The 7130c looks positively great. It's a rounded rectangle measuring 4.2 by 2.2 by 0.8 inches and weighing 4.2 ounces, with well-separated little keys and a bright 240-by-260 color screen that looks terrific in sunlight. The keyboard is RIM's SureType hybrid, which has two letters on most keys and uses a very good predictive text system to decide which one you want to type. It takes about 15 minutes to get used to, and then it's fine.
Once you e-mail on a BlackBerry, you'll wonder why all devices don't work this well. Cingular's BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) Web page lets you integrate up to ten e-mail accounts—either POP3/IMAP, Microsoft Exchange (via Outlook Web Access) or Lotus Notes, though sadly not Yahoo! or Hotmail. T-Mobile's BlackBerrys support Yahoo!, so Cingular needs to get on the ball. BIS automatically figured out the settings for my vanity domain name, saschasegan.com. Unlike previous versions of BIS, the new BIS 2.0 draws directly from source mailboxes rather than storing mail at Cingular. On the good side, that means you don't have a message limit any more. On the bad side, it means you can't manage messages on the BlackBerry through the Web interface.
E-mail accounts appear as separate mailbox icons on the 7130c's home screen, as well as in a consolidated mailbox combining all the e-mail accounts with SMS and MMS. Microsoft Word, Excel, and PDF attachments are viewable with their formatting stripped; you can also view thumbnails of PowerPoint presentations, and see JPEG and TIFF graphics attachments. MP3 attachments, alas, are unplayable. A third-party editor for Word and Excel files, eOffice from DynoPlex, costs a painful $119.95, but at least it exists.
Like other BlackBerrys, the 7130c syncs with PCs through a desktop application or with Macs via the free (albeit buggy) PocketMac for BlackBerry to copy over calendars, notes, tasks, and addresses from a range of desktop PIMs. Corporate users with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server can also sync PIM info over the air, but there's no such option for individuals.
Two major upgrades separate the 7130c from its predecessors such as the 7105t and 7100g. Unlike the previous models, the 7130c uses EDGE rather than the much slower GPRS network. Tethered to a laptop as a modem, I got very respectable speeds of 99 to 170 Kbps. That means faster attachment delivery and speedier Web surfing.
The 7130c also has a 312-MHz Intel processor, like its cousins the 8700g, 8700c, and 7130e. That's just now beginning to enable new, media-rich applications like Sona Mobile's BlackBerry Media Player. News clips downloaded through the free player were slow and blocky, but they worked.
As a quad-band world phone, the 7130c is decent if not great. Reception is good, and battery life is terrific, at 10 hours 25 minutes of talk time. The speakerphone is powerful. But I heard some volume fluctuations and occasional dropouts in the earpiece, and transmissions sounded scratchy with a lot of background noise coming through. A Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth headset connected without a problem, and MP3 ringtones (which you have to buy from Cingular) are loud.
A few missing features irritate me. No BlackBerry has ever had voice dialing. The 7130c lacks a camera and MP3 player. And although there's a perfectly decent Web browser, the 7130c doesn't have an IM client. You can download free Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger or ICQ clients, but to get MSN or a single multiplatform client you must buy commercial software costing anywhere from $20 to $50.
At $29.99 per month on top of a voice plan, Cingular's BlackBerry data plan will be too rich for some people's blood. But it's $10 cheaper than Cingular's data plan for the Palm Treo 650 or Verizon's plan for the Motorola Q. Only T-Mobile's plans cost less.
The 7130c's nearest competitors are RIM's own 8700c on Cingular, the BlackBerry 7130e on Sprint and Verizon, and the T-Mobile Sidekick 3. The 8700c has a better screen and a full keyboard, but otherwise works the same as the 7130c; you should make your buying decision based on form factor. The 7130e is just like the 7130c, but much faster at Web surfing and not quite as pretty; of course, you may not want to switch to Sprint or Verizon. The Sidekick 3 is a cuddlier device, with a full keyboard, camera and an MP3 player, but its complete inability to hook up to corporate e-mail will doom it for many professionals. Maybe that's the true niche for the attractive 7130c: It's a Sidekick for people with jobs.
SPEC DATA :
- Service Provider: AT&T
- Operating System: BlackBerry OS
- Screen Size: 2.3 inches
- Camera: No
- Bluetooth: Yes
- Web Browser: Yes
- Network: GSM
- Bands: 850, 900, 1800, 1900
- High-Speed Data: GPRS, EDGE
- Notes: 2.3", 240x260, 65k-color TFT screem
No comments:
Post a Comment