14 DAY TRIAL // While in other parts of the world, mobile users are waiting for the release of BlackBerry Bold 9000, in Russia, RIM has just launched the BlackBerry 8800 smartphone.
Available in North America since 2007, BlackBerry 8800 is released in Russia via Beeline, the country's second largest mobile carrier (owned by VimpelCom).
The 8800 is a good-featured smarpthone, bringing the following: a 320 x 240 pixels TFT display with 65K colors, trackball navigation, a full QWERTY keyboard, internal GPS, BlackBerry Maps, document viewer (PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint), email, full HTML browser, Instant Messaging, quad-band GSM connectivity with GPRS and EDGE, Music and Video players, Bluetooth 2.0, handsfree, voice dialing 64MB of Flash memory and microSD card support. There is no photo camera packed in the 8800, but since it's a business-oriented handset, this can't actually be considered a drawback.
Measuring 114 x 66 x 14 millimeters and weighing 134 grams, BlackBerry 8800 comes with a battery capable of providing up to five hours of talk-time or up to 530 hours of stand-by time.
"The BlackBerry 8800, featuring a stylish design and full QWERTY keyboard with English-Russian support, is a highly anticipated smartphone for our enterprise customers," declared Kent McNeley, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at VimpelCom. "Beeline is pleased to expand the range of BlackBerry smartphones in response to the needs of Russian business users."
RIM's Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Don Morrison, completed, "The BlackBerry solution has become popular with corporate customers around the world based on its unique ability to help organizations and individuals enhance communications, flexibility and productivity. We are delighted to work with Beeline and the VimpelCom group to help customers achieve these benefits and to introduce the BlackBerry 8800 in Russia".
Neither RIM nor Beeline has unveiled the retail price of BlackBerry 8800, but users can probably find it in the Russian carrier's stores.