[barjohn]

Review of 3 Blackberry Phones


Blackberry 7230 T-Mobile
The 7230 was my second Blackberry after a 950. The one thing I liked about the 950 was its ability to receive emails and send responses even in flight at 38,000 feet. Emails were fast and very reliable. I needed to replace the battery about once a week (sometimes 2 weeks). However, it fell short in two areas, 1) it had no phone so I needed to carry two devices and 2) no email attachment support so it was good for instant messaging but not for full emails with attachments.

I purchased the 7230 to resolve those two issues and I selected T-Mobile as the carrier because of price and the ability to use the device in Europe where I travel occasionally. The U.S. versions such as AT&T’s lacked the 900 MHz band used in much of Europe.

My initial impression was very favorable with only two major complaints. The first was the inability to see and read the screen in moderate darkness and the second was lack of a speakerphone. I was really impressed with the battery life as it seemed to never need a charge. I could use the phone for a week and only have the battery down by one bar. The size was a little awkward but it fits so close to the body that carrying it was comfortable and convenient. At first, I put up with the poor signal quality at my home and office because it worked so well in Europe and it was ok in other places I traveled. However, after a while the dropped calls, the poor reception at my home and office began to wear on me. Calls to T-Mobile promised to improve the coverage in those areas within 6 months. The improvements never came.

Blackberry 7100t T-Mobile
As soon as I saw the 7100t I was hooked. It appeared to solve many of the issues with the phone by adding a much better screen and a speakerphone. Having Bluetooth was the added kicker that convinced me to go buy one. I hoped that it would be the 7230 with the better screen and speakerphone and that with the new quad band radio it would have better signal holding capability. The 7100 screen was everything the 7230’s wasn’t with the exception of daylight visibility which is almost non-existent. The size was really nice though thinner would have been better and SureType was ok for most message typing. Not quite what the 7230 with full QUERTY keyboard offered but a good compromise to cut down width. (All things being equal I will trade thinness for width any day so I can slip it in a pocket without a big bulge) I like many others was disappointed in the lack of full Bluetooth functionality. This shortcoming became really obvious when I wanted to use the Bluetooth with my Lexus built in system. With no way to transfer my phone numbers from the device to the Lexus and no way to manually enter the numbers and names in the Lexus I had to go out and purchase a cheap Bluetooth phone, load my address book into it and use it to transfer my address book into the Lexus. Then return the phone afterward. Not very convenient for entering ones address book. Unfortunately, the T-Mobile service did not improve and the reception capability was actually slightly worse with the 7100t. I had the 7100t and the 7230 unlocked by T-Mobile and they were very accommodating. I liked their customer service even though they often failed to do what they said, but they were always nice about it and sooner or later fixed it. Compared to Nextel customer service that is powerless to do anything for you and will not let you speak to a supervisor it is a huge improvement. I took my work AT&T SIM and tried it on both units. With the 7230 there was no improvement because it lacked the 850MHz band; however, with the 7100t I suddenly had a very usable signal both at home and at work. Yes, it still dropped calls but not as frequently. I was still running the version 3.8 handheld software. Was I now a happy camper? Well, no not exactly. My complaints were as follows: The quality of the case and screen plastic seemed poor and scratched easily. The nylon holster was uncomfortable to wear and the unit is very insecure tending to easily fall out. SureType required a lot of extra steps because we use so many acronyms and constantly having to backspace and make corrections was getting annoying. The responsiveness of the unit to commands was slow and the entering of numbers for DTMF was painfully slow. The aforementioned Bluetooth shortcomings were still present but the worse feature was the lack of reliable communications. At various times it would lose the signal and nothing short of a hard reset would recover the signal. The worst part of this is that you would not know that it had happened and suddenly you would realize that the unit had no signal and was in constant search mode. The convenience of instant push email and phone calls was lost. This happened frequently after being on the USB port charging and after going through a weak signal area. Version 4.0 of the firmware became available and I upgraded to it with high hopes that all of my past problems would be resolved. The biggest improvement I have seen is that it does not lose the ability to recover from a lost signal as frequently and it seems a little more reliable but in my opinion it still has too many short comings. This led me to my next unit…

Blackberry 7250 Verizon
After having played with the Verizon XV6600 and the new EV-DO air card, I really wanted EV-DO capability. When I read that the new 7250 might offer that capability and had the hardware built in to support it so I decided to give it a try. A big factor was that I knew Verizon’s service is excellent wherever I travel except out of the country. I wanted reliability for both phone and messages akin to what I got back with the 950 and a separate Verizon phone. I also knew that the 1XRTT network is considerably faster than the GPRS network and might make the browser a little more usable. More importantly, if I could use the phone as a modem I would be able to communicate using my Vaio notebook almost anywhere. With EV-DO it would give me near WiFi performance without having to find a HotSpot. I knew I was giving up the speakerphone and the smaller size but gaining a better keyboard. I also knew I was giving up the really nice appearing screen on the 7100t for a screen that lacked the resolution but was a little larger. I was also giving up the ease of one handed phone dialing.

I have only had this phone a little over a week so my impressions may change with time. The screen is bright to very bright. When compared to a 7230…well…there is no comparison. The colors are a little flat compared to the 7100t and the resolution is obviously poorer. In daylight it is far superior. The keyboard is obviously better and the build quality is something you can see and feel. The speed of the unit with the ARM9 processor with a worst case speed of 250MHz is outstanding. Everything happens as quickly as you think it should. The browser speed is very good and puts the browser on the 7100t to shame in terms of speed to load pages. The network coverage is, of course, Verizon great. So far, I am leaning toward making this unit my only unit except when I travel to Europe. The plastic holster is still far better than the nylon one for the 7100t and I will soon try a leather holster. The Bluetooth sound quality on my Lexus appears to be better than the sound quality of the 7100t. Why RIM can’t put a small speaker like LG uses in the LG4500 for a speakerphone has always mystified me. There is no need to make the case thicker like they did on the 7510 & 7520. The sound level appears to me to be decent, but not as loud as I would like. They really should test their units in airports so they can see how difficult it can be to hear one in a noisy environment. Again the LG4500 is a good reference and it doesn’t compare to some of the Motorola units I have used.

What does it lack? Bluetooth needs to have additional profiles made available. We need to be able to transfer our phone book to another device. We need the GPS and wireless synchronization profiles as well and the serial port for use as a wireless modem. Take a screen like the 7100t, make it a little longer and put it in sideways into the 7250 and you have a great screen with higher resolution. Add the speakerphone for another hands free usage and finally add speaker independent voice dialing so I don’t have to fumble trying to dial a number that is not in my unit while trying to drive. This last one is a real must. Voice Signals technology supports the ARM processor so it should be possible to add this feature.

The bottom line is that I want a reliable means of staying in communications with my office for both messages and voice on a unit that is convenient to carry and use and that doesn’t crash or fail. I think the 7250 is pretty close to being there and with either software upgrades or minor revisions will become the killer unit to own.

[Mark Rejhon]

Do me a favour and benchmark your BlackBerry 7250 using this:

Java JBenchmark for cellphones:
http://wap.jbenchmark.com/

If possible, try all 3 benchmarks!

[barjohn]

1.0 Fails with a 907 invalid JAR error.
Benchmark2: 35
Details:
Image manipulation: 37
Text: 103
Sprites: 14
3D Transform: 23
User Interface: 40

JBenchmark version 2.0.4

Version 3.0 fails with error 907 invalid JAR

[barjohn]

Versio 2 on the 7100 produced the following result:

JBenchmark2: 14

Details:
Image manipulation: 8
Text: 62
Sprites: 7
3D Transforms: 5
User Interface: 30

[Mark Rejhon]

For my BlackBerry 7280 running BlackBerryOS 4.0.0.185:

JBenchmark1: 760

Details:
...Text: 127
...2D Shapes: 209
...3D Shapes: 142
...Fill Rate: 44
...Animation: 238


JBenchmark2: 18

Details:
...Image manipulation: 19
...Text: 66
...Sprites: 7
...3D Transform: 6
...User Interface: 23


It looks like the BlackBerry 7250 performs twice as fast as my BlackBerry 7280!
What version OS are you using on the 7250 and 7100?
Do you still get an Error 907 Invalid Jar on the 7100?

I have now made a benchmark comparision thread:
http://www.blackberryforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=31340

[barjohn]

On the 7100 I am running version 4.0.0.198 and I get the invalid JAR error on benchmarks 1.0 and 3D.

On the 7250 I am running version 4.0.0.204

By the way you can really see the differenece in performance between the two.

[Brad00111]

Can someone translate these results for us.......not so techie people?

[barjohn]

The 7250 is smoking the other units so far. It is probably due to the ARM 9 running at 250+ MHz.

[Mark Rejhon]

I am pretty curious about how the 7290 compares to the 7250.

I'd love to see the numbers for the 7750, the "reference standard" of SLOW in BlackBerry. :D

[barjohn]

Me too. I wouldn't be surprised if the two phones use the same MSM6500 chip since that chip also supports GSM/GPRS Class 10. It would be one way to get out two models quickly with little additional cost. Only the transmitter/receiver chips need to be changed. They could even offer a dual CDMA/GSM/GPRS if they want to add the additional chips.

[mok7100]

Originally Posted by barjohn

Review of 3 Blackberry Phones


[

ed me to my next unit…

Blackberry 7250 Verizon
After having played with the Verizon XV6600 and the new EV-DO air card, I really wanted EV-DO capability. When I read that the new 7250 might offer that capability and had the hardware built in to support it so I decided to give it a try. A big factor was that I knew Verizon’s service is excellent wherever I travel except out of the country. I wanted reliability for both phone and messages akin to what I got back with the 950 and a separate Verizon phone. I also knew that the 1XRTT network is considerably faster than the GPRS network and might make the browser a little more usable. More importantly, if I could use the phone as a modem I would be able to communicate using my Vaio notebook almost anywhere. ...
I have only had this phone a little over a week so my impressions may change with time. The screen is bright to very bright. When compared to a 7230…well…there is no comparison.

Your review is excellent. It's too bad you didn't try the 7100g instead of the "t" because for most of Southern CA, I have found that TMO coverage totally sucks and Cingular (Orange) is very good- but having said that I agree with you that VZW is best.

However, I have been told that with the CDMA versions of the BB's and othe PDA's (like Treo), you can both use the phone and data at the same time: when receiving email, your calls will be shunted to Voice Mail and not to the phone, and conversely when talking on the phone, your emails will not be received.

Have you experienced this at all?

I'd also be curious to know how the speakerphone compared on the 7510 (or 20) to the 7100t.

Thank,
-Marc

[barjohn]

I haven't tried the 7510 or 7520 so I can't comment on the speakerphone on these as compared to the 7100; however, folks I have talked to claim the speakerphone on the 7520 is far superior (Most Nextel speakerphones are quite good). The speakerphone on the 7100 is pretty mediocre compared to the LG4500, Siemens SX-56 and any Nextel I have owned. Neither CDMA or GPRS allow simulatneous voice and data (at present) however, GPRS gives priority to voice and will interrupt a data call to let you take a voice call whereas CDMA will send the voice call to voice mail.

[mok7100]

Originally Posted by barjohn

I haven't tried the 7510 or 7520 so I can't comment on the speakerphone on these as compared to the 7100; however, folks I have talked to claim the speakerphone on the 7520 is far superior (Most Nextel speakerphones are quite good). The speakerphone on the 7100 is pretty mediocre compared to the LG4500, Siemens SX-56 and any Nextel I have owned. Neither CDMA or GPRS allow simulatneous voice and data (at present) however, GPRS gives priority to voice and will interrupt a data call to let you take a voice call whereas CDMA will send the voice call to voice mail.

Actually not quite: I did the following experiements on my Cingular 7100g:
-Select "get link" on a web page and while it was loading, dialed my Wireless #. Result: Call range twice, nothing appeared on the phone to indicate a call was coming in, and after 2 rings (on the calling party's end), call went to Voice Mail. All of this was while the browser was open and said "requesting" and "loading"

-Send an E-mail and dial my wireless # as close to simultaneously as I could. Result: Call did "interrrupt"- "Answer/Ignore" screen appeared over the Messages screen. I was able to accept or shunt the call to Voice Mail. However, the bad news: the email I was sending went into "clock mode" and stayed like that. And to make matters worse, every email after that also went to "clock mode"- even though you could clearly see that the device was trying to send the email messages every few seconds. 4 Bars. The only thing that fixed this was re-registering the phone (Wirless on/off) and then instantly the emails with the "clock" symbol went out just fine.

So it seems in the second case, the incoming call and the outbound email somehow put the phone into a "stuck" state such that emails would't go out anymore (or not at least as long as I was willing to wait- maybe this would have cleared itself in 5-10 mins??).

-Marc

[barjohn]

Not the way it is supposed to work!

[riversen]

Originally Posted by Mark Rejhon

For my BlackBerry 7280 running BlackBerryOS 4.0.0.185:

JBenchmark1: 760

Details:
...Text: 127
...2D Shapes: 209
...3D Shapes: 142
...Fill Rate: 44
...Animation: 238


JBenchmark2: 18

Details:
...Image manipulation: 19
...Text: 66
...Sprites: 7
...3D Transform: 6
...User Interface: 23


It looks like the BlackBerry 7250 performs twice as fast as my BlackBerry 7280!
What version OS are you using on the 7250 and 7100?
Do you still get an Error 907 Invalid Jar on the 7100?

I have now made a benchmark comparision thread:
http://www.blackberryforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=31340

I wanted to make my first post about the benchmark that I received for my 7290 from T-Mobile. Here are the results:

JBenchmark2: 19

Details:
Image manipulation: 24
Text: 70
Sprites: 8
3D Transform: 6
User interface: 28

JBenchmark version: 2.1.1

Also, I was unable to download any of the other ones. I just thought you might all want to know. If I can download them, then I will publish those.

By the way, I am a convert (don't know if you all use such terms) from Palm or PalmOne (over 10 years). I love my BB and it is great. It does what it does very well!

Robert
Phoenix, AZ

[corey@12mile]

Here's the results from my Rogers 7290...

JBenchmark2: 15

Details:
Image Manipulation: 13
Text: 67
Sprites: 6
3D Transform: 4
User Interface: 31

That is version 2.1.1

It may go faster on a fresh handheld OS load, as I have a number of things running on my device including quite a few (10+) listening threads.

cd.

[merlinw]

For the rest of use, who have no idea what this all means, can you explain?

JBenchmark2:
Details:
Image Manipulation:
Text:
Sprites:
3D Transform:
User Interface:

Thanks

[jibi]

Its just a graphical benchmark. This post should have most likely not been bumped, since its quite old. I really wish people wouldn't do that unless its relevant information. Hell, there's an entire thread on this forum solely dedicated to JBenchmark results, so honestly... what was the point, riversen?

[Dawg]

so many topics get revised because people dont look at the age of a thread especially the buy sell