The old blackberry was loved by IT departments for its ability to be locked down to such a degree that they would allow it to be part of a corporate network, also the blackberry is one of the few phones to allow both push and pull email retrieval, so your exchange server will push emails to your phone as soon as it gets them assuming you use the enterprise version of the RIM software.

In shrinking the Blackberry 7100V down to size the obvious casualties are the screen and keyboard size, this means the 7100V measures 56mm wide by 119mm deep by 19mm high not quite a small mobile phone but the 120 gram blackberry is no ugly ducking or pocket bulger.

The quad band device will enable travellers to use pretty much any mobile network as you travel around the globe, battery life is first class too which is essential for the business exec away from a power socket for days at a time, we managed some 4 days on standby with a fair splattering of calls and a good deal of email traffic. The lithium Ion pack is claimed to be good for 4 hours talk time and 8 days on standby, plus it charges very speedily.

The screen has a resolution of 240x260 pixels and has a reasonable colour reproduction, viewing emails seemed ok but attachments were more of a challenge on the portrait screen and involved a lot of scrolling and indeed downloading. Getting emails that are plain text is quick and painless, in fact little more than getting an SMS, but messages with attachments are downloaded in chunks which seem to have a delay in between each bit which leads to a slow and annoying download process.

We liked the Bluetooth abilities and the inbuilt speakerphone functions, both of these will be essential features for business users and make conference calls so much easier, however we did find it strange that a device at this level had ignored WiFi, and 802.11 connection would have been a killer application in this market. Also missing is any form of external storage, the 32mb onboard the Blackberry 7100V is all you get and is not a lot if you get sent a few attachments, would have really killed RIM to have added an SD / MMC slot?

Driving the 7100V is a weird experience the keyboard while small does on first impressions look useable, there is an attempt at a qwerty style layout but there are only 20 keys leaving some keys to double up on letters / number or symbols, you have to ignore what you see appearing on the screen as you type and rely on the blackberry "sure type" predictive text input. Now for SMS this took ages to get used to and when replying to an email it drove us mad, for once we almost wanted the pocket calculator sized keyboard back as it seems that this Blackberry has made one too many compromises to look slim and wafer like.

But the Blackberry 7100V is a phone of contradictions, while the keyboard is poor the jog wheel is excellent offering a quick and intuitive way around the 7100V's navigation systems and menus.

RIM have pitched the Blackberry 7100V very squarely at the business traveller and so they have dispensed with any ideas about cameras and multimedia, but in doing so and making some rudimentary mistakes in the interface we think they've lost the plot. After all an email device that you can't easily type on and one that has just 32mb of memory and no way to get files out? we never thought we'd say this but if you are a hotshot executive then stick to the pocket calculator Blackberry of old, at least it gives us a laugh.

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