We spent short time with the BlackBerry 8800, which is the just announced successor of 8700 high-end BlackBerry and the Pearl’s bigger brother. The phone has all the lines of the stylish Pearl with the glossy black surface, the metal sides and of course the trackball.

The specs are identical to those of the 8700, and are quad-band GSM/EDGE, full QWERTY keyboard and QVGA display, etc. The improvement here is the SirfStar III GPS module built-in, used for navigation.

The 8800 comes with just very basic map software which even doesn’t support routing meaning you can not type an address and expect the phone

to find the location and show you the route to it. Fortunately, RIM has partnered with several mapping software vendors like Navteq, and a additional navigation software packages are available. The features will depend on the software you choose, but the performance will always be very robust, thanks to the chipset of the GPS.

Coming from the Pearl to the high-end series are the memory card slot and the multimedia players, which the brand offered for the first with the smaller smartphone. The memory slot position is still under the battery cover, but the battery does not have to be removed in order to change memory cards.
Still, there is no digital camera built-in, as this is highly enterprise targeted device.

The 8800 is expected to launch on AT&T Cingular network later this month, as this was officially announced by the carrier. Rumors say that it will have WiFi capable version called the 8820, which may be for T-Mobile USA.

8800 compared to Pearl

8800, 8700, Pearl