RIM Color BlackBerry 7230 Review

securitas submits this painfully well-linked piece: "eWEEK reviews the RIM BlackBerry 7230 color handheld, Research In Motion's latest combination wireless e-mail/phone/PDA, and the first BlackBerry to feature a full-color display. The tri-band GSM/GPRS J2ME device features a 240-by-160-pixel, 65,000-color display, 16 MB flash +2 MB SRAM, an Intel 386 32-bit chip, SMS, an HTML browser (missing from the preceding BlackBerry 5810), a claimed 4 hours talk/10 days standby removable/rechargeable lithium-ion battery, POP3/IMAP/Exchange/Notes wireless e-mail for up to 10 accounts with file attachment management, security via Triple DES encryption, USB sync/recharging and the usual organizer functions. RIM squeezes it all into a 4.8 oz/136g, 4.4x2.9x0.8 inch/11.3x7.4x2.0 cm package (tech specs at RIM). The BlackBerry 7230 is exclusive to T-Mobile USA until 2004 and costs about $400. With this release, RIM is moving the BlackBerry into the prosumer/consumer market to expand its customer base beyond enterprise users. The release comes amid speculation of BlackBerry doom following RIM's recent patent ruling loss and ahead of the highly anticipated Handspring Treo 600, its direct competition (which includes the MS Pocket PC Phone Edition Smartphone and the Palm Tungsten W). More at Wired News, E-Commerce Times, InfoWorld and Forbes/Reuters."

But is it legal?

[ybmug]

Didn't they just get in quite a bit of legal trouble for "borrowing" somebody else's technology? Seems like a pretty bold move to introduce new products at a time like this.

Re:RIM software extremely super bad

[shepd]

>I do dearly miss the previous generation of Blackberry with Mobitex network access.

As an unfortunate and early adopter of a RIM 950 pager (yes, the pager model) it regularly crashed at least once a week with some sort of system reset message (it's been years since I've used it, I think it said "system error 7" or something). Required a reset, and, as usual, all my stuff was lost (except, amazingly, my emails).

Apart from the software being so bad, the service being so expensive, and the unit being horribly overpriced, I loved it dearly. However, not dearly enough to keep paying $50 a month for email service.