Vodafone launches BlackBerry smartphone

Vodafone's BlackBerry 7100v is a quad-band GSM/GPRS phone featuring push email functionality and a QWERTY keyboard with predictive text.

The 7100v is a quad-band GSM/GPRS mobile phone measuring 5.6cm wide by 11.9cm deep by 1.9cm thick and weighing 120g. That makes it significantly more compact than any previous BlackBerry device, and also smaller than its main competitor, the Treo 600 from PalmOne (which is strongly rumoured to be getting an upgrade in the near future).

The 7100v has a 16-bit colour screen measuring just under 2.5in. across the diagonal, and comes with a fixed 32MB of memory -- there's no expansion slot for extra storage. Connectivity is via USB cable or wireless Bluetooth. Talk time is claimed to be 3.5 hours, with standby at 200 hours -- less than the Treo 600's 6 hours and 240 hours respectively. There's a speakerphone on the back of the device, so you should be able to handle calls safely -- and legally -- using a Bluetooth headset while in your car.

One of the BlackBerry 7100v's standout features is its keyboard, which integrates a traditional number pad with a QWERTY layout that mostly has two letters to a key to keep the size down. Predictive text is available in the shape of BlackBerry's SureType technology. Initial testing with a review unit suggests that typing is faster than with a standard mobile phone keypad, but slower than using the full QWERTY keyboard on full-size BlackBerry devices.

Vodafone will sell the 7100v in two versions: the Enterprise Solution targets bigger businesses wanting to push Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino email to the handheld device via BlackBerry Enterprise Server; the Internet Solution is for smaller organisations and individuals, and allows you to gather emails from up to 10 different Web, POP3 or IMAP4 accounts into one inbox.

Vodafone has the 7100v exclusively to itself for the month of October, after which it's likely that similar devices will appear -- T-Mobile, for example, has launched a BlackBerry 7100t in the US, although no European announcement has yet been made. And with a new Treo on the way, it looks as though the handheld/smartphone market is hotting up nicely.

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