Blackberry anyone?

CJones

CJones

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Verizon is running a buy-one get-one on their Blackberry's right now.

Anyone have experience with them as a 'casual' non-business user? Any particular model to stay away from? My wife has gotten a wild hair that she wants one for some reason, and since they're b1g1, I might as well get one while we're at it. :D

Are they a direct competitor for the iPhone, or are they apples v. oranges in regards to their usage?

I'll be spending the summer (possibly longer if the summer goes well) in southwestern MN, which doesn't appear to be a hot spot for AT&T or I might actually consider looking into the iPhone (*GASP*!!)

EDIT: Actually, I must have misread the coverage maps earlier - it appears that Verizon doesn't cover SW MN very well, either.
 
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CJones said:
Verizon is running a buy-one get-one on their Blackberry's right now.

Anyone have experience with them as a 'casual' non-business user? Any particular model to stay away from? My wife has gotten a wild hair that she wants one for some reason, and since they're b1g1, I might as well get one while we're at it. :D

Are they a direct competitor for the iPhone, or are they apples v. oranges in regards to their usage?
I'm a bit of a Luddite (despite my title as Senior Engineer at Computer Sciences Corp -- go figure...).

Anyway, I reluctantly caved and got a BB Curve in October.

How did I do without this thing?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
My wife and I both have the Storm. It has a couple software bugs, but each time an update comes out it becomes worlds better. I much prefer the Storm over the iPhone. I have fat fingers, so with the iPhone/iTouch I tend to hit wrong keys and wrong links frequently, and I often manage to launch applications just picking the damned thing up. With the Storm, cheesy as it is, the clicking actually helps. Simply touching the screen only highlights a program/hot link, but doesn't actually execute anything until you click. That alone makes it worthwhile for me, but overall I just love the BB interface and as Dan said - I really don't know how I got along so long without it!
 
Android Based > Blackberry > iPhone > Windows Mobile

Some will claim preference, I claim usability.
 
I have a crackberry ... wish I still had my Palm Treo.
 
The quality of Blackberries has slid so bad that I'd put Treos far ahead of them. It's a shame. The old 6200 series you could throw across a parking lot and it would still work. Since they went to the trackball they are garbage. Our last contract renewal our first office went with 8800s and a year later the other went with Curves. We are lucky if we can get six months out of them without needing repair. Every month at least one is getting replaced. Trackballs not working, not charging, freezing and constant sync issues are the norm. That is when they aren't dropping calls. We replaced two with iPhones and have had zero problems.

Where they excel is email, but only when connected to a BES server. If you use POP or IMAP they work about as well as a Treo, just a little more polished. The OS is rather clunky compared to the Treo and not even in the same league as the iPhone. I never understood people wanting Blackberries for consumer use. They are one of those phones that has a lot of features but doesn't do any particularly well. It always feels like you are fighting it to get anything done. Nothing like the iPhone. After being a die hard Treo fan (PalmOS only, of course), I've gotta admit the iPhone is hands down the best device I've ever used.
 
Two different missions. In most ways the Blackberry isn't in the same league as the iPhone or Treo for non enterprise use. But you are on Verizon so your choices are limited.
 
alaskaflyer said:
But you are on Verizon so your choices are limited.
Click to expand...

I just saw an article stating that 1/3 of iPhone 3G buyers were new customers for AT&T.

Fully HALF of them came from Verizon. :yikes: And now, in the survey you take as a customer leaving Verizon, one of the six or seven options for "what could we have done to keep you as a subscriber?" question is "iPhone."

I'm kind of glad AT&T is sticking it to Verizon on this, because Verizon has always been such a pain about disabling cool features on their phones. That's why I left after 8 years as an otherwise very satisfied customer (I had a Sony Ericsson phone with AT&T between then and when the iPhone came out). Verizon customers even filed suit against them at one point over disabling phone features, and Verizon's head-in-the-sand response was "our customers have told us they don't want those features." Hah! That's why they're suing you, idiots. :rolleyes: So, I'm kind of glad it came back to bite them in the butt. :P to you, VZW. :devil:
 
I have the Blackberry Curve with Verizon. I use it for both personal and work related stuff, and have the unlimited data plan. Not as intuitive as the iPhone, but I like it and it gets the job done. Plus my boss at work can reach me real quick by e-mail. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing...

Coverage around here is really good since it's a well populated area.
 
I picked up a clean (Verizon) Treo 700P off E-bay, complete with CD's Cables and a good battery and three new stylii (sp?) for $69. I really like it. There is a ton of freeware for it at freewarepalm.com.
 
SkyHog said:
Android Based > Blackberry > iPhone > Windows Mobile

Some will claim preference, I claim usability.
Click to expand...

Almost agree, although I have experience with the Treo and not anything Android. So my progression would go:

Blackberry > Palm OS-based Treos anything > iPhone > Windows Mobile
 
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SkyHog said:
Android Based > Blackberry > iPhone > Windows Mobile

Some will claim preference, I claim usability.
Click to expand...
I have not had a chance to use Android yet. I do agree that Windows mobile really blows!! That is what I am using now. But I did like the iPhone UI better than Blackberry.

iPhone > Blackberry > Windows


Android Based ???

Isn't the PalmOS a dead end? There is no next step and they are going to be Android based?
 
I've had my iPhone for 6 months now. Before that, I had some blackberrys, palm pilots, etc. I'd say that for really serious business applications in an environment where you need to be able to use all of MS Exchange's features, the iPhone has a ways to go. But for anything else, I vastly prefer the iPhone. I don't think the others are even on the same level....
 
smigaldi said:
I have not had a chance to use Android yet. I do agree that Windows mobile really blows!! That is what I am using now. But I did like the iPhone UI better than Blackberry.

iPhone > Blackberry > Windows


Android Based ???

Isn't the PalmOS a dead end? There is no next step and they are going to be Android based?
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Android Based = There is no phone called "Android" its just the OS. Same as "Windows Mobile Based Phone"

Now - if you like the iPhone, you'll love the G1, since its better than the iPhone. :D
 
You really can't compare an iPhone to a BlackBerry. They aren't the same beast..at all.

Both the G1 and iPhone are decent products.
 
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smigaldi said:
I was using a phone, Nokia, with Symbian OS on it a few weeks ago. Very nice OS from what I saw.
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Yes, but Symbian is a major hassle for developers. Android / iPhone are much better and will get the developers.
 
My last 3 phones have been Blackberries. The current phone is a Blackberry Pearl 8100 (the small form factor one) on the AT&T Edge network and I have a love/hate relationship with it.

The call quality is good, better than earlier generation Blackberries. The Bluetooth pairs well with my car audio system for speakerphone and my laptop computer (for tethered modem purposes).

It syncs with my work email and MS-Outlook contacts/calendar perfectly.

The web browser is ok, but given the small screen and Edge data rates, surfing the web is do-able but tedious. For web-browsing, it is a far cry from an iPhone.

I find the key-sharing keyboard woefully inadequate for sending work emails. I suppose it is better than text messaging, but whenever I have to type more than a few words, I pine for a Qwerty keyboard.

Ultimately, for a BB, the form factor is tough to beat, so I have kept it for over a year now and am unlikely to replace it until it breaks.

-Nathan



CJones said:
Verizon is running a buy-one get-one on their Blackberry's right now.

Anyone have experience with them as a 'casual' non-business user? Any particular model to stay away from?
Click to expand...
 
jesse said:
Yes, but Symbian is a major hassle for developers. Android / iPhone are much better and will get the developers.
Click to expand...
Way less of a hassle the Windows mobile. Also a lot easier to deal with if you actually own the company. Nokia is the big owner of Symbian now. Hence their commtiment to the OS. It is going to be interesting to watch what happens with Android coming on the market.
 
I've got two. One is the company SPRINT blackberry world edition (8830) and my personal Verizon Storm (9530). I like them both. My personal has an unlimited data plan. The browser works as a blackberry browser, IE, or Firefox. Both work well with email; the company on a BES; the storm on the blackberry net.
I replaced a win 5 mobile with the storm. Wouldn't think about going back. Replaced a NEXTEL 870i with the world edition. No contest there either.
 
smigaldi said:
No kidding Nick. :rolleyes:

That is probably why I did not call it a phone but instead used the word 'based'. Like you used in your example.
Click to expand...

Oh, with the question marks, I thought you were asking what "Android Based" meant.
 
SkyHog said:
Oh, with the question marks, I thought you were asking what "Android Based" meant.
Click to expand...
Ah ok. I thought you were just messing with me!

We had a failure to communicate, mostly form my shorthand, mea culpa. I just meant I had not had a chance to use an Android based phone yet.
 
smigaldi said:
Way less of a hassle the Windows mobile. Also a lot easier to deal with if you actually own the company. Nokia is the big owner of Symbian now. Hence their commtiment to the OS. It is going to be interesting to watch what happens with Android coming on the market.
Click to expand...

No..Symbian is crap. I'm sorry. It just is. I have *NEVER* heard a developer say otherwise.

They trashed the C++ language, they removed exceptions and came up with some crap called Leaves. Exceptions are what make C++ what it is. If you run into an exception, all the memory and resources for the object are released and released in the correct order.

In Symbian when you error with a leave..that is all that happens. The object and its resources will remain in memory and leak..and somehow you need to clean this up and keep track of everything.

C++ is nice because it comes with some good libraries that were well thought out. Well, this is all screwed up, because you don't have exceptions.

You don't have strings in Symbian. It's a major pain in the ass and its confusing as hell to make sense of it. In C++ you have the string class, which of course, doesn't exist in Symbian.

The development environment is seriously lacking and a hassle to make work. The APIs make no sense and change constantly. Symbian blows and there are few people out there, even Nokia, that say otherwise.

Symbian is not going to take out the market--there isn't a developer that is going to choose it when they've got Android or the iPhone..both of which..are nice to develop on.

Symbian is an operating system that might have sort of made sense in 1990 with real limited hardware. Lots of shortcuts were taken do to hardware limitations on mobile phones. This isn't the case anymore and the operating system just isn't up to the task. Rolling another operating system, new APIs, etc is a hell of a lot of work.
 
jesse said:
No..Symbian is crap. I'm sorry. It just is. I have *NEVER* heard a developer say otherwise.

They trashed the C++ language, they removed exceptions and came up with some crap called Leaves. Exceptions are what make C++ what it is. If you run into an exception, all the memory and resources for the object are released and released in the correct order.

In Symbian when you error with a leave..that is all that happens. The object and its resources will remain in memory and leak..and somehow you need to clean this up and keep track of everything.

C++ is nice because it comes with some good libraries that were well thought out. Well, this is all screwed up, because you don't have exceptions.

You don't have strings in Symbian. It's a major pain in the ass and its confusing as hell to make sense of it. In C++ you have the string class, which of course, doesn't exist in Symbian.

The development environment is seriously lacking and a hassle to make work. The APIs make no sense and change constantly. Symbian blows and there are few people out there, even Nokia, that say otherwise.

Symbian is not going to take out the market--there isn't a developer that is going to choose it when they've got Android or the iPhone..both of which..are nice to develop on.

Symbian is an operating system that might have sort of made sense in 1990 with real limited hardware. Lots of shortcuts were taken do to hardware limitations on mobile phones. This isn't the case anymore and the operating system just isn't up to the task. Rolling another operating system, new APIs, etc is a hell of a lot of work.
Click to expand...

Plus its Nokia technology, which is huge outside the US.

Here in the US, people are starting to see Nokia for the pieces of dung they make.

And yes, I have played with the European models, and no, they didn't change my opinion of their company.
 
jesse said:
Yes, but Symbian is a major hassle for developers. Android / iPhone are much better and will get the developers.
Click to expand...

As a mobile app developer, I can confirm the hassle with Symbian. The problem with iPhone development is it requires a Mac. That's great if you already have one, but if you're a small developer without a Mac, you have to consider the return on investment of significant money for a Mac (new or used) just to develop and sell apps on the iPhone. As an independent, it so far has not proved worth the investment for me.

Too bad. All they'd have to do is port Cocoa/X-Code to Windows to really blow the doors off the custom Mac/iPhone/iPod Touch app market.
 
I like that so far no one has mentioned BREW. It sounds like that was a complete dud! The only place I know that has any significant BREW apps is over in Japan on the KDDI network.
 
TknoFlyer said:
As a mobile app developer, I can confirm the hassle with Symbian. The problem with iPhone development is it requires a Mac. That's great if you already have one, but if you're a small developer without a Mac, you have to consider the return on investment of significant money for a Mac (new or used) just to develop and sell apps on the iPhone. As an independent, it so far has not proved worth the investment for me.

Too bad. All they'd have to do is port Cocoa/X-Code to Windows to really blow the doors off the custom Mac/iPhone/iPod Touch app market.
Click to expand...

If a $600 cost of entry is too much for you--your app really didn't have that much of a future. Developing on Symbian, with limited users in the U.S for "smart apps", taking twice the time, while having less capability, makes little sense.

I'd suggest either the iPhone or Android..both are good platforms..and both ahve decent futures.
 
jesse said:
If a $600 cost of entry is too much for you--your app really didn't have that much of a future.
Click to expand...

Ouch. It may be surprising to iPhone users, but only a very small percentage of my users have even mentioned wanting an iPhone port.
 
TknoFlyer said:
Ouch. It may be surprising to iPhone users, but only a very small percentage of my users have even mentioned wanting an iPhone port.
Click to expand...
That's because there are already equivalent iPhone applications that are pretty damn cool---and I suspect--have a larger market share. Why would they ask you to port your Windows Mobile app? They're Windows mobile users. An iPhone user isn't going to go looking for a Windows Mobile developer to write an app that already exists.

Which app of yours runs on Symbian?
 
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jesse said:
That's because there are already equivalent iPhone applications that are pretty damn cool---and I suspect--have a larger market share. Why would they ask you to port your Windows Mobile app? They're Windows mobile users. An iPhone user isn't going to go looking for a Windows Mobile developer to write an app that already exists.
Click to expand...

That may be. I certainly don't have the budget to challenge, say, Microsoft or even Apple. My point is Apple's forcing mobile developers to buy Macs is probably hurting their market. Sure, the big shops will be able to afford a few, but "mom & pop" shops like me are less likely to see the ROI and small shops can't chase every cool new tech.

Still, there have been queries about an iPhone port so it's obvious some folks look beyond the iPhone AppStore for software that might fit their needs.

Which app of yours runs on Symbian?
Click to expand...
None of my current ones.
 
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smigaldi said:
Isn't the PalmOS a dead end? There is no next step and they are going to be Android based?
Click to expand...

Well, yes. Kinda. But it's being replaced with another Palm-developed OS... The Palm Pre is going to run the new "Palm webOS". It's not a derivative of the old PalmOS (it's Linux based, apparently) though it'll contain similar-looking PIM applications.
 
jesse said:
Can you point me to the link to download the Mac version of Microsoft Visual Studio???
Click to expand...

Not beyond the link to BootCamp, but you already knew that and were just trying to be clever.

However, here are two links worthy of note. First, here is one of several surveys and trendwatchers suggesting WinMobile and iPhone both taking a significant backseat to Symbian and Android:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/03/smartphones_set.html

Here is one demonstrating how a smartphone SDK should be packaged - with kits for all major operating systems:
http://d.android.com/sdk/1.1_r1/index.html

It's also possible to develop for Symbian on Mac and Linux though Symbian realizes the vast market share enjoyed by Windows on development workstations.

I'm not arguing for Windows over Mac. I'm suggesting phone OS providers (like Microsoft and Apple) would do themselves a greater service by providing SDKs and other development tools that operate on a range of desktop OSs.
 
smigaldi said:
Side track. I have been hearing that bootcamp has fallen out of favor and that Parallels is far better. I know a little of parallels but have not used it to do any real work. Anyone using it and have an opinion?
Click to expand...

Parallels is payware.

Virtualbox is freeware. And better.
 
smigaldi said:
Side track. I have been hearing that bootcamp has fallen out of favor and that Parallels is far better. I know a little of parallels but have not used it to do any real work. Anyone using it and have an opinion?
Click to expand...
Far better for what? Every time Parallels puts out another build they fix one bug and create two more. For the odd stupid little Windows app I might need I use Crossover. If it's bigger and needs hardware access and stability, like a GPS updater, I'll stick with bootcamp. Parallels also has a habit of randomly corrupting your Windows installation. One thing that drives me nuts is how the caps lock can get out of sync. If you shut down Parallels with the caps lock on, then start it again with the cap lock off, the key will be reversed.
 
TknoFlyer said:
Not beyond the link to BootCamp, but you already knew that and were just trying to be clever.
Click to expand...
Okay. So you're telling me that I have to pay for Windows and who knows what else to develop for Windows Mobile?

Why exactly is Apple so evil for having you pay for Mac OS? iPhone development is tightly integrated with Xcode which is a really nice environment. Re-writing that to a Windows version would be a *HELL* of a project.

TknoFlyer said:
Here is one demonstrating how a smartphone SDK should be packaged - with kits for all major operating systems:
http://d.android.com/sdk/1.1_r1/index.html
Click to expand...
Sure--and the only reason that exists--is because they're using Java and they were able to take Eclipse which was already written for all the operating systems. Google didn't build that out.

Once again, Google is using Java, the tools already existed.
TknoFlyer said:
It's also possible to develop for Symbian on Mac and Linux though Symbian realizes the vast market share enjoyed by Windows on development workstations.
Click to expand...
Sure you can develop for Symbian on several operating systems but that is just because their tools suck terribly bad. The reason Apple is enjoying so much success right now is because they have a really great development environment, with a great language, that allows for rapid deveploment. Not a single one of these developers is going to jump ship to Symbian--nor will Android developers.
TknoFlyer said:
I'm not arguing for Windows over Mac. I'm suggesting phone OS providers (like Microsoft and Apple) would do themselves a greater service by providing SDKs and other development tools that operate on a range of desktop OSs.
Click to expand...
I agree--at the same time--that creates a lot of complication. The development environments, for example, Xcode tightly integrate into the operating system and use a lot of the Mac OS libraries. Re-writing all of this to work on Windows would be a hell of a project and would only slow the Mac development.
 
smigaldi said:
Side track. I have been hearing that bootcamp has fallen out of favor and that Parallels is far better. I know a little of parallels but have not used it to do any real work. Anyone using it and have an opinion?
Click to expand...

Scott--

The important thing to understand is the technological difference between the two. If you're running Windows in Vmware Fusion, Paralles, or VirtualBox on a Mac you're running Windows in a virtual machine. The advantage is you can run both operating systems at the same time. The disadvantage is that the Windows box is in a virtual machine and is slower.

When you run Windows in Bootcamp you are rebooting your Mac *INTO* the native Windows operating system. At this level it is running exactly like a normal PC and does not suffer any performance consequences.

It mostly depends on what you need Windows for. If you need it for something quick where performance isn't a big deal (not trying to play a game) the virtual machine is by far easier and more convienant. If the virtual machine isn't working for you then you boot into native Windows via Bootcamp.

I installed Windows on Bootcamp on my Mac about a year ago. I booted into it once--to test it. I also have Windows installed in Vmware Fusion on my Mac--I boot that about once every 6 months when I really need Microsoft Outlook.
 
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