[waine06]

Hey guys. I was noticing that new devices appearing on the market employee the clickwheel. The new Cingular 8525 and the Blackjack are the few that come to mind. Why do you think RIM is determined to do away w/ the wheel in favor of the trackball? Are these devices copying the BB or is RIM the innovator? What so bad about the wheel anyway? I really like it, makes a BB a BB. Not sure. I have heard more than a few members gripe about the trackball and I am in favor of giving customers a choice. What about a trackball and a clickwheel? The best of both navigational tools? Just my $.02

[ezrunner]

I love the Clickwheel!!! but I have played with a trackball enabled 8800 and that is nice too. my prference is the wheel but I will easily adjust to the ball. though when using my friends pearl for a few days I found myself going for the wheel. Id like to see RIM continue with the trackwheel on at least one device

[Dawgfan]

With this forum being a Blackberry forum I can only imagine the devotion to the clickwheel. I loved the clickwheel, especially over a touch screen. My experience with touch screen was not positive, especially with "wandering" alignment.
The new "ball", for me, works great and is an easy adjustment. I went from a 7250 to the 8800 (tried the Pearl for a bit but needed qwerty) and while I have reached for the clickwheel a few times on the 8800, the ball is working well. I do like that you can adjust the sensitivity of the ball both vertically and horizontally. That has helped me as I had to slow the dern thing down.

The main thing I like that they did about the ball system is they designed it to where you HAVE to roll up or down to go to the upper or lower row of applications. The way I utilize this is I put my most common apps at the edges of the rows so I can just do a fast roll of the ball to the right or left and as long as I am in the right row I know it will stop on the app I want. For example, my contacts icon is at the far right of the first row so at any time I can do a quick swipe of the ball and know that it will go to and stay on the contacts icon.

[takeshi]

No telling why RIM felt the change to the trackball was necessary considering that the BB OS is perfectly suited for use with the wheel. The only benefit I've found to the ball so far is in browsing in Desktop View. I've adjusted fine to the ball but miss the tactile feedback of the wheel as it allowed you to navigate a bit by touch.

[bbtrlb]

I have had only one berry, the 7100i that I currently use.

I am looking to upgrade at some point (nothing urgent) but everything I look at has the trackball. It appears that the 8703 was the last berry we will see with a clickwheel unless i am mistaken.

The curve I tried with the ball did not have "clicks" as you turn the ball, like we get when we scroll the wheel. I think this is huge. One thing I really like about the wheel is I can often navigate thoughtlessly or effortlessly through my programs because I "know" where they are and I can just get there by feel, i.e., three clicks this way, four clicks that way. Am I mistaken that with the ball you have to actually be looking at the screen to see where you are in navigating around?

Perhaps of more critical importance: how is brickbreaker on a trackball? I can only assume that scores are not as high.

I am reluctant at this point to give up my clearly obsolete 7100i for this as well as many other reasons. My wife has a 8703e with Sprint, and I do like EVDO, but for me really email and phone is 90% of what I need in a berry. So I am not inclined to change.

Someone please tell me I am wrong and that there will be a badass EVDO Rev A berry with GPS and a ton of memory out on the market with a clickwheel sometime soon.

Can anyone please elaborate?