BlackBerry 8800 Review - Multimedia
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Alfredo Padilla Published on May 22, 2007 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (3.65)
Dedicated Music Controls (0.0)
The BlackBerry 8800 does not have any dedicated music controls. If you want to pause music or change tracks, you will first need to navigate to the music software.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (3.6)
The music player on the BlackBerry 8800 does support standard .m3u playlists. There is no way to create and edit playlists on the device. The 8800 did recognize tags for our test AAC, Mp3, and WMA files, showing title and artist, the only things the phone displays. The music software on the 8800 is very basic, using a folder structure to access your music, there is no library that allows you to sort music by categories such as title, artist, or album. This means you will need to put some thought into how you load music onto the device since whatever folder structure you choose is what you will be stuck with. The 8800's music software did recognize the album art for our test album, a nice feature since even many music oriented devices often fail to support this. There is no support for advanced features like ratings, but you can take advantage of the 8800's multitasking capabilities to play music in the background. There is no equalizer available. The music experience on the 8800 does leave something to be desired, especially compared to the more complete media applications found on Windows Mobile or Series 60 smart phones. Still, the basic functionality is there, and considering that the 8800 represents one of the first RIM handsets to support music playback natively, we are glad to see this ability at all.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The BlackBerry 8800 does not support any online song download services.
Streaming (0.0)
The BlackBerry 8800 was unable to play streaming MP3, Windows Media, or Real Media audio from our test site.
Podcast Support (0.0)
The BlackBerry 8800 does not include any dedicated software to download and/or organize podcasts.
Music Sync with PC (7.0)
You can move music files to your BlackBerry's media card using either the media manger in the BlackBerry Desktop Software or by connecting the device to your PC as a mass storage device. When it is connected as a mass storage device, you can use Windows Media Player to manage file transfers; however, it does not support transfers of DRM protected content.
Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The BlackBerry 8800 is able to play Windows Media, AAC, Mp3, and WAV files. It does not handle Real or Org Vorbis files. It also does not support any form of Digital Rights Management. We are pleased that the 8800 supports a good range of music file types, but we hope that RIM chooses to add support for DRM protected files in the future.
Music Interruption (10.0)
The BlackBerry 8800 does a very good job of handling a situation where music is interrupted by an incoming call. It pauses the music when the call comes in and then resumes from the exact same spot when the call ends.
Video
Video Software Access (3.17)
To test how easy it is to get a video playing, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen (unlocked) until we have a video playing. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The BlackBerry 8800 took an average of 6.3 seconds to get a video playing. This is just about average for smart phones and a little faster than the Treo 750's 6.88 seconds, but it's slower than the Treo 700p's 5 seconds and the T-Mobile Dash's 4.83 seconds. It is significantly faster than the Motorola Q (8.6 seconds), however. Video Controls (2.0)
When playing video on the BlackBerry 8800, the volume keys of course control playback volume. There are two controls that you can access with the trackball, on the left is a play/pause button and on the right a stop button. All other controls must be accessed via the menu key, including things like moving to the next or previous video. This is a little clunky and we would have preferred to see some of these commands available via the trackball as play/pause and stop are.
Video Software Score (2.5)
As with the music player, videos on the 8800 are managed via a simple folder system. There are no advanced features like sorting by title, type, etc., nor can you rate videos or view them in full screen. We were pleased to see support for background play however. Like the music player, the video player on the 8800 is there simply to provide basic functionality and doesn't compare well with Windows Media Player on Windows Mobile Devices. It comparable with Realplayer on the Series 60 platform but that's because neither is very impressive.
As with the music player, video files are organized into a simple folder hierarchy. You can switch between multiple files in a folder using the next/previous commands, however there was no ability to create or edit playlist files. You also cannot sort your video files or search through them; however, you can play video in the background.
Video Sync with PC (7.0)
You can move video files to your BlackBerry's media card using either the media manger in the BlackBerry Desktop Software or by connecting the device to your PC as a mass storage device, the same as music files. When it is connected as a mass storage device, you can again use Windows Media Player to manage file transfers; however, it does not support transfers of DRM protected content.
Video Formats (3.5)
The BlackBerry 8800 was able to play all three of our test 3GP files, encoded in H263 or MP4, it was not able to play our test Mp4 file encoded in H264, nor was it able to play Quicktime, Windows Media, Real, or Flash files. Despite the problems with our MP4 file, the device can play some MP4 files as the sample file is encoded as such. As a result, we awarded only half points for that file type. We would have liked to see better support for more video file formats.
Video DRM (0.0)
The BlackBerry 8800 does not support any video DRM formats.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
To test how smoothly video is played back, we test a series of five 3GP files of increasing bit rates. We were pleased to see that the 8800 was able to play back all five files from 48kbps to 768kbps without any problems. This means that those wishing to watch high quality video on the 8800 should be able to do so, although, we recommend that you format it for the screen size because of the lack of full screen viewing.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The BlackBerry 8800 does not support any over-the-air video download services.
Video Streaming unscored
Because of the lack of standardization of video streaming services, we do not score this section. However, we do test a couple of websites to see how the device performs. Unfortunately, the 8800 was unable to play either streaming Windows Media video or streaming 3GP video from our test sites.
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