"BlackBerry 8820 Overview"

BlackBerry 8820

Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM) has gone a long since the release of their very first Blackberry in 1999. Last April, the company announced that their BlackBerry subscribers have increased to eight million partly due to the release of their Blackberry 8800 model. And now, the company is again in high spirits with the release of yet a new wireless handheld device.

Together with AT&T, RIM announced the all new BlackBerry 8820 with upgraded features the most notable of which is cellular and Wi-Fi capabilities, a first in the Blackberry product line. It is the first dual-mode BlackBerry handset and combines EDGE/GPRS/GSM cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity.

RIMs partnership with AT&T has enabled users to utilize corporate campus Wi-Fi networks as well as thousands of Wi-Fi locations throughout the U.S. This includes the 10,000 AT&T-owned or branded hotspot locations across the country. All can be availed for an additional charge, of course. Moreover, the quadband 8820’s Internet access and mobile applications can be used in more than 135 countries.

Also called the BlackBerry 8820 Smartphone, the new model incorporates a thin body, full and highly tactile keyboard, large and bright display at 320 x 240 resolution, user-friendly trackball navigation system, and great voice and data functionality. RIM also provides AZERTY and QWERTZ configurations for people who use a different language aside from English. This model continue on the elegant black and silver color scheme which has been used by its predecessors.

RIM fitted the 8820 with an ultra-thin, high-capacity, removable battery which has been rated to extend the already exceptional battery life. It is, however, normal that the more you use the GPS receiver and the Wi-Fi features, the faster the battery drains. On the average, six hours of talk time can be squeezed out of a fully charge battery.

The new BlackBerry 8820 is also equipped with a built-in GPS, RIM’s latest media player upgrades, and a slot for micro-SD or micro-SDHC to expand its memory for increasing music, photo and video storage. It also supports TeleNav GPS Navigator and TeleNav Track, AT&T’s Push-to-Talk service, and Bluetooth 2.0. Adding Wi-Fi capabilities to the 8820 is a good thing, but the lack of 3G support is noticeable. Moreover, some have commented on the relatively slow browsing and GPRS connection. Support for full HTML emails is still not provided.

Although I’m not a fan of attaching a camera on every portable device, some end users are looking for a camera even in their BlackBerrys. It has been announced that the BlackBerry 8820 will be sold initially at $299.99 with a two-year contract with AT&T plus rebate.