It seems like as time goes by, more and more not so stellar reviews of the BlackBerry 8800 hit the blogosphere. Matt Loney from ZDNet.UK recently posted that the BlackBerry 8800 is a “bit of a dud”.

I know someone that works in a Cingular store and they told me that the BlackBerry Pearl saw higher than usual returns for a BlackBerry when it first came out but it was mostly because new consumer BlackBerry users didn’t want to pay the extra BlackBerry fees. He says however, that the BlackBerry 8800 returns dwarf that of the BlackBerry Pearl and the most common reason is, “I liked my 8700 better.”

I didn’t particularly care for the BlackBerry 8800. Om Malik wasn’t that impressed. Numerous other BlackBerry 8800 reviewers have the same sentiment. Could it be that RIM has released their first BlackBerry dud?


I think that it will really depend on your definition of dud. If we base our definition on sales, then no, the BlackBerry 8800 won’t be a dud. It will sell very well because the 8800, if you can get passed the keyboard, is better than older model BlackBerrys that came out before the 8700.

The 8800 as an email device that you can make phone calls from, 90% of what most BlackBerry users use BlackBerrys for, is quite good. Removable memory is kind of cool, but, most BlackBerry users won’t buy an 8800 because of the media player or the GPS or make their decision to go with the 8800 over some other non-BlackBerry device because of these features.

If you base you definition of dud on a new device that does not much more than the previous version with new features that actually aren’t all that great, the BlackBerry 8800 might fit the bill.

BlackBerry 8800