Barack Obama looks likely to win his battle to keep his beloved BlackBerry smartphone, when he goes inside the White House bubble.

The President-elect, the world's highest profile "Crackberry addict", has used the cellphone as his connection to the outside world and has been strongly resisting the advice of security staff and administrators to hand it in.

He would be the first president to have his own personal device and use e-mail routinely.

Mr Obama said in a CNN interview. "I think we're going to be able to hang onto one of these. I want to be able to have voices, other than the people who are immediately working for me, be able to reach out and — and send me a message about what's happening in America."

A final decision had yet to be made, according to a transition spokeswoman. The new administration has to iron out problems surrounding the security of the handheld device and how e-mails and other messages would fit into public record laws.

Mr Obama is widely touted as the first "wired" President of the United States, keen to use technology to communicate directly with the American people. "Obama 2.0" has more than 1 million MySpace "friends", 3.7 million Facebook supporters and a YouTube channel. He has posted weekly video addresses as president-elect as part of his change.gov website which is poised to become WhiteHouse.gov tomorrow.

Change.gov issued an online interactive Citizen's Briefing Book to put ideas in front of the president after his inauguration. More than half a million people voted on tens of thousands of suggestions put forward by 70,000 people.

Mr Obams told CNN that the BlackBerry was "just one tool among a number of tools that I'm trying to use, to break out of the bubble. To make sure that people can still reach me. But if I'm doing something stupid, somebody in Chicago can send me an e-mail and say, 'What are you doing?'"

It is unclear if Mr Obama's BlackBerry messages would be public under the Presidential Records Act, which requires the National Archives to preserve e-mail and other records, if he were to use the device only for personal communications.

"If the president were using a BlackBerry, the requirement would be that we be able to store those messages and retain them for future use," Sharon Fawcett, director of presidential libraries at the National Archives, said.

But she said: "If the president is e-mailing his wife about what time he'll be home for dinner or checking on when the girls' play is at Sidwell Friends and whether or not he's going to be going, those are not constitutional and statutory business of the president. Those are personal messages, so we wouldn't have that." President Bush gave up e-mailing because of the potential for embarrassment from personal messages.

Mr Obama is often seen checking his e-mail on his handheld device.

Over the summer, he was seen reading his BlackBerry while watching his daughter's soccer game, only to have Michelle Obama slap at his hands, prompting him to return the device to its holster. The president-elect's unofficial endorsement of the brand is calculated by marketing experts to be worth up to $50 million.

Mr Obama is aware of the possibility that hackers - and foreign security services - would target any device used by the president. He told CNN: "Now, my working assumption, and this is not new, is that everything I write on e-mail could end up being on CNN. So I make sure to — to think before I press 'send.'"

Research In Motion, the Canadian makers of BlackBerry smartphones, has a good reputation for its proprietary encryption software. The phones, such as the BlackBerry Bold, are a favourite among business users.

But it is thought the technology does not meet the highest standards of the Secret Services.

The technology community has speculated that the president could be forced to hand in the BlackBerry and use a customised handset similar to devices sanctioned as secure enough to handle even classified documents, e-mail, and web browsing. BlackBerrys can become infected with viruses that install spyware and e-mail and text messages can be intercepted. There is also the risk of someone tracking the coordinates of a BlackBerry through the device's built-in GPS or the carrier's ability to triangulate on the signal.

The Sectera Edge, made by General Dynamics, is a combination phone-PDA certified by the National Security Agency. It was developed under a Defense Department project called SME-PED or Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device, according to the pocketnow.com website.

But some have pointed out that while it may be secure, it is a chunky "brick" of a phone, with a less attractive user interface and operating system. It can, however, survive repeated four-foot drops onto concrete. Mr Obama dropped his BlackBerry last Friday onto an airport tarmac and it broke apart. A Secret Service agent hustled to pick it up. It still works apparently.

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