Last week RIM announced the Blackberry 8820. Today RIM and Orange UK today introduced the BlackBerry 8820 smartphone to the UK market., The new smartphone features RIM's thinnest handset design with a full and  highly tactile QWERTY keyboard, large ultra bright landscape display, user-friendly trackball navigation system and best-in-class voice and data functionality. The BlackBerry 8820 also includes built-in GPS (Global Positioning System), RIM's latest media player enhancements, and a microSD / microSDHC (microSD High Capacity) expandable memory slot that can support the current and future generations of microSD memory up to 32GB.  

The BlackBerry 8820 is the first dual-mode BlackBerry handset   combining EDGE/GPRS/GSM cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity for data access and voice support through UMA (unlicensed mobile access) for fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) offerings, making it fully compatible with Unique, the innovative converged service for business customers from Orange.  By offering a single handset that switches seamlessly between Wi-Fi and GSM networks, Unique offers users a solution to make use of home office Wi-Fi network coverage and allows business customers to use one device for all their calls - whether at home, on the road or in the office.

The BlackBerry 8820 smartphone supports the 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi standards to enable data access over Wi-Fi connections in the enterprise, as well as through public hotspots and wireless home networks. The smartphone can seamlessly switch between cellular coverage and a Wi-Fi network to deliver any BlackBerry data service to the user - email, Instant Messaging, organiser, web browsing and other mobile data applications.

To meet various security requirements for users accessing a Wi-Fi connection, the BlackBerry 8820 is compliant with Wi-Fi security protocols including WEP (Wireless Equivalency Protocol), WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) and WPA2, as well as Cisco Compatible Extensions for simple, secure connectivity with Cisco wireless solutions.  For enterprises that require Wi-Fi users to access the corporate network through a VPN (Virtual Private Network), the BlackBerry 8820 includes IPSec-based software that supports the most commonly deployed VPN gateways from vendors including Cisco, Check Point and others.

The BlackBerry 8820 includes a microSD expansion memory slot memory that can support both microSD (up to 2GB) and microSDHC (4GB to 32GB) memory cards. 4GB memory cards are available today, and 8GB cards are expected to be available later this year.

Source: Blackberry

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