Review: The New Blackberry Tour

The Blackberry Tour is available from Verizon Wireless and Sprint for $199 with a two-year contract. (Georgia Rhodes / NPR)

By Ryan Kellett

The Blackberry Tour by Research In Motion is a long-awaited Blackberry update for the Verizon Wireless network. It's billed first and foremost as a 3G "global smartphone" and is most suited to the international traveler, hence the name "Tour."

But it's not only targeted at the international traveler. Last weekend, I walked in to a Verizon Wireless store in downtown Manhattan and every employee had a badge on promoting the new Blackberry device. Splashy ads announced the device's tagline "Take Life With You."

The Tour is certainly a great upgrade for those on Verizon with older Blackberries, but the real question is whether the Tour is right for the growing breed of smartphone consumers. Can the device hold its own against the likes of the iPhone and HTC MyTouch?

At first touch, the device is sleek. No more dorky Blackberry-in-belt-holster jokes needed. And for the road-warriors out there, the device also felt solid for frequent use. Typing feels downright satisfying on the real keys. The trackball feels antiquated but legacy Blackberry users will appreciate that the form of the Blackberry has not changed in around ten years.

On the same note, previous Blackberry users seem to grasp navigation with ease whereas newbies have a sharper learning curve compared to the iPhone or Android-based cellphones. In particular, finding out how to change the limited six applications on the home screen was infuriating.

Downloading applications, however, is surprisingly simple on the phone itself but to get easy access to more than the pre-populated applications, you will likely need to use the desktop software, which is not ideal.

Email has long been the forte of the Blackberry, and it still remains at the center of attention. Importing your personal Gmail as well as Microsoft Exchange work email took five minutes. Don't expect the wonders of heavily formatted email to display correctly, but viewing the majority of text is what the Blackberry was built for.

Conversely, multimedia -- music, video, and pictures -- is considered the weakness of the Blackberry family of smartphones. And the stereotype is somewhat true; music and video remains too unwieldy for the average user. Stick to your iPod and video camera for now.

But taking and sending quality photos from your phone is the one multimedia function that works well. The 3.2 megapixel camera takes crisp photos and Flickr integration made uploading the photo a cinch. Of all the functions, it's an important one to get right as most users think photos are a given on phones these days.

Ultimately, you might find a better smartphone but you'd be hard pressed to find a better Blackberry. The Tour is a powerful and useful phone for business and non-business users alike. It doesn't stop me, however, from thinking most users will never get a chance to test the ultimate feature that gives the Tour its name and perhaps its pricetag: world access in 220 countries. We didn't get to test that either.