Hello. First bost in Tech forum. Here goes!

My old Berry (7100t) is dead, so I'm going to buy a new one on eBay. T-Mobile user. Annoyed with the slowness of 7100t. So...

The 7230 seems to price with a "Buy It Now" price of $125, and the 7290 seems to be closer to $200-$225. I've done a device compare on blackberry.com, and I see three advantages of the -90 over the -30:
1. Black, not blue
2. Bluetooth
3. 850 band

Advantages of -30:
1. 0.1 oz lighter
2. 0.1" thinner
3. Extra day of standby battery power

Did I miss anything? I really like the black color vs. the silly blue.

Thank you, and sorry if this has been discussed. I did a search for "Blackberry 7290", and didn't get anything like this.

A few additional differences:

1) Backlight on the 7230 is very weak relative to the 7290 (and also the 7100)
2) The 7230 only has 16MB memory, which really is a tight fit with the 4.0 operating system.
3) The T-Mobile 7290 is a lighter blue than the 7230. Cingular 7290s are black.
4) Many/all newer 7290s are locked to Cingular and cannot be unlocked easily.

I think the 7290 has more memory, a better resolution screen, and may be faster. I am am getting ready to upgrade from a 6230 and it seems the 7230 is the same as the 6230, only with color. So, I decided tha the 7290 was what I wanted over the 7230.

Thanks. Oh - so the black ones are just Cingular? I've seen that T-Mobile light blue. It's odd. Hmmmm - no black T-Mo Berries?

Anyway, if I DO manage to get an unlocked Cingular 7290, can I put my T-Mobile SIM in and can my IT people put it on our Enterprise server?

My 7230 died a couple weeks ago and I got a 7290 to replace it. The screen is much easier to read and the unit seems to run a bit faster. The increase in bulk and weight is just barely noticable side by side and is a nonissue. I may have had a worse-than-average 7230 but the signal reception and sound quality seem to have improved on the newer unit (T-mobile).

On the downside, I like the old classic BrickBreaker game on the 7230 better than the 34 level, bells-n-whistles version on the 7290.

While I'm happy with my AT&T/Cingular 7290, the BlackBerry browser 4.0 is not materially better then the old one I had on my 6280 (Browser version 3.7). I no longer can get Flyertalk Lite! The well known 3.7 "RBRO" hack doesn't work on 4.0.

I've been using the 7290 for now a month, including a week in Hong Kong. As others have said it seems faster then old ones, and has much more free RAM. Battery life is not all that hot (three days max, with heavy usage), but my old one had a black and white screen which I suspect uses way less current. Our company enterprise email system is Lotus Notes, and during business hours it is pushing mail out to me every few minutes.

An interesting sidenote. When we tried to install the 7290 on my Thinkpad T41 notebook computer (over the old BB O/S), it would not do so. Our local IT tech called the company's BlackBerry expert (actually the "expert" works for CSC) and he immediately asked if I had a Palm O/S on the notebook. Answer was yes. He said I had to remove the Palm for it to work, due to Palm and BB sharing some sort of syncing software from the same manufacturer.

When I argued that I had not had any problems with this sharing issue under BlackBerry O/S 3.7, he said the problem was hit and miss back then. When we removed the Palm software, the BlackBerry re-installation was able to proceed.

Of course now I have a homeless Palm (an ancient IIIc), with a bunch of old historical info. I have not found an expedient way to export the Palm data to the Notes address book and calendar, without massive manual editing of the data. I'm resigned to carrying the Palm in my briefcase, for access to old info. Plus the Notes 5.0 address book and calendar program is far from world class.

Yes. I got my 7290 long before T-mo had it, and the previous owner had it unlocked for me. Works just fine.