Research In Motion may be a Canadian company, but its devices don't usually ship in Canada first. The honor almost always goes to the BlackBerry vendor's largest market, the United States.

Case in point: this week Canada's TELUS Wireless released the BlackBerry 7130e, a month after Verizon Wireless unveiled the very same handset in the U.S. The 7130e is the first edition of RIM's acclaimed Blackberry 7100 series to support high-speed (Evolution Data Optimized) networking.


    7130e Verizon

That means it is compatible with 3G networks from Verizon and TELUS for data transfer rates between 400 to 700 Kbps, with bursts up to 2 Mbps. The net result should be the faster delivery of mobile content—messages, video, pictures, games, audio, etc.—and other services, which boost ARPU (average revenue per user) for carriers over traditional voice products and peformance for consumers.

The handset can also serve as a tethered modem for clients looking to connect their laptop computers to the Internet and other data networks at broadband speeds. Of course, it supports "push-based" wireless e-mail, Web browsing, text messaging, personal information management and other productivity applications.


    7130e TELUS

As with earlier 7100 models, the 7130e is more phone than PDA-like than other Blackberrys.

It replaces the BlackBerry thumb-keyboard with one that merges a keypad and a keyboard. For text entry, each key supports two letters, while predictive text software called SureType helps you accurately input text-so when you press a key the 7100 knows which of the two supported letters you mean to use.

The software's word database encompasses tens of thousands of words plus the user's address book. As with your word processor's spell-checker, you can add more words to it as well. SureType support various languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and Swedish.

TELUS sells BlackBerry 7130e for $250 CDN until December 31 with three-year contract or $549.99 without a contract.

Early last month, Canadian carrier Rogers Wireless became the second operator in the world, after Cingular Wireless in the United States, to announce support for RIM's latest PDA-like BlackBerry handheld, the 8700.

Cingular calls its model the 8700c, while Rogers' is not surprisingly named the 8700r. The 8700r has a darker color scheme than the 8700c. Otherwise, the specifications of the handhelds are the same. For more information, see Review: BlackBerry 8700 - An EDGEier Model From RIM.