In conclusion, the Blackberry 8800 is far and away the best Blackberry ever. The trivial shortcomings of this phone do little to detract from the overwhelming delightful experience it provides.

Despite some minor issues, the RIM BlackBerry 8800 offers mobile professionals a well-rounded smart phone with added multimedia functions, GPS, and push-to-talk capabilities. That said, messaging remains its forte.

A tremendously effective messaging phone, the 8800 adds a trackball and music player to the traditional Blackberry form factor. But the lack of 3G high-speed wireless will be an issue for Web surfers and laptop modem users.

The BlackBerry 8800 has a great feature set, including the well-designed trackball, GPS-navigation, an excellent microphone and speaker for calling, as well as a bright, clear screen. Still, the interface holds the phone back in almost every way. The device does a great job with e-mail and calling, admittedly its primary functions, but should be a much more pleasant phone to use.

Overall, the BlackBerry 8800 is an excellent smart phone and a surprisingly good navigator. At $299, it’s priced between the sleeker, BlackJack and the more powerful Cingular 8525 ($399), which offers both HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity. Whether it’s $150 better than Cingular’s BlackBerry Pearl depends on how much of a premium you place on having a full-sized keyboard, up to five hours of talk time, and GPS capability. We think it’s worth it.

The 8800 is definitely a capable phone, but unless you’re infatuated with the idea of using a trackball with a QWERTY keyboard, this Blackberry 8800 review suggests you steer clear of the model, as it feels like a time bider between the innovation of the Pearl and Blackberry’s next big thing.