Nice device has a few areas to work on though

As a longtime user of Blackberry products in business I was naturally, attracted to the 8820 when I began looking to replace my Pearl. First the looks, it is a very stylish device. The included leather holster is stylish as well and very functional. The screen is nice and big. Coming from a Pearl it was a big change. The screen does adjust to lighting conditions fairly quickly, but you can also manually adjust the brightness level in case you need more or less brightness. The full QWERTY keyboard is nice. The buttons are on the small side though. If you have big fingers this may be an issue for you. But I cannot say that I blame RIM. Consumers want smaller and lighter devices so something has to give. It did take me a while to get used to the added symbols that are accessible on the keys versus having to use the SYM key. This was only due to having used a Pearl for a year. The trackball works well and having the ability to adjust its sensitivity is great. Accessing the battery compartment on the back of the device is easy though the release mechanism does feel a bit flimsy to me. The SD Micro card holder is also a little tricky to learn the correct way to insert and secure the card.

Using the 8820 is a breeze. The phone functions work as expected. Both the ear and speakerphone speakers are loud and clear. Pairing the device to my Motorola H500 was easy and did not require too much effort to do (I just had to remember to use 0000 for the password for the earpiece). With the large screen accessing the internet is not bad. The screen size makes it easy to actually read what is on the page. Having the ability to be on a call and access the internet simultaneously is a very nice feature. The built in GPS works like a charm. Though I must admit that it seems to take a long time for it to correlate the satellites initially. But using it in conjunction with TeleNav is seamless.

As for video the device shows video nicely and the sound is great. Would not advise looking at video where a lot of attention to small items in the video would be needed as the display while big is not huge. The PDA functions on the device work as expected. I am very pleased with having spell checker available for emails. Due to the loud speaker I am able to actually use this Blackberry as an alarm clock. I only wish RIM would have made it possible to set multiple alarms on it. Battery life is okay for regular usage but if you are a heavy data user or talker you will probably be frustrated with it. I am able to charge my phone overnight and use it throughout the day and still have 2 or 3 bars remaining on it at night. The rapid charging of the phone though does allow me to have a fully charged battery in about 45 minutes though.

Word of advice if you are switching from another Blackberry device to the 8820 I would advise using the Desktop Software to switch devices before doing any customizations. If you decide to set up your email, sync your calendar, tasks, notes, addresses and load applications first you may be frustrated when you finally do the switch devices part as it will most likely leave you with duplicate entries and overwrite several of your customizations. I had an issue where I loaded TeleNav first and when I went through the switch devices portion, it installed an additional another copy of TeleNav on the device, which in turn made it so I could not start the application. I had to remove one of the copies through the Desktop Software and I was able to use TeleNav once again.

My biggest concern is the switching between Wi-Fi Networks and AT&T's network. Yes, it is true you can easily transition from one network to another and the call is not dropped. But the conversation will be a little choppy while the phone makes the transition. Another concern is the ability for the phone to maintain internet connectivity when switching from a Wi-Fi environment to AT&T's. I am not sure if the phone is switching over fast enough. Meaning I can be surfing the internet fine when the phone is in Wi-Fi mode but when I am transitioning from Wi-Fi to the Edge network I don't think the data services in the phone recognizes this fast enough. It has taken me a few tries to get the phone to finally have internet connectivity once again. Not sure if it is my area but the phone initially wants to go into a GPRS mode instead of Edge. Eventually though it does say that it is in an Edge area but I have noticed a delay before internet connectivity is achieved.