BlackBerry 7290

I have owned a couple of so-called smartphones in the past and on the whole have found them to be sadly lacking. Certain vendors try and pack in too much capability and deploy dodgy operating system software, which tends to compromise the effectiveness of the product. I remember I had a Palm Treo 600 that was less than robust in the hardware department and was forever re-booting at the most inconvenient of times. However, all that said, about 18 months ago I once again decided to make a foray into the world of smartphones. Over the coming year, I was going to be making 3 fairly extended trips ... more

Since the inception of mobile telephony, I have had every new mobile device going, and have often quickly bored of them. Thanks to eBay, I can continually sate my thirst for gadgetry. I was recently paying an horrendous amount of cash to my mobile phone service provider in data charges for email and web browsing on my mobile. Thus, I decided to get a Blackberry device, for email and web ONLY. I signed up with O2 for a Data Only tariff, at about £15 a month ex VAT. Aside from an initial confusion re: my new SIM card, the account was activated and my Blackberry 7290 burst into life! Setting it ... more

I love getting my hands on new gadgets and when I had the opportunity to take possesion of a Blackberry 7290 for only £99.99 on an 18 month contract with Vodafone I jumped at the chance. Included within the box was the Blackberry itself, the software disk, a plug socket charger and a USB cable for transferring data to the desktop PC. The cable also doubles up as a charger for the battery which needs charging for about 12 hours before using it the first time. Whilst charging it is advisable to read the instructions as I found installing the software a bit of a nightmare at first and ended up on ... more