The consumer-friendly exterior of the 8700g hides a device with real business potential. When combined with BES, it’s a no-brainer, as the 8700g provides one of the best platforms for accessing mobile enterprise email and secure handheld applications.

Overall the BlackBerry 8700 series is ideal for mobile professionals who require always-on e-mail access, but its cost and functionality won’t be attractive to most non-business users.

The RIM BlackBerry 8700g offers T-Mobile consumer and business users a robust, user-friendly messaging device and cell phone with great performance.

Strong email and browser features, helpful memo lists and the speakerphone function are the BlackBerry 8700g’s key strengths. These, combined with a reduced-size qwerty keypad and the familiar scrollwheel, along with the ability to load extra apps, make this a solid business communications tool.

Overall, the 8700g is an impressive e-mail device, but it seems caught between its roles as a powerful enterprise tool and a handy consumer gadget.

In the end it doesn’t look like BlackBerry will really be able to compete against the latest-and-greatest Windows Mobile PDAs, but RIM’s iconic devices have their own appeal and perhaps the 8700g’s greatest selling point is that previous BlackBerry users won’t feel disappointed.

RIM’s BlackBerry 8700g is the best mobile-messaging device available, but it is very expensive compared to T-Mobile’s Sidekick II and less versatile than a Windows Mobile smartphone PDA.

While it wasn’t a terrible experience, overall I didn’t find the Blackberry to be that much easier to use than any of the Pocket PC phones or Treos I’ve used. I can only conclude that the big draw of the Blackberry platform was and is the fact that it was the first to do mobile and “push” email well. Otherwise, there’s not a huge amount to recommend it over the alternatives.