BlackBerry 8700c Cingular GSM Wireless Handheld

by BlackBerry

Product Details

• Item Weight: 6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 6 pounds
• ASIN: B000C1DOU0
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #95,808 in Cell Phones & Accessories (See Top 100 in Cell Phones & Accessories)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The latest BlackBerry handheld is better than ever with a thinner profile, a huge screen, a more powerful processor, EDGE data support, and more. The BlackBerry 8700c, an integrated phone, e-mail client (with support for corporate email servers), organizer, and Web browser is the ultimate weapon for mobile professionals.

Take a closer look at the BlackBerry 8700c handheld's functions.

Design
Design-wise, the BlackBerry 8700c is a nice upgrade from BlackBerry devices of the past. Yes, the same handy trackwheel is present on the right side, and yes, you'll still find a full QWERTY keyboard. This handheld is thinner and lighter, however, and the screen is bigger and brighter than ever; the high resolution 320 x 240 LCD display supports over 65,000 colors. Plus, intelligent light-sensing technology automatically optimizes screen lighting levels for indoor and outdoor viewing. The BlackBerry 8700c also features large, dedicated Send and End keys for easier call management.

The popular BlackBerry user interface is here, too, but it's been updated with a new look. Plus, a powerful Intel XScale processor, 64 MB flash memory, and 16 MB SDRAM combine to deliver a dynamic, highly responsive experience when viewing attachments and graphics, browsing the Web, and running applications. There's also a standard 2.5mm headset jack that can be used with the included headset, and a removable lithium-ion battery is housed in the rear of the handheld.

Calling Features
Many of the calling capabilities folks have come to expect in a wireless phone are present, but the BlackBerry 8700c ups the ante with MP3 ringtones. Plus, the built-in speakerphone offers hands-free calling and convenient conference calls. The handheld's Bluetooth capability (version 2.0) means you can use a wireless headset with the phone for hands-free calling. A vibrating alert, speed dial, and a contacts list/address book (limited only by the unit's 64 MB of internal memory) are also included. The BlackBerry 8700c is a quad-band phone designed for global roaming in 170 countries for voice and 90 countries for data.

Messaging, Internet, and Tools
The BlackBerry 8700c delivers the legendary BlackBerry e-mail experience. With BlackBerry service plans from Cingular, you can receive e-mails instantaneously from up to 10 e-mail accounts (personal and enterprise). With BlackBerry push technology, you don't need to retrieve your e-mail. BlackBerry devices are designed to remain on and continuously connected to the wireless network, allowing you to be discreetly notified as new e-mail arrives. Support is also built-in for viewing e-mail attachments (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, and PDF formats).

Because the BlackBerry 8700c is fast, and because it supports EDGE high-speed data networks, users can take advantage enterprise applications that are wirelessly enabled by the BlackBerry platform, such as sales force automation, field service automation, network and systems management, and more.

If your company has a BlackBerry Enterprise Server installed, you can also take advantage of the power of wireless calendar synchronization. Your calendar events are exchanged wirelessly and automatically so that your desktop calendar and BlackBerry handheld calendar are synchronized. All your Outlook meeting requests, changes, and updates are instantaneously synchronized instantaneously with your desktop. Make meeting requests, invite new attendees and more, all on your BlackBerry 8700c. Users without BlackBerry Enterprise Server support can manually sync with their desktop calendars and contacts via Bluetooth or USB using the included BlackBerry Desktop Software.

Use the BlackBerry 8700's Web browser to access the Internet from the palm of your hand. Browse Web sites, get up-to-date stock quotes, read the latest news, check weather reports, and more. Wireless text messaging and multimedia messaging (MMS) is also supported by the BlackBerry 8700c.

The BlackBerry 8700c ships with a number of tools, including a calculator with a unit converter and a to-do list. The handheld's software is based on the Java platform, meaning Java-compatible games and applications can be added to the handheld.

Vital Statistics
The BlackBerry 8700c weighs 4.7 ounces and measures 4.3 by 2.7 by 0.8 inches. Its lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 4 hours of digital talk time and up to 16 days of digital standby time. It runs on the 850/900/1800/1900 GSM/EDGE frequencies. The phone comes with a one-year limited warranty.

Product Description

Put your business in your pocket. The BlackBerry® 8700c combines all of your office needs, from email to messaging, into a complete lightweight package with a full QWERTY keyboard. So whether you're making international calls to your home office with quad-band GSMTM, sending email and instant messages to your family, or just planning your weekly schedule, you'll have every feature you need in the palm of your hand with the 8700c.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

342 of 356 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I see why BlackBerry deserves its legacy, March 7, 2006

By 

Gary Chou - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: BlackBerry 8700c Cingular GSM Wireless Handheld (Wireless Phone)

8700c has been my first BlackBerry. I got it a month ago right in the thick of the lawsuit. Cingular 8125 came out soon after that which really made me to consider if I should go for the WIFI-enabled, full size keyboard and MS Office compatible Windows Mobile phone. In fact, I did exchanged for the Cingular 8125...for ONE DAY...before I ran back to the Cingular store and exchanged again for a BlackBerry 8700c. (I almost cried happy tears to have my beloved BlackBerry back from the angry sale rep who had to deal with me.)

Why the BlackBerry is the BEST communication solution I have ever used:
1. BlackBerry email is incredible. What can I say? I guess it's hard to appreciate its greatness without testing Seven Sea's Xpress mail, GoodLink or Windows Mobiles Patch. After I tried other options, oh man, no solution works better than the BlackBerry. It's indeed second to none! When you read about the "alternative services," believe me, they are not comparable to the reliability and the ease of use from the BES.
2. Reliability of the operating system. I think this is by far the most important factor. Windows Mobile freezes or becomes extremely sluggish about 2/3 of the time I use it. It pratcially is useless. BlackBerry however is always responsive, stable, and most importantly you can MAKE phone call and RECEIVE phone call ANYTIME no matter you are running a Google Map or what not. (This is not possible on Windows Mobile. Whenever I am doing some CPU-intensive task the phone will just freezes for about 30 seconds.)
3. EDGE is real fast. No more do I need to say about this.
4. The keyboard works like a charm. The keyboard is MUCH BETTER THAN THE CINGULAR 8125 full size keyboard. I kid you not. Why? Because you can a. ONE HAND OPERATE and b. use it on the go.
The full size keyboard on 8125 is big indeed, but after using it for one day I realized its uselessness. Since you have to expand the keyboard on the 8125 and use both hands to type, you MUST place that device on a table in order to hold it stll (since both of your hands aren't free) and type. That maens you basically have NO WAY to input anything-name, calendar, task, website address, etc-on the go. And boys, if I don't use cell phone on the go, I don't know why do I use it for. If every time I do the above task I have to sit down in front of a flat surface, why don't I just get a dang laptop??
So don't get fooled into the "sliding full size keyboard myth" because it's plainly meaningless.
5. It's sturdy and it looks really good. 8125 feels awkward on your hand and big/heavy in the pocket. 8700c however is actually quite elegant.
6. The phone quality is by far the best. I talk when I am driving above 75 mph very often. It has been hard for any phone (Samsung or Moto) to be loud enough for me to hear. I remember using speaker phone on my Samsung phones and put it on my ear in order to hear. But with 8700c, not only its reception is super (much better than 8125), its clarity is great, it's over-the-top loud!
7. Intuitive operation. Oh my God, I finally understood the success of BlackBerry in using it operating system-its ease of use with the thumb. You see, Windows Mobile is made by Microsoft which makes GUI OS like Windows. GUI means the need for a mouse. On PDA it means a stylus and many layers of "folders." Guys, it's practically useless on a phone if whatever you need to do with it, you need to hold it with one hand and take out a stylus to scroll/type. Why? How in the world am I going to do that when I am eating, driving, walking, etc, at the same time as operating my phone? Omg, Microsoft is NOT thinking about this. Who uses his/her phone sitting down in front of a desk? Maybe you, but I ALWAYS use it when I am multitasking--walking, listening to speech, driving, drinking, eating dinner, waiting for a table, watching movie, sitting on the toilet, etc, etc. BlackBerry's navigation works way better than any other device method I have ever heard of. It's simply intuitive.
8. The following functions are not only excellent, they set industry standard by going way above and beyond over its competitors:
a. phone logs. It stores unlimited number of events (missed call, dialed call, received call) per the last 20 contacts. Each event includes time and duration. EACH! You simply have over 3~400 events easily.
b. font. It has wide selection of pleasant fonts of different styles and size. They look grrrreeat.
c. screen. 320x240 is really high resolution for a screen this size. You can arrange the folders and icons on the screen by applying theme and manually hide/unhide icon so that you largely have an empty desktop to show your favorite picture!
b. phone. the dailing, the calling features, are all excellent! It's really easy to send SMS, Email or PIN to anyone on your contact. You can right click on the contact and select one of the following functions-view history, SMS this person, email this person, call this person, PIN this person, etc. Once you click on "Call this person" for example, a menu will come up and ask you which number. It's just so simple yet powerful.
c. the categorization of all your messages (sent and received) in one single box differentiated by icon. It's really a smart idea. Windows Mobile gives you an Outlook style menu tree that has over 30 different folders on its tiny screen requires a style to select each time. Think about it, when you are using a phone to read messages, is it more important to organize it clearly in outlook style (which is designed for the use of a mouse) or in a centralized place where you can simply navigate it by one thumb? Oh my, Windows Mobile is not impressive AT ALL. What is Microsoft thinking? Look at how BlackBerry can do the simple task well.
d. the auto dimming works great! Under bright sunlight the screen lights up ultra bright to acomodate the environment. When it's not too bright, the screen brightness decreases and the keyboard turns off (since the ambient light is enough to see the keyboard), when it's completely dark, the keyboard will light up again while the screen stays dim. (Thus at least three different modes.)
e. theme is very, very pretty. Aesthetically pleasing. Much prettier and artistic than Windows Mobile.
f. I like the airplane mode, the alarm clock (finally loud enough for me) and the expansive options for manual modification.
g. You not only are able to customize the profile (ring tone style and volumn) down to every single type per profile (message, level one message, phone, calendar, browser, task, etc), you can also SET MULTIPLE EXCEPTIONS and ACTIVATE EACH EXCEPTION INDEPENDENTLY!! Exception means you can turn off the vibration/sound completely off in a theatre, but unless this number calls in which the phone will use an overriding profile. So if you are waiting for imporatnt phone call, you can definitely let it get thru. It's sort of a "Do-Not-Disturb" guard and "VIP-only" kind of thing.

In conclusion, this phone is powerful and completely designed for business purpose and business people oriented.

242 of 254 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The first five-star smartphone, no longer the best..., April 21, 2006

By 

Earl E. A. Dopter (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: BlackBerry 8700c Cingular GSM Wireless Handheld (Wireless Phone)

Update 10/13/07: Well, it's no longer the best available. My company now has about 25 of these phones deployed and the results have been very good. However, the 8800 and Curve are the next generation and are easily superior in every way to the 8700. For free, the 8700 is still a great phone, but if you can get a decent deal on the 8800 or Curve it's a worthwhile upgrade that you will not regret. The only thing is that these new designs do take some getting used to if you are very accustomed to the thumbwheel method. It took me about two weeks to adapt to the trackball. But once I did, I was convinced. The other thing that is worth noting is that in heavy use, the thumbwheel on my 8700 started to become sloppy and less reliable after about a year, and several of my employees noted the same.

Original Review:
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I want to impart upon readers of this review that this smartphone is the one you have been looking for, whether you are a current BlackBerry user or not. My last phone was the previous BlackBerry version, the 7100, however I have tested a wide range of smartphones over the past 6 years. In my review of the 7100, I told everyone that we were probably a year or so away from a five-star smartphone. That was a year ago. Modesty is not my strong suit.

This is the first smartphone I can wholeheartedly recommend. Palm, Symbian, and Windows Mobile devices are being fully considered when I make this statement. It is hard to express my satisfaction given the amount of time I've waited and researched, going all the way back to the Kyocera 6035 in 2000. The potential of the integrated PDA and cellphone has always made sense to me, but the reality has never matched my expectations - until now.

The BlackBerry 8700c meets and even exceeds my expectations as a true, integrated smartphone. The intuitiveness of the BlackBerry operating system remains excellent, but the phone itself is finally worthy. The volume is loud enough, the signal is strong enough, the unit is light enough, the battery life is long enough, and the integration is nearly perfect. This device is lightweight, intuitive, and reliable.

What most business and power users need is to eliminate having to carry a PDA separate from the phone, and to be able to process our emails. We want to look up a contact and call them. We want to receive our email, then either email or call the sender back without having a complex set of menus to navigate. We want to set reminders and consult our calendars. We want to manage our to-do list. We want to do all this reliably and quickly. For those of you who want a smartphone but think that the answer is a handheld computer running Windows Mobile, my comment to you would be that Windows Mobile smartphones are built to do too many things. This attempt to turn them into spreadsheet editors, cameras, MP3 players, laptop modems, etceteras, causes needless complexity, slows down the machine, and causes frequent freezing and crashing issues. These units are always larger and heavier than I find comfortable to hold, and usually require a stylus to input information. Some, like the one my friend just got six months ago, the top of the line at Cingular, has a pull-out keyboard. We played with his smartphone for hours. He showed off all the great functions, including the ability to use WiFi, the size of his color screen, etceteras. But he is a computer consultant. He tweaks it constantly. I walked away thinking that no one needs that many functions on their phone; that's what a laptop is for. The sound quality when I talk to him is poor. His new BlueTooth headset sounds like crap, and he still cannot get the phone to do some of the things the manual says it can do. The battery life is weak, and he drops calls constantly.

Palm devices were great, back when they invented the PDA category. I bought my first Palm in 1996 and loved the simplicity and power packed into such a small device. However, I have since tested many Palm-based smartphones, from the old Kyoceras, through the Samsungs, all the way to the latest Treos, and they have all fallen far short of my expectations. They have never been fully integrated. In other words, you always have to operate either in phone mode or in PDA mode, and there are differences in how the menus function depending on which mode you are in. Sometimes the screen is a touchscreen, sometimes not. You can't make the phone carrier's network time, which is always accurate, become the phone's system time, you must reset that manually. The touchscreen must be calibrated regularly, or it may get so out of sync that you cannot sync it without a hard reset. The stylus is a pain to use on a phone, yet some functions on a Palm-based smartphone cannot be accessed without removing and using the stylus. They are subject to lockups, followed by soft resets, and occasionally by hard resets, with great frequency. Email does not get pushed to these devices, you must manually go check your email to see if you have any. In Outlook, if you have multiple categories for a contact, only the first one imports to the Palm. In Palm, you cannot have a work and home address for the same contact, you must create a second contact if you happen to need both their addresses. You are limited to only thirty categories. If you try to add another in Outlook, it just overwrites one of the other categories the next time you sync. Palm OS simply hasn't evolved enough to handle the needs of a modern smartphone user, nor have developers found a way to make the integration seamless enough.

I have a friend who just got the new Nokia 9300. This is the one that flips open sideways, with a full keyboard underneath and a big sideways screen. Nokia uses the Symbian OS. He and I demoed it for quite a while. He was trying to show me how easy it was to add my new email address to his database and send me an email. After ten minutes of trying, he gave up and went to the user manual. I pulled out my 8700, updated his email address in my address book, and sent him an email, all within about 30 seconds. I rested my case. Symbian is a loser; the sooner Nokia realizes this the sooner they can start making smartphones that work and stop losing market share.

The BlackBerry OS integrated smartphone is the best balance between usefulness, intuitiveness, and integration. In terms of integration, it is seamless and has been for some time now. The menus are intuitive. Whenever you depress the click wheel, only those menu items which apply to the screen you are on appear. For example, if you are reading an email and you click there, if the person who sent you the email is in your contacts database, you will see an option to call or text message this person, in addition to responding via email. If there is a phone number in the email, you can select that phone number and dial it instantly. If you are looking at the phone screen, a click wheel depression will offer to let you dial from the address book. When looking for a contact, you simply begin typing the first or last name of the contact, or the company name that contact works for, and the list of choices is pared down until you see your contact from among the remaining choices. When you click the wheel on that contact, the menu will show all phone numbers you have for that contact. In other words, if you don't have a cell number for that contact, the choice of calling their cell number is not on the menu.

The new processor is extremely fast. I manage over 5,000 contacts in the company database with ease on this new processor. The older BlackBerries had significant delays searching for contacts, as did all the other devices I have tested, so this is a huge improvement. Syncing to my Outlook database is much faster too. My sync operation went from approximately 5 minutes down to less than a minute when I upgraded to the 8700.

The screen is the best ever for a BlackBerry, and it rivals any other smartphone I have seen. I love how everyone harps on the size of the BlackBerries. The fact is that you can't have a large screen and a keyboard on a phone the size of a matchbook. The size of the unit is about as compact as could possibly be expected for what it does.

The 8700 is much easier to hold and use as a phone than the original BlackBerry. There is no possibility of accidentally hanging up on your call because the side-mounted escape key does not perform that function anymore. This was one of my most severe criticisms of older BlackBerries. Now you have a real dial and hang-up key. Much better. Also the earpiece is natural and the sound is much clearer. Older units were almost impossible to keep centered on your ear and the sound volume rarely was high enough. The sound is also much clearer than the 7100 I owned prior to this, as is the signal strength. I put the two units side by side in an area of low signal strength, and the 7100 had only one bar and difficulty making calls, while the 8700 had nearly full strength and no issues making calls from the same spot.

Now for the negatives. The Bluetooth functionality is still nearly zero. I can't tell you how annoying that is. I keep hearing that they are planning on un-crippling it soon but for now the only thing you can use with it is a wireless headset. The history of this is that so many BlackBerries are used by the government, and security was the primary goal. However I fail to see why the consumer edition cannot offer that functionality. I can use my BlueTooth headset, that's great, but a BlueTooth sync to my laptop would really make my day.

As I've mentioned in previous BlackBerry reviews there are some other things you should know if this will be your first foray into the BlackBerry world. This applies to all BlackBerries not availing themselves of the expensive but excellent... Read more ›

73 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BE CAREFUL!, August 24, 2006

By 

J. Mahoney (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: BlackBerry 8700c Cingular GSM Wireless Handheld (Wireless Phone)

Great product, but when I tried to port over a number from a Verizon account, I was informed I would be charged $250. here's the fine print:

"By accepting this Equipment Discount, you agree that for a period of 181 days after your new line of service is activated, you

1. Will pay your balance due to Cingular each month
2. Will not disconnect this Cingular line of service
3. Will not transfer this equipment to another Cingular line of service
4. Will not port an existing phone number to this new line of service
5. Will not change your Cingular service rate plan to a lower monthly service rate
6. Will not use this new line of service to replace an existing account with Cingular

If these conditions are not met, you herein agree to a $250 reimbursement to be paid to this Cingular-authorized agent. This reimbursement of the $250 Equipment Discount will only be charged if the above conditions are not met."