With its Bluetooth headset support, the BlackBerry 7290 becomes much more viable as a combination PDA/phone rather than just a traditional e-mail handheld device. The BlackBerry 7290 looks much like its predecessors; in fact, it looks just like the BlackBerry 7230. It's slender and slab-like, comfortable in the hand, with the usual full QWERTY keyboard and a bright 160-by-240 color screen that looks especially good in sunlight. Battery life is excellent—talk time is 60 percent longer than that of our Editors' Choice for phone/e-mail devices, the palmOne Treo 650. And as a quad-band GSM device, the BlackBerry 7290 can travel the world.
Support for Bluetooth headsets is the real innovation here. Though BlackBerry devices have packed in phones for years, holding them up to your head has always felt and looked awkward. Because the 7290 paired easily with our Logitech and Nokia Bluetooth headsets, that's now much less of an issue. Unfortunately, the 7290 doesn't support voice dialing, so you'll still have to pull out your BlackBerry in order to dial. There's also no support for the Bluetooth dial-up modem profile and no Bluetooth file transfer. Phone calls are clear, although there's no speakerphone.
Like other recent-model BlackBerrys, the 7290 is supported by RIM's Web client, which will forward up to ten e-mail accounts to the device. T-Mobile's version of the 7290 client easily merged our POP3, Microsoft Outlook, Lotus, and AOL accounts and shipped them to the device. Unfortunately, it does not yet support the free versions of Hotmail or Yahoo! (then again, neither do the palmOne or Windows Mobile operating systems, though Windows Mobile 5.0 will support Hotmail when it starts to ship later this summer). You can, of course, get these services by logging on through a mobile Web browser or, in some cases, third-party clients.
Natively, the 7290 boils Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF attachments down to text files, but it does display Excel spreadsheets on a grid and JPG attachments clearly. Keep in mind though, that to import or export Word or Excel files and work on them, you'll have to purchase DynoPlex eOffice Standard Edition ($149.95 direct, www.dynoplex.com), a suite of productivity applications. Business users whose IT departments are running BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.0 will be able to wirelessly sync their contacts and calendars in addition to e-mail.
The 32MB flash memory, up from 10MB in previous generations, reflects the explosion in third-party BlackBerry applications over the past year. (Those new to BlackBerry devices should note that they were originally meant to be the ultimate thin clients—in other words, all data would be managed from the server end, so there was therefore no need for much memory on the device itself.) You can now check your stocks, view the weather, or chat on four instant-messaging services.
The 7290's Web browser supports JavaScript, but not frames. Unfortunately, it mangles tables.
The old-fashioned slab-style BlackBerrys have become outclassed in features by powerful PDA/phones like the palmOne Treo 650 and the Verizon XV-6600, but they still have plenty of partisans who love their easy-to-set-up push e-mail and extra-long battery life, not to mention the proliferation of third-party applications that make them a bit more flexible. If you're already a BlackBerry fan, want to upgrade from a previous generation, and like the idea of wireless headsets, the 7290 will be right up your alley.
SPEC DATA :
- Service Provider: AT&T
- Operating System: Other
- Screen Size: 2.75 inches
- Camera: No
- Bluetooth: Yes
- Web Browser: Yes
- Network: GSM
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