Hi all,
Just got a T-Mobile 7230 Blackberry and had some interesting first impressions.
First of all, went from AT&T SX56 PPC Phone Edition, so the change has been shocking.
First of all, size. The 7230 is tiny in comparison. It also does feel as fragille as the SX56. For folks with large hands and big fingers it may not be the best solution, but for me its great, although I'd prefer the scroll wheel on the other side.
I still have my SX56 and its unlocked, so I haven't switched back, but its hard to compare AT&T and T-Mobile GSM service, but I haven't lost service yet with the 7230 and coverage is great in my house, which with AT&T was marginal at best. Eventually, the winner in this System category will probably be T-Mobile, as they have a larger area of coverage then AT&T in Minneapolis.
As for functionality, I'm finding that the 7230 is quite limiting. But I bought it for 3 reasons. Email, Phone, PIM (Contacts and Calendar). Now, when it comes to Email, the 7230 blows away everything else. I have yet to get it hooked up to our corporate BES but T-Mobile's Wireless Email client works like a champ. No configuration needed, just plug in your email address, username, password and wham, emails start forwarding to your device. Also, you can do the reverse and have incoming mail to your ISP accounts forwarded to your
username@tmo.blackberry.net. Either way works, but forwarding the emails seems to be faster and more reliable. I'll get my corporate email set up today, so I'm sure this will be even better.
Phone, nice phone, nothing fancy here, midi ringtones, big difference from .WAV and .WMA on the SX56 but nothing I can't deal with. The phone is easy to use, with a quick launch button on the top of the device. The biggest benefit is the dial pad!!! The numbers are arranged on the keyboard so they represent the standard keypad minus the # and * keys on the left side. Makes dialing really fast and easy. Phone calls are logged in the email area, which makes it easy to see what you have been doing, calls in and out and missed are shown here.
PIM functions... This is where the SX56 has an advantage. I've been spoiled by using Pocket Informant on the PPCPE and using the Calendar on the 7230 is painful. But it will work for what I need. As long as I can do wireless calendar syncing through my BES. Which is yet to be determined. My goal was to avoid having to sync with a desktop. Contacts, well, this is decent, but its more email focused, rather then phone focused. A change not that hard to get used to. Finding contacts is easy, just use the keyboard.
The internet browser is fast, loads images well, formats pages fairly well. And with the keyboard shortcuts, it makes browsing painless. Being on the T-Mobile unlimited BB plan makes me no longer have to worry about loading images or how much data I'm using.
All in all, a solid device. Mine came with an older version of the software, and after diging around on T-Mobile's site I finally found an upgrade. The upgrade didn't go smooth, it killed the machine halfway through, but restarted the upgrade and recovered, but lost all the data. Now I am able to install 3rd party software, although there isn't much other software out there for the 7230 yet.
I'll try to put together a hints and tips area for keyboard shortcuts and such as I find them, hope all the other BB owners can help!
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