Ok. I want to start off that I am not yet BB user. I am addicted to the this site right now as I am convincing myself that I need a 8700.

My question is.

Is Edge really that exciting?????

I am currently using my V550. I receive the EDGE network all over the place. However, I am not at all impressed with the speed. It takes a good 1-2 minutes to get most anything out of the browser. Not each screen, but from start to finish; It would be faster to walk to my house, turn on my computer and get mail/movies/weather or whatever that way. It seems very very slow. I imagine that it could be the PHONE and not the edge speed itself. It seems like the phone does not have the fastest processor.

So, what is the deal. Is it fast on the BB or not???

Well you have to be realistic. Of course there will be a slower response time than if you were at home using a Pentium 4 processor with 512MB RAM and a high speed cable modem. But, as far as handheld device web access goes, EDGE on the 8700 is very competitive. It isn't as fast as EVDO, but from what I have read it is actually very close. Much of it is the browser itself, and the BB browsers are quite fast and accurate. As long as you are being real, I think your web experience on an 8700 will be very impressive. I use it daily to check everything from this forum, bank accounts,weather, news and stocks, and I'm pleased.

It's definitely better than GPRS. I'm happy with EDGE on the 8700c but I did come from a 7290 and the only sites I visit are traffic, doppler, and maybe some news sites or blogs if I'm stuck somewhere and bored. It's more than suitable for my needs.

That's not to say that I wouldn't appreciate significantly better speeds or enough throughput to browse standard sites at high speed.

EDGE is much better than GPRS but no where near the speed of EVDO.

I had a v551 that I used to test out Cingular coverage before we switched over from Nextel. I almost didn't believe that the device had even GPRS support, because any kind of downloads were just awfully slow. Ringtones, tiny WAP pages, sending MMS or email, all just took forever.

I dug up my old 7230 from T-Mo and borrowed a friend's SIM to try out GPRS on it (it has no EDGE support). It was faster than EDGE on the Moto when using BES or WAP. So something's fishy with the Moto.

The 8700c is fast all around, whether it's doing WAP (like downloading ringtones from MediaNet) or transferring data through BES. I think the Moto just is underpowered when it comes to being able to handle data coming from the network -- the menus themselves are slow on the device sometimes.

Basically, I wouldn't judge EDGE's capabilities by using a non-BlackBerry (or non-smartphone) device. If you can swing it, borrow an EDGE laptop card and a GPRS laptop card and see how they are side-by-side just going regular web browsing or downloading a file.

I have an EVDO laptop card from Sprint and it can usually get between 500 and 700Kbps on downloads -- about the speed of a barebones DSL connection. Not sure if the EVDO BlackBerries can do this well, but the "raw" speed of EVDO definitely seems to leave EDGE behind.

I guess it funny but as little as I browse with my 7290 I am happy with the speed of the browser.

Wirelessly posted (8700c: BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Unless you are using the BB as a modem the evdo and edge results are similar. Evdo is much better as a modem

Thanks all.

Yeah, I am not expecting to go crazy on the thing. I am just not very impressed with the Motto. TRUE, the menus in the V550 V600 are slowwww...making me believe that the phone itself is not able to handle all of the incoming data.

The only thing that I am confussed about is that GPRS is faster than EDGE coments. Yes, I guess that I know that. But I might be on the crack pipe thinking than my previoulsy mentioned Motto V550 IS on the EDGE network. (most of the time) It has the EDGE icon and everything.

Am I confussed between the difference of my Motto's EDGE and lets say the 8700's EDGE?

Yeah, I do not really plan to use it as a modem. Maybe a tiny tiny bit.

The thing of the matter is this: The v550/v551 only uses EDGE while transferring MMS/tethering. For WAP browsing and downloads it only uses GPRS, and as such this explains why it is so unimpressive.

Why's this? Dick move on the part of Motorola, IMO. All in all, don't use your experience with the v550 as a marker of how fast EDGE really is - it's pretty damn speedy on the 8700.

Almost as exciting as my car insurance quotes.


The browser speed is a definate step up. GPRS in my opinion is now history

Ah hah.

I get it now. Browser=GPRS

I am excited to fully convince myself to get the 8700. Then I have to convince my wife. lol.