Blackberry 7130e

After spending 5 days familiarizing myself with my new Blackberry 7130e, I'd say this has to be one of the best smart-phones on the market. There's a fairly steep learning curve - fortunately several of my colleagues have the same phone and saved me hours in setting up and customizing various aspects of the unit.

First, the phone itself works great. Reception and voice quality is superior, and the speaker phone (which can be toggled on/off either by using the click-wheel or the (.) keyboard shortcut) is outstanding. People on the other end remarked at how clear voices were (using it both as a handset and/or speaker phone).

The address book is simple to set up and edit. Names, numbers & email address can be added on the fly (the address book also sync's with Outlook on your computer).

As many as 10 POP3 email accounts can be forwarded to the unit - I'd recommend having your service provider set up the accounts (for $25 it will save you hours of frustration), Emails are pushed every 10-20 minutes (this doesn't seem to be adjustable and you don't have the ability to pull emails off the server if you're waiting for something urgent) *Note to RIM - Add an option to query mail server manually*. I have noticed that more often than not, emails are delivered to the unit before they ever land in my POP3 account (Telus). Added Note: "Reconcile Now" does NOT pull emails sitting on your POP server onto the handheld. What it does is PUSH deleted emails  from your handheld to your POP3 or Outlook Mailbox.

The 7130e has a form factor (shape) that is closer to a phone than a standard Blackberry, which was one of the reasons I chose the model. The narrower body means RIM has had to double up 12  of the keys (2 letters on each). In order to make this work, they employ something called SureType technology (no, you don't push the sides of these keys for the alternate letters - you simply type the word you want and the microprocessor basically interprets what you're trying to type). It has an active dictionary of about 35,000 words and learns new ones on the fly. Takes a couple of days to get used to it, and I'm sure it's almost as fast as the standard Blackberry once you're comfortable with it.

The hi-res screen is easy to read (even outdoors) - all fonts & sizes are adjustable.

I really like the fact that the handheld can be used as a tethered high-speed modem. SImply install the modem driver on your laptop (set up as a dial-up modem) and then start the Blackberry desktop software and attach the unit via the USB cable - you now have yourself a broadband modem you can use anywhere you can receive digital service (surf the net anywhere, no more paying for airport wireless). *Note - this proved to be a bit of a challenge as the documentation provided to install the modem correctly was severely lacking. After 3 days of searching (RIM refused to help as they said it was a service provider (Telus) issue), I finally found easy to follow instructions on Connecting a computer to the Internet using a BlackBerry device as a tethered modem *.

Telus gave me unlimited bandwidth for the first 3 months - I suspect if you were going to use the phone extensively as a broadband modem you'd definitely want to look into one of their extra data plans.

I'd invite anyone with questions or suggestions to leave a comment below. Of course if you've got a 7130e, you're invited to share your thoughts and any shortcuts / tips .....

• RIM

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