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REALITY CHECK
What's better than a BlackBerry?
Useful bells and whistles
By David Berlind
June 6, 2002
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As with its other BlackBerry models, RIM has included some useful bells and whistles. The 5810 uses a SIM card that makes it possible to move your "digital personality" to other, similarly equipped devices. One reason you might need to do this is if you intend to keep the same phone number when you travel to Europe, where a GPRS/GSM network that operates on the same frequency as those found in the U.S. is not available. (They use a different frequency that requires a different.) So far, no BlackBerry supports multiple radio types, but RIM officials say that's a "natural path" for the company to take.
One interesting feature of the BlackBerry is that you can save your address book to the SIM card. If you move the SIM card to another device, your address book should get moved as well. Unfortunately, the SIM card is pretty much a placeholder for now. If you travel to Europe, you will be able to insert it into a BlackBerry 5820 (the GSM version of the 5810) for phone calls, but you won't be able to get your wireless e-mail. VoiceStream has yet to work out those roaming details with its European sisters in the U.K., Germany, Czech Republic, and Austria.
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The 5810 also comes with a WAP-enabled wireless browser. Of the WAP-browsers I've used (mostly on cell phones), this one is the best. Navigating WAP-enabled sites was a piece of cake thanks to the wheel that makes the BlackBerry the best PDA out there for single-handed operation. (All BlackBerries have a clickable wheel that is used for scrolling through menus and text, and selecting options.) The browser incorporates all WAP navigation into the browser's normal menuing system. Performance of the 5810's browser blows away other wireless Web access methods that are based on slower, CDMA-based networks.
No VPN client
Another shortcoming of the 5810 is lack of a basic PPTP VPN client-- something that I've come to appreciate in my PocketPC-based iPaq. I can imagine a scenario where 5810 users might want to duck behind the corporate firewall to access corporate applications or maybe even access a POP3-based e-mail server that RIM doesn't yet support with its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). RIM's BES is the intermediary that funnels e-mail between Exchange or Notes-based inboxes and corporate users out in the field. According to RIM officials, this problem will be solved later this year when the company releases its Mobile Data Services. MDS will directly connect BlackBerries to corporate networks for other applications (including Java-based ones) using Triple DES encryption and without having to poke a new hole through the firewall.
Also alleviating that problem to some extent is RIM's Web-based mail client, which accesses a service that RIM runs, and that can pick up mail from other POP3-based e-mail servers on the Internet (but not behind corporate firewal ls). I was able to send and receive e-mail through it, but I was not able to take e-mail that arrived via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (the aforementioned funnel to my corporate email server), and redirect it through the Web mail client. The e-mail client on my iPaq --- Pocket Outlook --- can take mail that comes from any server, and redirect to any other server to which Pocket Outlook has access.
Lastly, the cost of buying and using a 5810 is comparable to similarly equipped PDAs and phones, and the services they connect to. RIM's MSRP for a 5810 is $499. VoiceStream's voice plans appear on the pricey side when compared to something like the 8,000 minutes that Sprint PCS gives you for $79.99. But when you read the fine print (for example, how those 8,000 minutes are divided and when evening time begins), VoiceStream voice plans turn out to be a good bargain. On the data side (mostly for wireless e-mail and Web access), expect to pay about $45 per month, a price that's on par with what I pay Earthlink to wirelessly connect my iPaq to the Internet.
Does the BlackBerry 5810 sound like convergence heaven? Do you have a favorite PDA/phone hybrid? TalkBack to me or e-mail me at david.berlind@cnet.com.
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