Blackberry 8110 Silver Mobile Phone Review - Finally - A SIM Free Version of the Ultimate Smart Phone

It appears that the mobile manufacturers and mobile service providers are finally paying attention to the end user - we are now able to buy the ultimate (for some) in smart phones as a SIM free version, with no need to sign up to lengthy contracts.

Given a choice, this is the phone that many of us would prefer to own, it has top quality features which are very suitable to the business person desiring a compact Smartphone. For someone who wishes to keep abreast of the news, receive email and listen to music on the way to work - this is one of the best around.

Produced by RIM (Canada), it sports a 2 megapixel camera complete with flash, media player, 65,000 colour LCD display, messaging with SMS, MMS, instant messaging and push-email with attachment viewer. Then there are the built in speakerphone, voice dialling, voice memo recording and MP3 ringtones facilities.

The internet browser, GPRS and EDGE are useful, as are the personal organiser functions - once you get used to the strange menu structure.

What we did like:

We liked the phone's connectivity - it uses Bluetooth 2.0, but has a USB port. It can also connect to a modem and has a stereo headset port.

The 64Mb memory plus MicroSD memory card makes this a useful instrument indeed.

The appearance has changed a bit - instead of the traditional Blackberry 'look', the 8110 now looks more like a mobile phone. While they have done away with the QWERTY keyboard sported by the previous Blackberry editions, this phone has a 20 key keyboard, with a word choice feature - the phone actually learns what you are trying to type and offers you shortcuts to the most commonly used words in your usage vocabulary. For anyone who is used to typing messages using a T9 facility on other mobiles, this will be easy to adjust to, and is much easier than using a full QWERTY arrangement in such a small space.

What we didn't really like:

The phone tends to be slow compared to the iPod 3G, and has a tendency to freeze. While this can be solved by clearing the cache and for the savvy user does not present much of a problem - it is something you have to know about to be able to cope with it without stress. The memory on these is upgradeable which also helps.

The camera pictures are not the best in the world, however, the flash is useful for indoors for recording an event or an object that appeals.

The email client takes some getting used to, and the menu layout is not all that intuitive. The 2-key keyboard causes a bit of a problem when first used, however the layout does make sense and is actually easy to use once you are familiar with it.

Summary:

This is a good phone for the person who does not require 3G facilities and video downloading from places such as YouTube. It does what it does very well indeed.

Weighing in at only 91g, the Blackberry 8110 silver is a tidy little package, a bit different from the norm as far as Blackberry is concerned, but we definitely liked it - a lot.

For once we have a phone which does not lose track of your music when you receive a call - the two functions seem to operate quite separately. This is a very welcome change from the norm.