I have now had a few days to check out the new T-Mobile Blackberry 8900. I will be comparing my most recent Blackberry, a T-Mobile 8800.
Good Points:
1. Nice screen; very good resolution; and good readability. Good for viewing attached documents.
2. Nice industrial design and small form factor.
3. Wifi (but it seems much slower than the Iphone or an old T-Mobile Dash I have around the house).
4. Pretty good camera. There is considerable shutter lag; but the photos are fair. Note that I cannot seem to be figure out how to turn off the annoying shutter sound. I tend to use a camera phone for reminders of a product or article that interested me. The shutter may be required by law in some locations; but I don’t think it’s required where I live.
5. Audible works a bit better. I am an Audible fan. (I also download audio books from Net Library, but they require a protected WMA format, which the 8900 does not support). I finally can downloads audio books directly to the device. There are still glitches, such as updating the My Library list, but it improved from essentially “non-functional” to “somewhat usable”.
6. UMA–T-Mobile’s voip option, worked quite well. Voice quality was so so (probably device limited) but setup was simple and it seems to work at various wifi sites without use of minutes or special hardware. I am excited to try this in Japan and on other international trips.
7. 3.5 mm headphone jack, started with the original Curve. Quite good sound though my headphones.
Not So Good Points:
1. Mediocre voice quality. My 8800 had exceptional voice quality. It was better than my Cisco Voip phone at work. The voice quality of the internal speaker for the 8900 is not nearly so good. I found myself continuously re-positioning the phone vis-a-vis my ear to try and hear better. This is a big problem; and makes me think about returning it rather than suffering through a year of poor voice calls. I have been with T-Mobile for seven years or so in the Chicago area (from right after Voicestream came to town). I find their service much better than AT&T and Verizon and rivaled only by Sprint (this may sound funny, but it is my experience). Anyway, this is probably the worst voice quality I have had on any of several Blackberry phones.
2. No 3G. May not mean so much for routine Blackberry functions, which are highly compressed, but for web browsing or downloads, lack of 3G is a big minus.
3. Annoying change from mini-usb to micro usb for device connections. I have several devices, such as M3P players and another phone that use mini-usb; now I need to have another cord just for the 8900 and buy some extra chargers and cords for when I travel. I note that the media-sync was much faster on the 8900 than my 8800. I don’t know if this is because of better software, drivers or the micro usb (versus mini usb).
4. Annoying, audible phone dialing sound. In normal and other non-silent profiles, there is an annoying and very audible rapid dial sound that everyone around you can hear. My convoluted work around, found on line, is to use vibrate mode, and then have it ring. This is silly and annoying. It is representative of the settings limits for this phone that seriously detract from individual usability and customization.
5. The included case is a definite letdown. It is too small, leaving the top 1/2 inch of the device uncovered. It is too tight, making the phone tough to extract when answering a call, and there is not a belt clip.
6. Web browser–still bad. Bookmarks are a pain, locked in to useless T-Mobile sites, and browsing is not so good. I loaded Opera Mini but it doesn’t seem to be well integrated. This may be the side effect of using an Iphone; by comparison the 8900 browser, even tough introduced more than a year after the Iphone, is so poor.
7. Reception seems to be worse than the 8800. It is difficult to compare exactly, but it seems that reception at home and work is a notch worse than my 8800. Not as bad as an Iphone, though, on AT&T.