Gadgets Review: The BlackBerry 7230 PDA

Christmas came early for me this year when my boss announced that he would be purchasing the new color Blackberry PDAs for a few people in the office. Luckily one of those few people was me. I've had a number of PDAs before, but the Blackberry was different - I was wirelessly connected at all times. Little did I know how much this feature would come to haunt me.

The Hardware

The 7230 is the latest and greatest from Research In Motion, a Canadian company who has a long line of varying units available. It's the first color unit available, and it comes packaged in a stylish new case. Whereas all prior units were in a typical PDA rectangle and packaged in matte black plastic, this unit has rounded corners and comes in a nice dark navy blue. People "in the know" have nicknamed it the BlueBerry.

It became immediately evident to me that someone had really done a lot of work to come up with a new set of hardware interface features for this unit. Prior units connected to your computer only through the synchronization dock. This was also the only method by which you could charge the unit, unless you package also came with a specialized charging package adaptable to most any wall plug. The 7230 charges and synchronized through the industry standard USB port on the side of the unit. This has the obvious benefit of allowing you to charge up your unit wherever there's a computer. Combined with the blackberry is a wall plug that has a USB port as well, so you can still plug into a wall socket if that's all you have available.

Also new to this unit was the top phone button. This is particularly useful when you're driving or otherwise in a situation where taking the 7230 out of its belt holster would be inconvenient. When you get a call, you simply hit the button on top of the unit labeled with a little phone symbol, and begin speaking and listening through your connected earpiece and microphone.

They've reformatted the keyboard with this series, namely the numbers are now in a standard phone configuration as alt-options for the left side of the keyboard. I've found that dialing the phone with this new keyboard, and, in particular, navigating phone menus or voicemail, is much more accessible with this system, as my mind is used to finding the numbers in that order when listening to my options.

Oddly enough, either as a relic of an earlier model or a taste of things to come, the 7230 includes an infrared port. Presumably, this would allow a user to "beam" his data to another blackberry unit or potentially wirelessly synchronize your unit with a similarly equipped CPU. However, nothing in the Blackberry OS currently allows you to take advantage of this.

Interfacing with the OS is through the use of two controls on the side of the unit, along with, of course, the thumb pad keyboard. The first control is a clickable wheel, which definitely takes some getting used to. You'll find yourself accidentally clicking when you intended to scroll, or vice-versa, until you get used to the required pressure for each activity. Included in this unit is a second button near the scroll wheel whose main purpose is that of a default escape button. It'll get you out of most anything, but typically you want to navigate by the menus to ensure that you're saving your work.

The Desktop Software

Included with the unit is the newest version of the Desktop Connector software. Since RIM has a penchant for proprietary applications, don't expect to be able to easily migrate your Palm Desktop information to this application. I've found a pretty straightforward way to do it, but it's not trivial (I used Outlook as my go-between).

On the surface, this software appears to have limited options, and even more limited functionality. It's only until something goes wrong or, like me, you're generally curious about these things, that you'll discover the depth of the application and all of the available configuration options.

From the Desktop Connector software, you can manage your synchronizations with the unit, load applications onto the unit, backup and restore your entire handheld storage and configuration, and set up how email gets redirected to the unit. I won't go into too many details about this application, as its function is pretty straightforward, and most of the time, it's always on and continuously ignored by the average user.

The RIM OS

The OS for the Blackberry is based on a publicly available JDK, making application design and production for the unit pretty easy. On the 7230, it manages 65,000 colors in a 240x160 resolution display.

The included applications are everything that you'd expect to see integrated in a standard desktop organizer application. Each PDA application has a corresponding synchronization function with your organizer application, and it's compatible with Outlook or Lotus Notes.

Along with the standards, you have wireless web browsing capability, a calculator, a classic game of breakout, and a few OS utility applications.

Blackberry: The Addiction

Everyone that I know that gets a Blackberry goes through the same routine: For about 3 weeks or so, they carry it everywhere. Instead of walking over and sit down in front of a computer, they'd rather sit where they're at and email someone with the Blackberry. I don't know if it's a combination of the "always-on" wireless connectivity and the QWERTY thumb-pad keyboard, but something keeps these people from living a normal life without the unit.

This is followed closely by the Burnout Period: You start setting the profile to Quiet, because you just need some peace, damn it. You start conveniently "forgetting" the unit at the office or at home. If you're lucky, you can find a happy medium between Power Email Blackberry God and Hopeless PDA Burnout.

The 7230 does nothing but intensify these extremes. The rounded corners on the unit make it fit nicer in the palm of your hand, and the backlit screen and keyboard make you feel like you're operating Future Technology. The color screen is just gorgeous, when you consider that all your friends have to settle for shades of gray.

The increased wireless band capability of the 7230 doesn't ease your addiction to communication, either. My Blackberry handheld manages to get a good signal in places where my older Motorola phone swore up and down that I was insane for trying to place a call.

As a gaming rig, the Blackberry performs adequately. If you're looking for a good gaming PDA with wireless capabilities, I would consider the oft-maligned Nokia N-Gage before I'd go with the Blackberry. Otherwise, you're looking at a good platform for card games. You can find some decent arcade games for the unit (like the "Brickout" game that ships with it), but they're all retreads of the massive arcade machines you'd see in bars circa 1982. In retrospect, this is probably a good thing, considering the age group of the average Blackberry user.

Wireless Service

If you're in the US, and you're looking to get a Blackberry 7230, then you have to deal with T-Mobile. If you wait a few months, you could spend a premium and get the new Blackberry 7280, which allows you to interact with the Cingular network, instead.

Let me make this clear: The regional sales folks for T-Mobile are fantastic people: Well-informed, helpful, and very interested in doing what they can to retain you as a customer. They operate under the often forgotten credo that a happy customer is a loyal customer.

I can't say the same for T-Mobile customer support. My last technical support call with them lasted 2.5 hours, and was a series of conversations like this:

Transferred In
T-Mobile: Hello, this is operator 2-4523STX%%$, How may I help you?
Me: Explains the problem, again.
T-Mobile: Let me look up your account. What as your wireless number?
Me: Gives them the number, again. (Which, incidentally, I typed in at the beginning, as well)
T-Mobile: Hmmm, I don't know why you were transferred to me. Let me transfer you to the correct department. Let me put you on hold while I find the right person.
Hold Music (20 minutes)
T-Mobile: Hello, sir, I apologize for the wait. Before I transfer you, is there anything else I can help you with today?
Me: (barely containing the fuming) No.
Transferred In.

(Repeat above as needed)

Before you smirk and tell me the above is an exaggeration, and it really couldn't be that bad, I'd like to show you the scars on the side of my head where I pounded the receiver of the phone in my frustration. I haven't had that kind of bad customer service since I voted in the 2000 Presidential Election.

Additionally, T-Mobile has decided that the web is a wild, dangerous place. Leaving people open to read reviews like this could potentially lead them to complain about their lack of service. Therefore, they've decided to shut down general web wireless service to all of their subscribers, allowing them only to browse through the limited web experience of their own "T-Zones". Of course, they decided this just as they released the 7230.

The T-Zones service wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so horribly slow, buggy, and so extremely limited in its information options. For example, you can only get news from CNN or ABC, you can only play the games that they provide, and their "local news" options seem like an exercise in up-to-the minute fraudulent advertising. Surfing what little they have available is a "click and wait" experience that I haven't enjoyed since my home computer was equipped with a blazingly fast Hayes 300 SmartModem.

Now, if you pay the premium, and upgrade to the most recent version of the Blackberry Enterprise Server (the email redirector server that's optional for enterprise deployments of Blackberry PDAs), you can surf the web through a gateway provided by the server, rather than go through T-Mobile's network. Since this software is provided by RIM, it's understandable that it's faster, more compatible with the PDA, and opens up the entire web for browsing. The BES upgrade also provides you with wireless synchronization and the ability to read attachments in email.

Conclusions

As compared to the Palm and other PDAs, the Blackberry is my choice for day to day communication via email. The integration in the OS with the phone is a dream, and porting my Outlook contact lists in was not only a breeze, it's actually motivated me to stay in touch with people that were wallowing in the bits of some forgotten contact category.

The simple QWERTY keyboard is as fast an interface as the standard hunt-n-peck method of typing. It's so much faster than using "Graffiti" or the on-screen keyboard in the Palm OS units.

The 7230 is a great unit, and even though it came out just this last spring, there are already some nice deals to be found through your local T-Mobile representative. If you want to avoid the T-Mobile fiasco I described above, you may want to consider waiting for the 7280 to come into wide-release, as you'll be able to hook up to the Cingular network instead.