The Blackberry 8830 World Edition is the perfect phone for people who travel a lot. You get a quality phone that is up to the standards that you would expect from Blackberry which you can use anywhere in the world. This phone is pretty much the standard Blackberry design so you should know what to expect.
The Blackberry 8830 World Edition look pretty much the same as any other Blackberry; however the metallic silver body does give it a bit of a more upscale look. It includes all of the features that people have come to expect from a Blackberry, the trackball and the QWERTY keyboard. This makes navigating through the menus a breeze. The size is also perfect since it is small enough that you can easily put it into the pocket on your shirt.
Like all Blackberry’s the thing that the 8830 does best is handle email. You can set up an account very easily using the built in wizard. It was easy to type on the 8830 as the keys are nice size and they are well spaced. You can view most file types fairly easily whether they are Word, Excel or PDF. Blackberry Messenger is also included with the phone. The biggest downside is that there is no GPS like there is on other models. One of the best features that we found on the 8830 was that the battery life was outstanding. Far better than any other smart phone that we have tried.
There is a feature for voice dialing on the 8830 which works quite well, better than on most phones. It had little trouble with any of the names that I tried to dial. Using Bluetooth with a wireless headset worked well for hands free calling. However one area that was a little bit disappointing was that you can’t use Bluetooth stereo headsets with the 8830.
The 8830 includes Roxio Media Manager which works quite well. It is very easy to move your media files from your notebook to your handset; all you have to do is drag and drop them using the split screen feature. Pictures look really good as the color of the screen is excellent. The video plays well and the speakers are loud, although the audio quality isn’t as good as it could be. Unfortunately the memory is way too small so you will likely fill it up pretty fast.
All in all the Blackberry 8830 World Edition is a very good phone, there are a couple of areas where it could be improved, but by and large it is quite good. It would be nice if there was GPS or if you could use Bluetooth Stereo headsets. Perhaps the biggest issue though is that there is no camera, a strange oversight in a world where you would normally expect to see one.
