Not long ago we discussed the Blackberry 8330 and the Blackberry 8530 right here, and we discovered they were a lot alike except for a few minor, almost cosmetic, differences.  Thus it will prove to be little surprise that not much has changed once again in the new Blackberry 8830.

The Blackberry 8830 offers a battery capable of generating up to five hours of talk time on a single charge.  It also features wireless email and internet access, Blackberry Maps, a media player, a GPS feature, a trackball and a fully backlit QWERTY keyboard, stereo headset jack, integrated earpiece and microphone, built in speakerphone, Bluetooth connectivity, hearing aid compatibility if you happen to use one, microSD card support, and access to dual band Ev-DO networks.

Make no mistake, this is a beautiful phone with plenty of great options, but all the standard problems–not a whole lot of fun options like games and such, hypersensitive trackball–are all still in play.  But yes, the 8830 is an improvement over the earlier models, if something of an incremental one.

I just wish they’d learn from what they so relentlessly screw up….

The Good

Loads of great options

Steady, incremental improvement

Adherence to what works in earlier models

The Bad

Minimal fun

Hidebound philosophy

Adherence to what DIDN’T work in earlier models

Score: 7/10

Source:mobilewhack.com

The Nokia X3 is a slider-style cell phone with an FM radio, clock, calendar, organizer, Internet access, access to the Nokia OVI store, size converter, temperature converter, currency converter, world clock, Flickr access, a collection of games, a 3.2 megapixel camera and a few more nifty things besides.

Like I said, this is a great phone with lots of options–the radio’s got some pretty good reach to it–but the design is one I don’t much care for.  The radio scans for channels five hundredths of a frequency at a time.  So if you want to tune from 99.3 to 99.8, you’ll have to go from 99.35 to 99.40 and so on until you get there.  No scrolling, either–just one button press after another.  The keypad also has some ridges between keys to separate them.  I find they get in the way more than help.

But all things considered, the Nokia X3 is a great cell phone.

The Good

Lots of features

Good function

Good sound

Good camera

The Bad

Ham-fisted design

Frequency trolling on the radio is a kludge

Score 8 / 10

Source:mobilewhack.com

The LG Xenon phone is a slider-style phone with a full QWERTY keyboard contained underneath the phone’s screen. It’s also got a two megapixel camera, a battery with four hours of talk time per charge, a five hundred entry phone book, GPS tagging, and more.

I had a profoundly hard time getting this thing to work. I don’t know what in particular was wrong here, but I’ve never had so much trouble trying to get a phone to work right. Sure, there are plenty of great features here, and the phone itself looks terrific in every respect, but it may well be the most difficult phone I’ve ever used.

The LG Xenon has a lot of great features involved with it, but chances are, it’ll be a whole lot more complex than you’ll want to try tackling.

Source:mobilewhack.com

Blackberry

This was actually the first time I’d ever managed to lay hands on a Blackberry, so I was eager to find out how they worked, and all the nifty extra features they had contained in them.

Well…I should have seen it coming, frankly, but the Blackberry Bold 2 9700 is a business machine, first, last and always.  ALWAYS.  There are plenty of sweet features in here–it’s also one of the only cell phones I’ve ever seen to have a full QWERTY keyboard where the number keypad would be.  Normally it’s hidden away under sliding panels or hinged panels or what have you.  It also has two hundred fifty six megs of onboard memory, a 3.2 megapixel camera, trackpad navigation and more.

First off, that trackpad is EXTREMELY sensitive.  It takes some real getting used to to slide that sucker around just right.  Too light a touch and it won’t move; too heavy and you’ll slide right past the thing you want to select.  And if you like games on your phone, forget it.  Like the title says, the Blackberry is all business.

And if it’s business you’re wanting your phone for, then the Blackberry Bold 2 9700 should be just what you want, even at the high price of five hundred and ninety one bucks.

The Good

Powerful business tool with lots of features

Front and center QWERTY keyboard

The Bad

Absolutely ZERO fun.  No fun here.

Source:mobilewhack.com