For writers of Chinese-language e-mails who are on the go, the BlackBerry 7730 is the first and - by default - the best device.
Front-page promotions in many Chinese-language newspapers for most of last month prompted me to splash out on a BlackBerry, whose parent, Research in Motion, was ranked by BusinessWeek as the world's fastest-growing information technology company.
The new Chinese model is the company's first non-Roman letter character set, and represents hopes to crack the world's largest mobile-phone market.
Just as there are hundreds of Chinese dialects, there are a multitude of input methods (Changjei, Quick, Jyutping, Pinyin, WuBiHua and Q9) to type traditional and simplified characters.
Users will have to download software that will enable their BlackBerry to read Chinese.
A major drawback, however, is the lack of a completely Chinese operating environment. In addition, toggling between languages requires a two-step process, compared with a simple click for Microsoft Windows.
I attempted to send three e-mails to my BlackBerry from websites that used traditional and simplified characters but was able to read only the simplified ones.
