A Blackberry without a scroll wheel?

Feb 14, 2007 Gadgets

Blackberry maker, Research in Motion, has for the first time, introduced a new model without the scroll wheel, the Blackberry 8800. This scroll wheel was mostly used for navigating through emails, and has been a feature of all BlackBerrys since the first model was released eight years ago.

In its place on the 8800 is a small front-mounted navigation ball developed for the BlackBerry Pearl, which was released last year.

The 8800, will have the full keyboard that has always been featured on BlackBerrys intended for business and government users. Despite that, it is the thinnest hand-held ever offered by the company. The unit includes other features from the Pearl, like the ability to accept SD memory cards and play music as well as videos.

Mike Lazaridis, the president and a chief of R.I.M, said he anticipated that even hard-core BlackBerry users would find the ball easier to use, particularly when viewing Web pages and using some of the multimedia features introduced on the device, including a GPS based automatic mapping system.