I have used this handset for about 6 months now after I retired my old Blackberry 7290.
This is a similar size to the old phone but the screen clarity is 10 times better. The designers have also thought about the phone functionality more with two buttons on the front for on & off hook as well as a couple of convenience keys that you can customise.
Overall if you are like me and you want to get your emails on the move and the telephone comes second then this is really good and simple to use.
If the phone is more important to you but you still want a Blackberry then you could try an 7130 although this doesn't have a qwerty keyboard. There is also a similar Blackberry Pearl which has a 1.3 Mega pixel camera and MP3 player, but again the keyboard uses predictive text.
Another thing to note is that Vodafone have recently brought out an 8707v which I have tried. I don't like it as much, although it can use 3G for higher speed Internet access (no coverage where I live at the moment).
The cost for an 8700v handset will be largely dependant on the deal you can do with Vodafone. My phone was free but this was down to the large number of minutes I use each month.
If you are with another phone provider you can get 8700's with the same functionality but they will have their own little customizations.
Now a quick bit of background on Blackberries in general. They normally come in two flavours, BES & BIS (Blackberry Enterprise Server and Blackberry Internet Service). Generally speaking BES is a company controlled server and BIS is more for home use. You can set up these handsets for both although mine is configured for business. Email gets pushed out to the handset automatically so there is almost no delay between it arriving in your In Box and getting to your phone.
The running costs of these devices can be quite steep. It is easy to end up with a £40 per month bill for both voice and data.
Overall I love my handset, it looks good and definately saves me time with wirelessly synchronizing my email & calendar. I am very lucky that this is a company handset as the costs would be a bit steep for me to run it privately.
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Advantages: Easy to install. wireless email, SMS/MMS, clear mobile phone, organise, contact book, coour screen Disadvantages: QWERTY keyboard too compacted, battery life could be better
CaptainColonic 17.07.2007 (17.07.2007)
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Review of RIM BlackBerry 8700v
Advantages: Easy to install. wireless email, SMS/MMS, clear mobile phone, organise, contact book, coour screen Disadvantages: QWERTY keyboard too compacted, battery life could be better
CaptainColonic 17.07.2007 (17.07.2007)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of RIM BlackBerry 8700v
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