The BlackBerry Electron (8703/8700/8707) is a discontinued

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

developed by Research In Motion Ltd and released in 2005.

Launch

The Blackberry Electron was announced in Q4 of 2004. It was formally launched in the fall of 2005. The gross profit reported by RIM's income statement, as of March 2006 (about four months after the release of the Electron), was US$1.3 billion.

Manufacturing

Most of the materials that make up the

Electron and other

devices, such as flexible circuit boards, were manufactured in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. The BlackBerry Election weighed 134 g (4.73 oz), the dimensions of the device were 110 by 69.5 by 19.5mm (4.33 x 2.74 x 0.77 in), with a

QWERTY QWERTY ( ) is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sh ...

keyboard configuration and a 320 by 240 pixel

LCD Display A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not emi ...

with a 16-bit (65K colors) colour depth. It had a loudspeaker and contained 3 different alert types: Vibration; Polyphonic, MP3 ringtones. It did not contain a 3.5mm jack. The memory was fixed at 64 MB storage, and 16 MB RAM. The Electron had a Lithium-Ion 1100 mAh battery. Which would last up to 450 hours on Stand-By time, and up to 4 hours in Talk time.

Software

Interface

The BlackBerry Electron features a graphical interface and uses menus and icons for navigation.

Music and ringtones

All 8700 series phones come with

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

ringtone A ringtone is the sound made by a telephone to indicate an incoming telephone call. Originally referring to the sound of electromechanical striking of bells or gongs, the term refers to any sound by any device alerting of an incoming call. On p ...

support. Saved songs can be played.

Network

The 3 versions of the Electron had differences in network support the original (8700) model supported

Quad-band In telecommunications, a multi-band device (including (2) dual-band, (3) tri-band, (4) quad-band and (5) penta-band devices) is a communication device (especially a mobile phone) that supports multiple radio frequency bands. All devices which ha ...

GSM (

EDGE Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

GPRS General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), also called 2.5G, is a mobile data standard on the 2G cellular communication network's Global System for Mobile Communications, global system for mobile communications (GSM). Networks and mobile devices wit ...

). The 8707 (AKA "UMTS Electron") added 2100 MHz UMTS 3G and the 8703 model was designed for US CDMA operators and supported both 850 MHz and 1900 MHz CDMA2K (EvDO/1xRTT) the 8703 also has A-GPS support, which was not present on the GSM/UMTS variants. All variants have

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...

, and

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

facilities. The quad-band network (on the 8700 and 8707, but not the 8703) was the network available for international travelers in 20052006. The Electron uses a

mini-SIM A typical SIM card (mini-SIM with micro-SIM cutout)A SIM card or SIM (subscriber identity module) is an integrated circuit (IC) intended to securely store an international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number and its related key, which are us ...

References

External links

BlackBerry Smartphones

{{Research In Motion phones Mobile phones with an integrated hardware keyboard

Electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary charge, elementary electric charge. It is a fundamental particle that comprises the ordinary matter that makes up the universe, along with up qua ...