The Good:

I have to admit that when I first got the brand new BlackBerry 8830, I was very excited. The 8830 is a CDMA phone but can also connect to GSM networks when you decide to roam globally. This essentially means that if you plug in a roaming SIM Card from a trusted supplier like Celtrek (http://www.celtrek.com):

you will be able to travel abroad and not pay ridiculously high roaming fees. You’ll get to make your phone calls for about 90% less. Amazing? yup

Other than the world phone functionality that the new BlackBerry 8830 offers, it also has push email, access to the internet, native mp3/video player, IM services, etc… All good stuff. The interface is also very simple to navigate.

The Bad:

a) Well, there is no camera which is a downer. Why not?

b) For the two weeks that I’ve had the phone I’ve experienced downtime almost every day. This is ridiculous. I don’t think I’ve had one day without any downtime. There are constantly delays in receiving email and I can’t access the internet a lot of times. I get errors like “The service is currently not available. Please contact your service provider.” or “you do not have enough network coverage to process the requested service.” How dissapointing

c) For about 100 bucks/month that I end up paying for the phone, I get about 100 daytime minutes, unlimited incoming calls, and a measly 4 megabytes of data. There’s not much I can do about the low data offering. Fortunately, there is something I can do about the limited daytime minutes thanks to bOK (http://www.bOKnow.com).

The great thing about bOK is that I can use it to make ridiculously cheap long distance and international calls while in my roaming area.

My Question at the end of the day is, does everyone get so much downtime on their BlackBerries? If so, how is it tolerable?

Aydin.

Posted By: Aydin Mirzaee