A couple of months after the GSM BlackBerry 8800 hit the market for AT&T and T-Mobile, Verizon brought the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition phone to CDMA users in the US. Though both BlackBerry phones are in the same series of RIM’s device portfolio, the BlackBerry 8830 isn’t just the 8800’s CDMA twin brother. It adds a GSM/GPRS radio to the CDMA mix, making the BlackBerry 8830 a two-flavored beast. But it loses some speed as it’s using a different processor than the BlackBerry 8800. You can use the phone on Verizon’s CDMA networks in the US, and when you travel abroad in Europe and Asia where GSM dominates you can roam using the GSM SIM card with Verizon’s Global Service plan. There are lots of similarities between the BlackBerry 8800 and the 8830, but there are some differences as well. Like the 8800, the BlackBerry 8830 has the new BlackBerry form factor with that attractive, slim body and trackball control, a microSD card slot, Bluetooth 2.0, push email support, PIM applications and built-in GPS and navigation. The camera-less BlackBerry 8830 is designed for corporate users who require more security in their working environment.
The BlackBerry 8830 works on both digital dual band 800/1900 MHz CDMA networks and dual band 900/1800 MHz GSM/GPRS networks for use in Europe and Asia (the US uses the 850/1900MHz GSM bands only, which the 8830 doesn’t support). The service plan in the US is the same as other BlackBerry devices, but if you wish to add the GSM service, you will need to get Verizon’s Global BlackBerry Service plan which gives you a SIM card and international dialing instructions and a call card back to the US for customer support calls. The SIM is Vodafone ‘s and the Verizon 8830 is SIM locked to Vodafone. The enterprise channel sales of the BlackBerry 8830 starts on May 14th and the consumers will be able to buy the device and services in Verizon stores and on Verizon web site starting May 28th 2007.
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