Messed with it for a half hour today at a store. My impression overall:
. I now hear that more units are not going to be released until the software is fixed (around Dec. 5 for people who ordered today). Typing: is just OK, not nearly as fast or accurate at the BB keyboards of the Pearl/Curve/Bold. anticipating the next keystrike to type fast won't work well because you have to touch the backscreen to enter the letter But I expected that. No touchscreen will ever be as good as a keyboard for obvious reasons. I could live with that though, and learn to deal with it and get better I'm sure. I don't send long emails anyway. The dealbreaker for me was selecting things from a browser page with my finger as the cursor. You can't see what's under it (doh) and so I usually selected the wrong thing (try CBS Sportline and try and select College Football, or Fantasy Football or College Basketball--those selections are so close together you cover them all up with your finger at once). Scrolling up and down with the finger is awkward, but can be done. The "big screen" gets half as big when the keyboard appears, making it at least as small as a Curve screen if not smaller so for messaging the screen is no advantage. In short, the trackball as mouse is far superior to my finger as mouse/cursor, and that messes the thing up. If it had a trackball at the bottom between the keys it could be much much better.It's also hard to hold it in one hand and page down a long email stroking the screen, and paging down using the letter 9 ain't happening either. You can do it, but it's more difficult. It's very attractive, very pretty screen, very cool looking at the menus and stuff, but for a primarily messaging person I think the curve beats it. I'll look at the Bold next. Just my .02