I have a new Blackberry 8800 that was supplied to me for work. Being that the corporate policy is so strict, the only third party applications I've installed is Berry411 and Google Maps.

When the device is sitting on my desk, the screen turns on, times out after a few seconds, and goes off.

I'm not receiving any email at the time, no alarms, and the signal is strong and unwavering.

What's going on?

The only thing I can think of that makes the screen turn on automatically like that is an incoming phone call.

I believe that's just due to the light fluctuations in the surrounding environment.
Mine does that too if I leave it near a window.

it does?

Never seen that happen before.

I've never seen mine light up from black all by itself (except for an incoming call.)

The screen brightness of my 8830 (World edition, threw Verizon Wireless BIS) flucuates along with my signal so if I have a good signal it will light up, if I have a bad signal it will dim out, of course that is when I am using the blackberry not when it is connected to my laptop.

You can try to uninstall the 3rd party you put on just eliminate that possibility.

The screen doesn't dim and brighten with signal strength. It dims and brightens based on a light sensor next to the flashing led on the top of the device. The more light, the brighter the screen.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320) BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

My guess is (and its only a guess...) that the server is refreshing your device and because the device see's that action as incoming data, it turns the device display on. Is yours the only one in the group that has this characteristic? Do other users have this happen to them as well?

The BB screen doesn't come on with just data coming and going.

I must say that I have never seen my display come on unless I receive an incoming call, or plug my device in. (self activation notwithstanding)

Which again beg's the question... is this the only device in the network that has this characteristic?

That could be it. To the OP, is the device plugged into the computer or to a charger when this happens? When the power goes on and off to the device while plugged in it will light the screen.

...particularly to a computer since the USB port may be set up to power down when the computer enters standby. If the PC is set up to allow USB to bring the computer out of standby, the pair will cycle each other, hence the random ignition of the BB display.

make sure you completely exit from Google maps...sometimes I use it and don't completely exit....the gps is still locating you and thats why the screen turns on randomly....it also kills your battery life...it used to happen to me until i realized the google maps and gps was tracking me the entire time...