Blackberry 7100i

Does anyone have one of these and if you do, would you mind giving us your
opinion of the unit.

I have a <1 month old refurbed 7520 that I love, but am thinking of moving
to the new unit and would like to get some opinions of those who have one.

If you have this phone and had a 7520, how do they compare?

Thanks much.

I had a Nextel 860i and I was used to sending gobs of text messages. I
upgraded to the Nextel Blackberry 7520 and paid more and got NO TEXT
MESSAGES. Now I have a Nextel Blackberry 7100i and things are easier.

Advantages of the 7520:
1) full size key board saves time if you know how to use a keyboard.
There is no guessing at where the keys you need to punch are and there
is no mistake made hitting the wrong button unless you hit it.
2) Things may be different for others, but I found the 7520 to have
better reception. I work in a downtown high rise building and I had a
noticeable difference in reception change. The 7520 even had better
reception than my 860i flip phone.
3) once you get used to holding the 7520, it fits in your hand like a
glove.
4) I don't know if the 7520 has a larger speaker but it sure sounds
like it. The voices come out of the 7520 with a more full, bass
sounding tone.
5) If you like using speaker phone while you are driving and on a phone
call, one handed operation of the 7520 is a breeze. The speaker phone
button is right there at your thumb. The 7100's is on the top of the
phone (takes manuvering the phone to switch to loud speaker).
6) I had an extended battery and battery cover. I havent seen one with
the 7100 yet.

Advantages of the 7100i:

1) The 7100i does SMS (text) messaging!!! The 7520 does email, but no
text messages(at least with Nextel). The 7520 with T-Mobile has SMS
messaging. I don't know about the other carriers.
2) Takes time to learn a new keyboard, but once you do things get
faster. The 7100i has "SureType" software similar to T9 text
recognition software. Where T9 helps you finish a word, SureType does
not but since you are using keys that have more than one letter when
you hit a key the software recognizes the most probable word that you
want to type to help you along. BAD NEWS-you have to proof read before
you send. I have almost sent sentences with the word "are" instead of
"see" more than a couple of times.
3) The 7100 adds apostraphies for you. No more having to hit a
function key to type "that's" or "you're"anymore. Just type "thats" or
"youre" and the 7100 adds the punctuation in the correct place.
4) Looks more like a phone. The screen size appears the same between
the two. Where the 7520's is wide, the 7100 is tall. The 7100
webpages are easier to read since the screen is now taller most of the
text fits on one page without having to wear out the thumb wheel to
scroll all the way down.
5) The 7520 has 65K colors and the newer 7100i has 262K colors.. no
comparison between the two.
6) every other Nextel phone has the push to talk button on the side,
but the Blackberry has it on top. The 7100 is on the side again.
Easier to hold and push to direct connect someone.
7) Software bundle comes with the phone already. The backlight light
is programable, popular software is in the ohone so you can open
attachments, nulike the 7520 where you had to purchase the software.
8) The 7100i is lighter weight than the 7520.


I hope this helps... I tried to be as unbiased as I could reviewing
both units so you can make an educated decision.






Mike Callery wrote:
> Does anyone have one of these and if you do, would you mind giving us your
> opinion of the unit.
>
> I have a <1 month old refurbed 7520 that I love, but am thinking of moving
> to the new unit and would like to get some opinions of those who have one.
>
> If you have this phone and had a 7520, how do they compare?
>
> Thanks much.