Hi all - I posted this yesterday to the 7100 forum, but have not had any responses yet, so I thought I'd try the general forum to see if I got any response here.

I have just been approved at work to move from a mobile phone to a Blackberry and will be ordering a brand new unit in the next 2 weeks' time. I can choose from either the 7130e or 7250. I am leaning towards the 7130e for a number of reasons, and since have used T9 keyboard before SureType doesn't worry me.

What I am concerned about is losing some of my convenience features on my Nokia handset like voice activated dialing, speakerphone, and personalization features like ringtones, screensavers and backgrounds. I know - kinda dumb to worry about personalizing the device when the Blackberry adds so much from a mobility perspective.

Anyway - I'd appreciate hearing on the general opinion of the two products, how form factor fits into your daily usage, whether you miss voice activated dialing, etc.

My carrier will be Bell Mobility in Canada, and I'll be connected to my Lotus Notes email.

Thanks.

jww

Before commenting on the 7130e, let me be the first to say that the 8700 is THE berry to have!

That said, scan the forums for comments on the 7130e. I had a 7100g (Cingular), and I loved the form factor, but its phone was never good, and after a little more than a year - right after the warranty expired! - had to give it up because the microphone was breaking up and no one could understand me. The forums are littered with similar stories of the 7100 series (the 7130 is too new to have that kind of feedback yet).

The 7130 is also a slow poke compared to the 8700. It uses EVDO (when available) instead of EDGE that the 8700 uses, but in operation time. It can take 20+ minutes for the thing to boot up. The 8700 does it in less than 2 minutes. I don't even want to think about how long searches take. They are amazingly fast on the 8700!

If you're with a service that doesn't carry the 8700 (V), be patient....

J

20+ minutes to boot up? Really? I've worked with a lot of device and have never had a device take that long to boot up (even after wiping the OS).

I would probably still go with the 8700 due to the EDGE speed.....but I'm used to the keyboard of the 7100i, so going back to a full keyboard would take some getting used to.

20+ minutes to boot? Not the ones I've worked on.

As of now there is no CDMA based 8700, so talking about it is moot.

Yes, you will lose voice activated dialing. But the 7130 has a speakerphone, and you can personalize it (as you described) as well as any other phone...

The 7130 has EVDO, which is great. The 7250 has the full QWERTY keyboard. The 7130 has 64mb RAM (useful to load more programs - not for music). If you can live with the Suretype keyboard and don;t want to wait an unknown period of time for the next CDMA device, go with the 7130e.

Strictly

I seriously doubt that a CDMA 8700 will use EDGE anyway so I'm not sure what the point of "selling" the 8700 based on EDGE is... Have you actually used a 7130?

Also, I've never had a Blackberry take 20 minutes to boot and I've used the 6230, 7230, 7100t, 7290, and 8700c.

For the record, 7250 also has EVDO after the latest OS upgrade.