1 Sep 2008
Weighing only 123 grams inclusive of battery, and measuring 14 x 114 x 66 millimetres, the Blackberry 8820 is slim, compact and handy for a smartphone. The Blackberry 8820's 63.5-millimetre external display screen is a head-turner. Supporting 65,000 colours and with a 320 x 240-pixel resolution, the mobile phone's light-sensing screen is dominant on its front surface. With light sensor technology, the Blackberry 8820's display screen automatically adjusts to lighting levels for convenient indoor or outdoor use.

Despite being primarily reputed for being an office-on-the-go mobile phone, the Blackberry 8820 comes with a fairly friendly user interface. For one, the mobile phone has a QWERTY keypad complete with backlight, resembling a personal computer's keyboard, only handier. As added feature, the mobile phone also allows users to customize the font size of the text they input. The Blackberry 8820 also has dedicated keys for ease of use, including dedicated mute, end, and send buttons. Furthermore, a trackball tool for navigation allows users to easily explore the smartphone's features and menus.

For security purposes, the Blackberry 8820 keyboard can be locked, and a password option is available for users who opt to keep certain data personal and inaccessible by others.

To give personality to their Blackberry 8820, users can choose to play ringtones in MP3, MIDI and polyphonic sound formats.

The Blackberry 8820 operates on quadband technology, supporting GSM 1900, GSM 1800, GSM 900 and GSM 850, making it highly suitable for worldwide roaming. The Blackberry 8820 can serve as a portable navigation guide, as it supports BlackBerry Maps that works under GPS technology.

Makers of the Blackberry 8820 recognize that Internet access is a must in any business-focused mobile phone. Hence, browsing the Internet is easy with the Blackberry 8820's HTML Web browser. Additionally, the handset also comes with an embedded RIM wireless modem.

Connecting the Blackberry 8820 with other compatible devices is convenient with its wire-free Bluetooth feature for compatible headsets and car kits. Essentially, the BlackBerry 8820 retains the technologies that were integrated to its predecessor, the Blackberry 8800. Notably, though, the Blackberry 8820's Wi-Fi spells the bigger difference. The mobile phone also works on EDGE technology, which means faster and speedier file transfers and online downloads.

Primarily a business mobile phone, the Blackberry 8820 is compatible with PIM software, or personal information management. The Blackberry 8820 assists on-the-go users in their effort to become organised through the handset's phone book, calendar, alarm clock and vibrate mode. Moreover, the mobile phone allows voice dialling and has a speaker phone for hassle-free calls. Notably, the Blackberry 8820 comes with a document viewer feature, which allows its users to check out documents in popular formats, such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel or PDF, right on the mobile phone.

While powerful business-focused capabilities characterize the BlackBerry 8820, the smartphone is not an all-work-and-no-play handset. An advanced media player has been integrated with the Blackberry 8820 to allow its users to enjoy their favourite music and video. For that quality viewing or listening experience, users can utilize the stereo headset that comes with the Blackberry 8820 user kit.

The Blackberry 8820 offers the customary text messaging or SMS for its users, as well as multimedia messaging or MMS. Thanks to its Internet connectivity, users can also access their emails through the mobile phone, or get in touch with other people online through the Blackberry 8820's instant messaging service.

The Blackberry 8820 also allows on-device gaming, through downloading of compatible games from the Internet.

Sixty-four Megabytes of internal memory allows users to store substantial amount of data in the Blackberry 8820. Users can make more room for the storage of their files using the mobile phone's microSD memory card option.

The Blackberry 8820 offers users about five hours of talk time, as long as it is being used with fully charged battery. When on standby mode, the mobile phone can last up to 528 hours.

However, some observers say that the Blackberry 8820 could be a better phone if it had 3G support. Some photo-digging users also find the Blackberry 8820 inconvenient, as it lacks a camera feature.

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