BlackBerry 8820 Cell Phone Review - Organizer

Mark Brezinski
Published on October 11, 2007 Comment on this

Synchronization Ease of Use (6.33)
The 8820 comes with some desktop software that makes synchronizing anything on your BlackBerry easy. It's a bit more straightforward than the Series 60 sync software, but not as visually appealing as the one from Windows Mobile.

You can use your BlackBerry synchronization software for calendar appointments, contacts, tasks, and notes. You can either sync up via USB or use the 8820's Bluetooth connection. The desktop software works with Outlook or BlackBerry's own Stop Manager. This is a little basic, as Series 60 devices will also sync up with the various Lotus applications.

Alerts (9.0)
Calendar events contain a good array of alert options. You can set the alert to occur at one of 25 preset times, which start at zero minutes and stretch to one week. You can also set a recurrence for the alarm, which is a good feature.

When the alarm actually goes off, the functionality dips down a little. Alerts are linked to your current profile. While there are some good customizing options here, such as setting the style (vibe, ring, or vibe & ring) and tone, you have to choose the number of times the alarm will sound. Unfortunately, the maximum number is three. This means your phone will chirp or shake three times before it gives up. At this point it's up to the LED to inform you you've missed the initial alarm. Once you pick up the phone, though, you'll see a splash screen which allows you to open the event, dismiss the alert, or snooze, which causes the alert to sound again in five minutes. We would've liked to see an auto-snooze here, or for the phone to sound off more than just three times. It is a BlackBerry, however, and chances are if you have one you check it constantly, and probably don't want your phone disturbing meetings.

Over the Air PIM Sync (4.0)
The 8820 can sync up over the air via BlackBerry's own server, or an Exchange server. You can't synchronize with Yahoo! or Google out of the box, but this is not surprising considering this is an enterprise-focused device.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (7.88)

To test the ease of adding a new contact, we time how long the process takes. Our time trials begin on the home screen and end when each entry is saved. We do multiple trials with different sets of data in order to better estimate user experience. We then average the times.

The 8820 took an average of 12.69 seconds to enter in contact information consisting of a name and phone number. The quickest method we found was to just type in the phone number, and then add it to your address book. This fast time is mainly due to the simple interface and QWERTY keyboard.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
BlackBerry 8820	12.69	7.88
Nokia E90	17.48	5.72
Nokia N95	25.42	3.93
T-Mobile Wing	16.04	6.23
Palm Treo 750	16.10	6.21
Apple iPhone	20.86	4.79

Looking/Sorting/Search (6.5)

Contacts can be sorted by first or last name, as well as by business. You can also filter contacts by group. There is an active search that accepts either part of the name or the business. Overall, the 8820 offers good sorting options.

Fields (5.6)
Contacts have 25 fields each that you can fill out. It can hold up to two full addresses, both physical and e-mail. You can assign a photo and custom ringtone, write a note, or create up to four customized fields. While this is a great number of fields, there are even more offered on Treo and Series 60 devices.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
The BlackBerry 8800 supports speed dial and voice command, but not voice tags. A speed dial can be assigned to any letter on the keyboard by simply holding the key down until a dialog pops up asking if you want to assign a speed dial to it. Speed dial can be used for contacts or phone numbers, but not applications. The voice command application on the 8800 did very well in our test, recognizing all five diverse names of our test contacts. It can also be used to check the status of your phone, including battery life and signal strength. Voice tags are not available on the 8800; however, given the excellent performance of the voice command software, this should be of little importance to most.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (20.49)
This score is another triumph for the BlackBerry operating system, as the 8820 was able to enter in our test appointment in an average of 4.88 seconds. As you can tell from the score, this is incredibly fast. While the trackball/QWERTY tag team certainly helped here, the interface was the real reason for the low time. You can scroll between days simply by rolling the trackball horizontally, the 8820 is kind enough to automatically include a 15-minute reminder, and you can type in the title without even opening up the new appointment entry dialogue. The BlackBerry calendar application is very easy to use. This is an incredibly quick time, as evidenced by its score.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
BlackBerry 8820	4.88	20.49
Nokia E90	16.82	6.11
Nokia N95	18.64	5.36
T-Mobile Wing	11.00	9.09
Palm Treo 750	6.76	14.79
Apple iPhone	18.92	5.29

Calendar Views (4.67)

The calendar software on the 8820 is the same as found on all BlackBerry devices. As such, it has the standard four views: monthly, weekly, daily, and agenda. The daily view is still the default, and the day still has a default range of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Appointments are represented by orange highlights and brackets. You can also scroll through the week by rolling to the left or right, as guided by the mini map in the top right corner.

The week view shows the typical grid of days along the top and times down the left side. Chunks of appointed time are highlighted in orange. Rolling the cursor over an appointment shows its title, location, and time frame. If you click on an appointment, you'll be sent to the day view.

The month view isn't as helpful as the weekly or daily views. Each square of a date accumulates smaller squares for each appointment scheduled that day. Scrolling over a busy day will not reveal any information. You'll have to instead click on the day you want, which sends you to the day view.

The agenda view lists all of the appointments you've ever scheduled, in chronologically descending order.

Fields (11.0)

The 8820 allows for some detailed appointments. You can, of course, set a title, start/end, location, and reminder. You can also add a recurrence or note, invite a contact, or make the entry an all day event. The recurrence option in particular allows for great customization, such as setting up groups of specific days during the week when the reminder should go off. The only feature we would have liked to see was some kind of category functionality.

To Do/Tasks

Adding To Do/Task (5.32)
The 8820 was able to have a new task created in 18.79 seconds after starting the phone up, which is a bit slow. There is a bit of menu navigation involved, which is where the time was lost. Also, although comprehensive, the task interface isn't as easy as the calendar to manipulate.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
BlackBerry 8820	18.79	5.32
Nokia E90	10.71	9.93
Nokia N95	12.38	8.08
T-Mobile Wing	18.96	5.27
Palm Treo 750	16.90	5.92
Apple iPhone	N/A: Cannot create tasks	0.0

To Do/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (7.0)
There are quite a few options for sorting tasks on the 8820. The options listing under the Main menu allows you to choose the default sort. You can choose name, priority, due date, or status. You can also search for tasks by typing any word in their title in the Find field.

Fields (10.0)

The 8820 has a healthy array of fields for task creation. Of course, there are your standard fields, such as title, priority, due date, and reminder. You can also assign a category, add notes, change status, specify a time zone, and set recurrence. These are more fields than most phones have in calendar appointments.

Notes

Adding Notes (4.19)
To gauge how easily a user can create a note, we time how long the process takes. We start with the phone in an unlocked standby, then try to get the note application up and running. With the help of the track ball and QWERTY, we clicked save just as our timer hit 11.92 seconds. This is a fast time, mainly because the notes application isn't buried nearly as deeply under a heap of menus and folders.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
BlackBerry 8820	11.92	4.19
Nokia E90	16.73	2.99
Nokia N95	17.70	2.82
T-Mobile Wing	15.42	3.24
Palm Treo 750	11.65	4.29
Apple iPhone	12.66	3.95

Note Interface (7.5)

The new note dialogue is only slightly more complicated than a blank screen. At the top you can enter a title, under which is a huge blank canvas for your notes. Notes can be given a category, and later filtered by this category. You can also search for any word in the title. The menu button even offers to spell-check your notes. Though the software certainly looks basic, it provides solid functionality.

Note Formatting (0.0)
The notes program, unfortunately, doesn't allow for any sort of formatting. You can't change the font size or type, or anything else.

Voice Memo (1.0)

The 8820 unfortunately inherited the 8800's bafflingly bad voice notes application. First of all, they are limited to 60 seconds, which is unfortunate. Second, unlike every other non-BlackBerry device with voice notes, once you're done recording the only option you're given is to send it in an MMS. This means you can't save the notes to your phone, and if you want to keep them, you'll have to MMS them to yourself. This is ridiculously limited and unintuitive, and we were really hoping this would have been fixed in the update.

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