[cellinator]

I had a chance to play with this today without the security device. It felt good in my hands and I was surprised how comfortable it felt with the slider open.

Here's a summary of my thoughts:

PROS

• The slider mechanism seems sturdy. No real wiggle or movement noticed.
• The screen looked great!
• The keyboard worked well. The key action was much better (looser) than my stiff 9700. From a guy coming from a 9000 before the 9700, that's saying a lot!

CONS

• My thumbs kept hitting the top part of the slider when I used the top keys on the physical keyboard. I don't have big hands. Just seems a bit cramped there.
• With the slider open, at times some tasks were cumbersome or at least "not as easy" as the same task being completed on the 9700. I don't know if this has to do with me not being used to the 9800 or not though.
• While a marked improvement, I was disappointed in the browser. It didn't reflow text for most pages (like Opera Mini does). Also, it hung just as long as the original browser for some sites. I'm wondering if this was a network thing or the browser itself.
• For the browser again, some of the links had to be touched twice to get them to start loading.
• Another browser item: For some sites, you had to wait for the entire page to load before you could start navigating through the page. This was rather annoying.
• Browser again. I wish there was a setting to force the browser to load full html pages. Most of the time I got the mobile version. While that works for some sites (Crackberry!) I want to see the full HTML for other sites.
• The virtual keyboard was ok. However, I'm not a fan of them anyway!

While I'm intrigued with the 9800, I think I will try the OS6 for my 9700. The first leaked release will be hitting my berry!

I hope my comments help someone.