BlackBerry 8800 Review - Messaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on May 22, 2007 Comment on this |
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Supported Email Services (6.5)
Messaging has always been one of the strong points of BlackBerries, and the 8800 is no exception. It can work with POP3 and IMAP servers. Support for email services such as those offered by GMail or Yahoo! is poor, though, since no software for any of these services is included. You can send and receive email from them if you don't mind sorting out things like mail server addresses, but we don't award points for this. Push Email (4.0)
Push email is available to users through two services: the BlackBerry Internet Server which is run by your ISP or the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. As the names suggest, the former is for individual users, while the latter is for large companies that want to run their own mail servers. A desktop redirector is also available if you use Microsoft Outlook. You run this on your PC, and it automatically forwards any email that comes into your device. Push email is one of the strengths of the BlackBerry devices, but as recent events proved, RIM had a network crash that stopped the flow of email for some time early in April that indicates a weakness. Their Internet Server service relies on their servers which do crash sometimes.
Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The BlackBerry 8800 supports up to 10 POP3 and IMAP email accounts; enough for even the most prolific of emailers. Email accounts can be added either on the device itself, through the deskstop software or online through the web-based controls offered by the network. This flexibility makes it easy to add and manage a number of email accounts.
HTML and Attachments (2.0)
The email client built into the 8800 does not handle HTML. All emails are displayed as text only. This can be a good or a bad thing. It means some emails won't be displayed properly, but it also means that you won't have problems with spammers and the like sending HTML emails that you don't want. Attachments to emails depend on the service you use, since the files are processed by the service to make them usable by the device. We were able to view, but not edit, Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations. However, Word Documents were not processed correctly.
Email Customizations (2.0)
The messaging program on the BlackBerry 8800 does not provide you with many customization options when creating emails. You cannot change font color or the height of displayed emails. You cannot change font type and size within the program; however, you can change those things globally in the phone settings. You can create signatures for outgoing emails however.
Time to a New Message (11.36)
Email Usability (11.0)
Using email on the BlackBerry 8800 is just about the same as any other BlackBerry except for the difference in input. The BlackBerry 8800 uses a trackball as introduced on the BlackBerry Pearl instead of the traditional scroll wheel. Email accounts are each given their own Inbox on the home screen, once in an account you move between messages by moving the trackball up/down. Unlike BlackBerries that have a scroll wheel which, when pressed in, activates a menu that allows you to open the selected message and access all other commands, you open the selected message on the 8800 by pressing in on the trackball. To open the menu, you use the dedicated menu key to the left of the trackball. Although this adds a little bit of complexity to the interface, we find that it is actually more intuitive. Overall, we found email on the 8800 to be as excellent as any other BlackBerry, despite the slight differences in hardware. The auto complete on address feature allows you to begin typing an individual or company name in the To: field of email addresses and have the device automatically suggest matches from your address book. We were pleased to see that the BlackBerry 8800, just like the 8700, suggested email address for first name, last name and company. It did not make suggestions based on email address. This is yet another feature that make BlackBerries the messaging powerhouses they are.
Supported IM Services (0.0)
The BlackBerry 8800 supports RIM's BlackBerry Messenger service out of the box. Unfortunately this services charges your for text messages for each IM sent or received, as such we do not award points for it. Additional IM support must be added via third party software. RIM themselves do offer some clients for several IM services, but these aren't included with the 8800 by default.
MMS Support (1.0)
Unlike the BlackBerry 8700, the 8800 does support MMS messaging. You can create a new MMS message from within any Inbox. Unfortunately, it appears that not much thought went into the interface. We were unable to send a MMS message from the photo album software and were unable to add photos from the album to a MMS that we created in the Inbox. Instead, we were limited to relatively few templates that are preloaded. It may be possible to add MMS media by dropping files into this folder, but this is an unnecessary complication.
SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
To test the ability of a device to interpret smileys sent via SMS as their graphical equivalents, we send four test smileys to the device. Unfortunately, the BlackBerry 8800 was not able to interpret our test smileys as their graphical equivalents.
SMS/MMS Ease of Use (6.0)
Although the BlackBerry does not support MMS well, SMS messages are easy to create. SMS has its own Inbox similar to an email Inbox on the home screen. As with email, you scroll through messages using the trackball and open them by pressing in on the trackball. The menu key brings up a menu where you can choose to compose a new message or manage existing messages. We were pleased to see that the menu in any Inbox will give you the opportunity to create a SMS, MMS or email message. When a new SMS is created, you are taken to a list of your contacts to select the one you want or given the option to send to a new phone number. Overall, SMS on the 8800 was simple and straightforward, but it lacked more advanced features as found on the Treo devices.
Time to a New SMS Message (2.62)
To test how easy it is to create a new SMS message, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen until we have a new SMS dialogue open. We repeat this process five times and take the average for our score. The BlackBerry 8800 took an average of 3.82 seconds to get to a new SMS. This is slower than the BlackBerry 8703e and slower than creating a new email on the 8800. We found that our time was slowed down by the fact that we had to scroll down most of the menu list to get to the new SMS item, and we then had to select the appropriate contact before we got to the dialog.
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