Anyone who commutes by train will recognise the Research In Motion (RIM) Blackberry, a sort of souped-up mobile phone that receives emails and handles documents and web browsing.

In fact, well-heeled business-folk who use them religiously for work, have dubbed this device the Crackberry. How well this carries across to those of us who don’t need to check our emails every 10 minutes is a different matter, though.

We tried out a Blackberry 8700g on O2’s mobile network - at present, the 8700g is only available on a business tariff. Those on a monthly contract should be able to get hold of the 8700g for less than the advertised price.

The device itself is striking, and seems solidly constructed with a metal grille for the speaker phone, matt blue/black finish and a noticeable lack of flimsiness. 

The full Qwerty keyboard is easy to get used to, although bigger thumbs may find hitting relatively small keys hard to hit every time. The raised buttons are easy to find, and we adapted quickly to pressing out messages with our thumbs.

Dialling numbers was more awkward but a thumb dial on the right of the device makes scrolling up and down documents easy.

Web browsing was surprisingly straightforward; images loaded smartly, and the built-in web browser seemed capable of handling most web sites.

The big selling point of Blackberry is that it automatically collects email and allows you to reply to it while on the move. However, it was here that we encountered problems.

While business users are well catered for - RIM supports Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange - the Blackberry doesn’t seem to support the sort of email accounts most non-business people have, which use POP and SMTP to send and receive mail.

Instead, O2 has its own email service, o2email, where users have enter their email address and mail password into a web page, and then collect and send email via o2email.

This is all a bit fiddly, especially considering most intelligent mobile phones will allow the collection and sending of email from POP accounts quite happily.

This niggle is, however, balanced by the fact that the Blackberry fetches email all the time. On top of that, we were able to log in and pick up web mail services like Google Mail and Hotmail no problem.

In summary, this hybrid mobile phone would suit those who travel around a lot, don’t want a notebook computer and can live without word processing, printing or the more complicated bits of the web.

That said, the Blackberry 8700g is only available on a business tariff -starting from £15 per month. We reckon the Blackberry will appeal to those in small business; a plumber, electrician or carpenter, for example, could find the Blackberry invaluable for keeping in touch with customers.

However, we’d also suggest other options from Palm and Nokia, as the Blackberry’s expense compared with other smartphones is hardly an incentive.

Also Consider
Nokia 9300i Communicator 
Verdict: A good business phone that is smaller than other PDAs and does not require stylus input
Rating: 4/5
Price: Dependent on contract