Earlier today, I received a RIM BlackBerry 7230 from T-Mobile for long-term review purposes. This is a very nice integrated communicator for the price. It's also a Blackberry through and through-- no application-oriented buttons and a thumbwheel that gets a lot of use.

Blackberries are a little unique in that a lot of their functionality apparently depends upon server-side entitlements that are tied to your SIM card. I was issued a SIM with a "206" phone number (a Seattle-area phone number) for use in my review. My own T-Mobile SIM has a "609" phone number (local to Central New Jersey, where I live). When I use the 206 SIM, Blackberry email and T-Zones web access both work. When I switch to the 609 SIM, neither email nor the web work. These mobile Internet functions have worked on other phones with the 609 SIM installed, so there must be some special entitlement that I'm missing.

I am going to find out from my technical contacts why this is in a couple of days. In the meantime, I will switch SIMs when I need to test the mobile Internet functions.

Much more on the Blackberry 7230 in the next few weeks.