While we understand that the phone is geared toward business users rather than young consumers or even the Hollywood types, such as Tom Cruise, who are famously devoted to their BlackBerries, the lack of a camera seems an oversight and a drawback. We expect to be able to take pictures with our phone—and we believe we are not alone.

The phone features integrated Bluetooth 2.0 and you can use the BlackBerry 8830 as a wireless modem for your laptop. Since it supports Verizon's EV-DO network, you can potentially experience data speeds of up to 2.4Mbps, although they are likely to average less than half that rate. Currently, the BlackBerry 8830 does not support Verizon's V Cast multimedia services or VZ Navigator, but that may change.

The 8830 is Verizon's first full-size BlackBerry with multimedia functions. The built-in media player can be used for music (MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, and MIDI formats) or video (MPEG4, WMV, and H.263 files). 64MB of flash memory is available, along with a microSD card. It's simple to use and includes a full-screen mode for video. The 8830 also includes an image viewer, but since you can't take your own photos with the smartphone, these will have to find their way into the viewer some other way.

Business users will appreciate the on-board PIM tools, such as a calendar, a tasks list, a memo pad, an alarm, and a calculator.

Voice features include speed dial, voice-activated dialing (which is the default program for the convenience key), smart dialing, conference calling, and speed dial. The phone book can be as large as the available memory will allow and each entry can contain eight phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and other useful information like a job title. You can also add photos so that when a number comes up in CallerID, the photo comes with it.

Performance
We tested the dual-mode (CDMA 850/1900; GSM 900/1800) RIM BlackBerry 8830 in Connecticut and Massachusetts on the Verizon Wireless CDMA network. (Alas, we were not able to test the world-roaming capabilities of the phone.) We experienced consistently clear call quality with limited background noise and speakerphone quality was also near perfect. Listeners often reported that our voice sounded somewhat subdued or slightly dampened when compared to the crisper quality of other devices.

The RIM BlackBerry 8830's battery is rated for 3.6 hours of talk time and up to 9 days of standby time.

Overall, performance was excellent. Applications opened quickly and a variety of functions were completed without delays. Thanks to EV-DO speeds, browsing the Web on the 8830 was much speedier than we've experienced on EDGE-only BlackBerries. As for multimedia, music playback wasn't terrible over the phone's speakers and video played well.