[alphasports]

I ran BB's for a couple of years, up to and including the Pearl, before going for an E61 a few months ago. The E61 was destroyed yesterday and I have happily replaced it with another 8700.

The E61 absolutely demolishes the BB feature set, including the new 8800 series. The problem with it is the Symbian OS: it is very sluggish compared to the BB, which is normal given its overpowering features, but this doesn't make me feel any better using it. It is slow, pure and simple. The WiFi is good, and the browser is excellent, but the OS tends to be a bit buggy even on v3. What put me over the edge is a very peculiar quirk of bad design: the On-Off switch is located in the top right corner of the face, very close to where your earlobe rests when you're on the phone. The result is the tendency for the phone to shut off in the middle of a call. Due to Murphy's Law this means that only the important calls will suffer from this problem, as was the case yesterday, resulting in the violent demise of the phone!

The E61 also is cursed by a spongy, low-contrast keyboard that is often difficult to read under certain lighting conditions. Drove me nuts.

They are coming out with an upgraded model, the E61i, which includes a camera and an improved OS, but reports suggest it offers no better performance. I saw pre-release pics of the wifi-enabled BB8300 yesterday, and will probably wait on it.

As everyone's said a million times on these forums, it all depends what your needs are. I love the gadgetry of these new superphones but when it's simply not ready for primetime I prefer the simplicity of the BB.