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The BlackBerry is built just like most of its brethren. It is a rather flat device that comes with a 35-key QWERTY keyboard and a large horizontal screen. A speaker with a silver frame is located on the back of the device, and just below that is a thin slide-out cover. A trackwheel dial is found on the right side of the phone and the escape button is found just below that. On the left of the device is a USB port which is mostly used for charging or connecting to the computer, and a headset jack. Another button is found below the USB port and this is a convenience key that opens the profile list.

The top of the device has a power button and a mute button to turn off the audio coming from the device. The battery cover is a thin slice of blue plastic on the lower half of the back of the phone.

In the box
# Handset Transceiver
# Battery (standard battery)
# Charger
# Headset
# Carry Case
# User manual

Buttons/Screen
The unit that we got was the 8700g, and this comes in a navy blue shell and has similarly-coloured buttons. Only the numberpad is in silver, but only for half the key as the numbers share keyspace with some of the alphabets.

The keys on the 8700 are black with white text, and the backlight for the keypad is also white. It takes some getting used to as there are a few keys that are unique only to the BlackBerry. The call and end buttons are thin strips nestled just below the screen. This appears to be a new feature in BlackBerry devices as previous PDA-shaped devices did not have this feature which made an appearance on the 7100 series phones.

The keys are a little bit small as one can expect from having a full keyboard on a device this size. However, the tactile response was a little stiff and it was easy to see why repeated pounding on the keys would cause some discomfort in both thumbs.

The screen was given as a 65K screen, measuring in at 320 x 240 pixels in a landscape configuration. However, the backlight would brighten and dim at weird intervals which led me to believe that the device did not respond to user input with regard to resetting the timer to dim the screen.

It could also be that the device is responding to the ambient lighting as it should, but the funny thing was that this happened under a fluorescent light with no fluctuation in the intensity of the light in the room.

Software/Messaging
The device runs on the proprietary Blackberry OS, in this case the BlackBerry 4.1.0 with Java support. Messaging with a full keyboard is always a pleasure, and even more so for those who are familiar with standard QWERTY keyboard layouts.

However, the keys are rather close together and you have to use the very tips of your fingers to get the precise alphabet or number that you want. Again, this was rather uncomfortable after a while.

The message interface is rather plain compared to the general screen which displays in full colour whereas the messaging screen is only in black and white. It does feel like a different device altogether when it does that.

PIM
There is an address book, calendar, task list, memo pad and calculator in the device. Standard features, with one caveat ?Pocket PC devices have more third-party applications to choose from.

The device has 64MB of flash memory, and the 16MB SDRAM is separate. However, there is no provision for using a memory card to store data, and this is quite a large shortcoming in that the device is limited in the amount of data that it can hold.

Camera/Video
There is no camera in the BlackBerry 8700g device.

Multimedia/Voice
The voice reception is rather good, as is the built in speaker. However, the audio jack is just for a headset and is not for stereo headphones. Anyway, since there is no expansion and the device only holds 64MB, it is rather unlikely that you will be using the BlackBerry 8700 to listen to music.

Connectivity
The BlackBerry 8700 supports Bluetooth connectivity, and it was a fairly simple process to pair up a Bluetooth headset to the device and use it to make and receive telephone calls.

The web browser is quite bad. It has its own idea of how web pages should display, and this usually means that web pages are jumbled up. It worked a little better on websites that were built for mobile-devices. Don’t get me wrong, the browser is quite fast and gets the webpage for you really quickly. It is just that the webpage shows up looking really funny and not like what it looks like on other mobile devices.

Games
The BlackBerry has the BrickBreaker game built into the device. This is one of those old classics which require the player to keep a bouncing ball moving around the screen and breaking blocks at the top of the screen without dropping the ball to the bottom of the screen.