Intrigued. This was my first impression seeing my first BlackBerry, exactly the 8700.
I was in London, into the Tube, and I was surrounded by important businessmen with these strange and heavy gadgets. Attractive? Maybe, but it wasn’t my first thought. The first thought I had, after silently looking at their functions and after trying to understand their working way, was “professional”. Anyway, neither the beauty or professionality attracted me more – even if they tend to think they’re the first things a women should be thinking of. It was, instead, the consciousness of their power. A complete handheld, well working and tested, that is a mobile computer before being a phone. A handheld dressed like a mobile phone, furnished with a complete keyboard that, undoubtly, could give me the opportunity to take notes in a fast and efficient way. A really important aspect for me, who use to write about anything during my spare time.
I’ve always had Nokia phones of different kinds so I’m aware of the heavy limitations brought by the T9 dictionary and its numeric keyboard, while writing a document. I recognized that, in my particular situation, that keyboard would have been the one that could be able to bring me to the still unknown – in Italy, at least – Rim’s world. And I would have done it with a lot of interest.
Thanks to a friend’s help I was able to get a 8700 phone directly from USA. From the moment it arrived, more than one month ago, my poor BlackBerry has never found a minute of rest. That handheld, intended at the beginning to be condamned to be unused, became my first phone. Fast, organized, full of features expressly studied for a professional use and not, as often happenes today, teenager-oriented, the 8700 has almost replaced my good Nokia. I must admit, anyway, I’m using less than a half of its many functions.
Calendar and alarm are totally customizable, the contacts are efficiently stored, the desktop has a “first glance” sorting, the display is clear and the phone has a good management of Bluetooth tecnology. These are, more or less, the peculiarities I’ve noticed and appreciated for now.
Weaked points: you can’t transfer notes using the Bluetooth, low volume ringtones, no Umts and no camera. Concerning the first point, I know they’re working on it; in the second one, I’ve solved using the classical “ring”, unwilling to mess up with those midi/Mp3s; in the third case, no BlackBerries but the 8707g/v actually supports the Umts technology. For the last point, as I was saying, my good Nokia is always with me and it has a very good camera. That’s what I mean when I talk about complementary phones.
Would I be able to have one only mobile phone, maybe the BlackBerry? Maybe, but I’m not yet ready to do it now. I’m still studying it. Sure, in order to reach my actual level of using I’ve had to be patient, to be strong and prepared for a hard learning curve. Who knows BlackBerries is aware of how hard could be to switch from a normal phone to a similar product: to face a totally different phone, with its own logic and quite different from the one you’re accustomed to. The first impression is almost always the final one: you may either love or hate it. In this second situation, you could label it as an expensive extravagance without any future; if you’ll love it, you won’t be able to miss it for a minute, even if using another ordinary phone as I’ve done.
And now the crucial point: what could be pushing a woman to buy a typically male phone? It depends. She could do it for its functions, for its comfortability or sometimes, unfortunately, just for its elegance as often happens to the 8100 Pearl.
I’ve received a lot of positive comments about my phone by some women I know, but never a question about its real features or how it works. Usually, they tend to spread nice opinions all over the air for its professional and curious aspect. Nothing more.
The percentage of female buyers is still very low, and it’s sad to think there are BlackBerries that have been chosen just for their estetical aspect. And that, daily, their only work is send and receive messages or calls. After all it’s a common fate for every modern phone, nowadays, BlackBerry or not: in the houses the carousel of phones is almost a fashion to which, it seems, nobody can renounce.

Juana