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The BlackBerry 7130 series, long available as an EV-DO-broadband model from Verizon Wireless (Sprint caught up last week with the same 7130e), just recently started to find its way into Europe via Vodafone as a 2.5G GSM/EDGE device. The series has now landed on Cingular's GSM network as the BlackBerry 7130c. The smartphone has a slimmer, narrower phone-like design than previous Cingular BlackBerrys and aims to appeal to a broader user population; something America’s largest mobile operator would like to emphasize.

"BlackBerry has long been the darling of corporate America," said Mike Woodward, executive director, mobile professional solutions, for Cingular Wireless. "But clearly wireless e-mail can benefit more than just corporations. Cingular's new BlackBerry Personal Plan and the easy-to-use BlackBerry 7130c are designed specifically to make wireless email accessible to everyone that leads a mobile lifestyle."

Due to ship next Monday, as with past 71XX devices, the 7130c nixes the traditional BlackBerry QWERTY thumb-keyboard for SureType technology, which merges a keypad and a keyboard. For text entry, each key supports two letters, while predictive text software helps you accurately input text-so when you press a key the 7130 knows which of the two supported letters you mean to use. The software's word database encompasses approximately 35,000 plus words and the user's address book. As with your word processor's spell-checker, you can add more words to it as well.

The $200 smartphone (with a two-year service agreement and qualified voice plan, of course) features a 240 x 260 pixel screen - a little less than QVGA - resolution, 65k color LCD. As with other recent BlackBerrys, intelligent light sensing technology automatically adjusts screen and keyboard lighting to provide an optimized view in outdoor, indoor and dark environments.

There's also 64 MB of ROM, 16 MB of RAM, speakerphone and Bluetooth.

Since the new BlackBerry is a 2.5G EDGE device, users can access the Web and (most importantly) send and receive e-mail at 70 to 135 kbps. Verizon users enjoy average transfer speeds of 400 to 700 Kbps by contrast on that carrier's CDMA/EV-DO network.

Nonetheless, Cingular says its EDGE network is the largest high-speed national wireless data network in the U.S., with availability in 13,000 cities and towns and nearly 40,000 miles of major highways. So you're likely to have a connection in most locals.

Cingular has launched a new data service, the BlackBerry Personal Plan, with the 7130c, for push access to personal e-mail accounts via RIM's BlackBerry Internet Service. The hosted plan costs $29.99 month for unlimited e-mail and Web browsing.

The solution provides automatic wireless synchronization of read, deleted and sent e-mail from the user's BlackBerry handset to their e-mail account. Users with multiple e-mail accounts can choose from multiple "sent from" e-mail addresses when sending an e-mail. Customers can also browse the Web wirelessly via Cingular's MEdia Net wireless Internet access service or use the BlackBerry Browser for HTML Internet browsing.

Cingular enterprise customers interested in leveraging the 7130c with RIM's behind-the-firewall BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) solution will have to shell out $44.99 per month for limited and $49.99 a month for unlimited service.

"No other wireless carrier in the world has more BlackBerry subscribers than Cingular," according to Woodward. "Given our leadership position, Cingular is pleased to introduce this new, consumer-friendly BlackBerry solution. Just about everyone can now enjoy the functionality, and rich push e-mail, voice and Web browsing features that have made BlackBerry so popular."

Recently, RIM itself introduced some incentives to get more company's onboard the BlackBerry bandwagon:

 A couple of weeks ago, in conjunction with an announced collaboration with IBM to extend Lotus Domino applications through Web services directly to BlackBerry handhelds, the push e-mail leader started offering a free ten-user edition of BES 4.1 for Lotus Domino or Sametime customers to help draw more Notes users to BlackBerry. This edition of BES supports up to 15 users and can be upgraded to the full version.

 Shortly before that, RIM introduced BlackBerry Enterprise Server for MDS Applications. Due later this year, this version of BES not only allows organizations to mobilize applications, they can run them independently of wireless e-mail deployments. With MDS, RIM said organizations can deploy custom-made or out-of-the-box applications to personnel and their BlackBerrys, while saving money by negating the need to purchase e-mail licenses where necessary before.

The development of BES for MDS resulted from RIM seeing over the years that there’s a class of customer that wants e-mail and those that want e-mail and applications for BlackBerry. Then there are those who don’t have or need e-mail accounts at a company, but want to wirelessly get at their applications

 BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express is free to anyone who purchases a new BlackBerry handheld, yet delivers the very same capabilities as BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1—tight integration with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino or Novell GroupWise to enable, pushed-based wireless access to e-mail, organizer, Internet and intranet applications—but on a smaller scale.

After the initial first license, companies must pay $99 for each additional one, with a maximum of 15 users supported. Should you want to add more than 15 users, then you can purchase an electronic unlock key to the full BlackBerry Enterprise Server, making Express quite scalable.