14 DAY TRIAL // T-Mobile USA offers from now on a new business-orientated smartphone, BlackBerry 8820 more exactly, adding it to its portfolio of existing BlackBerry devices, which includes some Pearl and Curve models as well as the 8700g handset.
The new BlackBerry 8820 is not new in the real meaning of the word, since it was first launched in the fall of 2007, but it's surely a good thing that it is now available for T-Mobile's subscribers (almost 30 million as of February 2008).
BlackBerry 8820 measures 114 x 66 x 14 millimeters (4.48 x 2.59 x 0.55 inches), weighs 134 grams (4.7 ounces) and manages to pack many features that make it a pretty nice business smartphone. The device comes with Wi-Fi connectivity, built-in GPS with BlackBerry maps, email and Internet capabilities, a full QWERTY keyboard for easy text input, trackball navigation, a 320 x 240 pixels display with 65K colors, Instant Messaging (Yahoo!, AOL, ICQ, Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger), document viewer (supporting PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Corel WordPerfect), myFaves capability, voice dialing, organizer, To Do list and so on. Moreover, the smartphone also offers multimedia features, including Music player, Java games and microSD card support, and it has a powerful 1400 mAh battery that can provide up to 5 hours of talk-time and about 22 days of stand-by time.
The 8820 handset doesn't support 3G networks and it doesn't have a photo camera. However, the latter missing feature might be considered as being a positive aspect by business customers, since there are many enterprises that do not allow the use of camera phones within their perimeter.
BlackBerry 8820 is offered by T-Mobile in a package that includes a USB cable, stereo handsfree headset, BlackBerry software for your desktop PC and, or course, a battery charger. The smartphone can be bought either from T-Mobile's retail stores or from the carrier's official website (found at this address), for $349.99 with a two-year contract agreement.