BlackBerry 8700 and 7730 comparison

4 May 2006 by Rod McLaren

The new BlackBerry 8700 is replacing the 7xxx series (the 7730 and the 7130/00 are RIM’s most popular enterprise and enterprise/consumer handsets currently), and in form and features sits in between the two. There are some changes in the physical design and operation, and some interaction changes in the UI/OS:

• It comes with soft slip-case holster rather than the 7730’s hard shell holster, and the 8700 device itself feels like it has lower build quality than the 7730, though it’s better than the 7100. So that’s a couple of respects in which it is less robust than the outgoing 7730.
• At 320×240, the 8700’s screen goes back to the landscape ratio of the older BlackBerrys (ie: it’s vertically shorter than the 7730’s), and the screen brightness is better.
• The 8700’s physical design is heading towards “smartphone” and away from “PDA”: it’s shorter, narrower and a tiny bit deeper than the 7730, and it adds the green call/send key, the programmable context menu key and the red end key above the keyboard.
• Other new keys: there’s a dedicated speakerphone key on the front, a select-phone-profile key on the side, and a mute key on the top. All of the keys are smaller than they were on the 7730, making it a bit harder to use for the meat-fingered (but it’s probably a compromise between its predecessor and the smaller 7100, whose keyboard doubled up letters, requiring you to learn RIM’s own version of predictive text)
• You get 4 rather than 5 hours talk time, 16 rather than 9 days standby time. That standby time is so good that you may get out of the habit of charging it.
• It has 64mb flash memory storage and 16mb SRAM memory (rather than 16mb and 2mb), which is a big bonus for anyone developing applications for it.
• Polyphonic ringtones, is quad band rather than tri-band, and it has Bluetooth.
• The only significant interaction changes we’ve come across so far (other than those allowed by the new keys) are that its switch-on time is blindingly fast, whether quick-starting from the holster (BlackBerrys have always been good at this) or from Off. Small things like this can be important to users, particularly in terms of making them feel positive enough about the device that they’ll forgive its idiosyncracies.
• (data from RIM and other sources.)

Another way characterising the difference is that Alex had the 7730 and has upgraded to the 8700, and I have the 7100 and want the upgrade.

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