Research in Motion's BlackBerry 7100 series was a new direction for the company, offering its customers a more compact and consumer-friendly device with the familiar BlackBerry functionality. The line has continued to evolve over the past year, and its latest model, the RIM BlackBerry 7130c, is a winner. It offers many of the features found in its siblings, such as a speedy Intel processor, robust e-mail capabilities, a sharp screen, and Bluetooth, but it also boasts a more refined and lightweight form factor that makes it the best-designed model we've seen to date. You may be thinking, "Great, it has a nice design, but how does it perform?" The answer: very well. It's an excellent phone and e-mail device with EDGE capability and a vast range of features. The RIM BlackBerry 7130c is a great smart phone for mobile professionals and consumers alike who need to stay connected on the road. It's now available through Cingular for a fair price of $199 with a two-year contract.
The RIM BlackBerry 7130c has a great design, plain and simple. Though the 7100 series has always had a compact form factor, the BlackBerry 7130c most closely resembles a candy bar phone in look and feel. It's sleek (4.5 by 2.1 by 0.7 inches) and incredibly light (4.2 ounces), which makes it comfortable to hold up to your ear for conversations. As a bonus, the handset is attractive, with an appealing silver and midnight blue color scheme.
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The 7130c's 2.25-inch (diagonal) screen dominates the face of device and displays 65,000 colors at 240x260 resolution. It's not quite the 320x240 pixels of its full QWERTY cousin, the BlackBerry 8700c, but the 7130c still shows off sharp images and text. It's also equipped with light-sensing technology that automatically adjusts the backlighting depending on your environment, and unlike that of many other phones, the display is readable in sunlight. Customization options are plentiful, including the ability to change the backlight time and the font family, style, and size, as well as to turn antialiasing on or off.
Navigating the phone's menus is simple, thanks to the 7130c's intuitive controls. Below the screen are the Send and End keys for making calls and a center convenience key that you can program to open any application. Below those buttons, you'll find the SureType keyboard that's present on all devices in the 7100 series. This modified QWERTY keyboard features two letters per button (the number keys share space with the keys in the three center columns) and works with SureType technology, which, like predictive text, guesses the word you're typing after you input the first couple of letters. Admittedly, we've never been huge fans of SureType, preferring the ease and speed of the full QWERTY models, but we're so enamored by the compact form factor that we're willing to make that compromise. The keys themselves are well spaced and adequately backlit.
On the left spine, there is a 2.5mm headset jack, a mini USB port, and another customizable Convenience key, while the familiar trackwheel and Escape button are on the right spine. All these controls make it easy to operate the 7130c with one hand. There's a power button and a mute key on top of the device and a small notification LED on front. Finally, the speakerphone is located on the back. Cingular packages the device with a number of basic accessories, including a wired headset, a travel charger, a USB cable, a belt holster, a CD containing the BlackBerry Desktop software, and reference material.
Just because the RIM BlackBerry 7130c is small in size doesn't mean it skimps on features. Like the latest BlackBerrys, the 7130c is powered by a speedy Intel processor, and it comes with 64MB of flash memory and 16MB of SDRAM. The phone book is limited only by the available memory, and for each contact, you can store up to eight numbers, home and work addresses, a Web URL, notes, and more. For hands-free calls, you can use the speakerphone, which can be activated only once you're on a call, or you can wirelessly connect to a headset, thanks to the 7130c's integrated Bluetooth.
As always, e-mail remains at the forefront of the smart phone. For business users, the BlackBerry 7130c is compatible with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, and Novell Groupwise, so with the help of your friendly IT department, you can set up your device to receive corporate e-mail in real time. In addition, you can access up to 10 POP3/IMAP accounts and use the included Internet browser to check Web-based e-mail, such as Yahoo and Gmail. For our tests, we logged onto the BlackBerry Internet service using our PC and entered our SBC Global account information. The process was painless; within a few minutes, we received an activation confirmation e-mail on our 7130c, and we started getting e-mail messages within 20 minutes. If you receive attachments with your e-mail, no problem--the 7130c can open and view Word and Excel documents, PDFs, images, and more. The EDGE support also helps to reduce download times.
Despite these great e-mail capabilities, we're disappointed that the 7130c doesn't come with an onboard instant-messaging client. You can, however, download BlackBerry Messenger and GoogleTalk for free from BlackBerry's Web site--it's an extra but minor step. The 7130c also handles text and multimedia messages.
Other features on the RIM BlackBerry 7130c include a WAP 2.0 Web browser, a calendar, a task list, a calculator, a memo pad, and an alarm clock. Like all BlackBerrys, however, the 7130c is a business-oriented device, so multimedia features are sparse. There's no camera or MP3/video player, though the absence of the former will suit users who work in security-conscious environments. The only source of entertainment is the standard BrickBreaker game. Of course, you can download more games and applications for your amusement and use. For example, our test unit came loaded with extra apps, such as Texas Hold'em King and PocketExpress.
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; EDGE) RIM BlackBerry 7130c in San Francisco using Cingular's network, and call quality was excellent. Voices sounded clear with ample volume, and our callers reported the same. They added that they couldn't even tell we were using a cell phone. Turning on the speakerphone diminished the sound only slightly, but still, we give it high praise. And we had absolutely no problem pairing the 7130c with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset; we had them connected in less than a minute.
The Web-browsing experience on the 7130c was good. With EDGE support, Web pages loaded quickly, as did e-mail attachments. We had no problems opening up Word documents or JPEG images on the device.
The RIM BlackBerry 7130c is rated for 4 hours of talk time and up to 18 days of standby time. In our tests, the 7130c beat the rated talk time by an hour. According to FCC radiation tests, the 7130c has a digital SAR rating of 1.09 watts per kilogram.