Blackberry Mobiles
 

Has anyone had any experience with the new gen ones?

They apparently hook up with microsoft outlook ok now.

Battery life is much improved also.

Anyone had any good / bad experiences

Thanks

Brendon

Chris/STI Tuned is the man who can answer this.

Hey Brendan...

I'm using one at the moment & I'm pretty impressed. First off they look the biz (a first for BB), feels real nice in the hand & up to the ear (I was using a Kjam before that.. as a result I ended up with one huge bicep from lifting to my ear... that & the excessive wanking). They also have a very pretty screen, not sure of the specs but it looks good.

Because RIM's OS is java based you can customise a whole lot of shit in it. You can pick which icons you want on the screen & also what they display. For example a theme that I like is the today screen.. each icon has two entries below it. So from the home screen I can see my next two appointments as well as any unread emails or missed calls. A guy here has also just downloaded a comic book theme which has turned the whole thing into like a comic strip. So the battery icon & stuff are in one of those speach bubbles, very cool.. as soon as he can figure out what all the icons now mean.

It also has the camera, supports itunes, mp4's & all the other multimedia stuff that you'll find in nearly every other phone. The voice recognition stuff wasn't bad either, you don't have to add voice tags it just knows by the spelling how it should sound. But like all that voice stuff it's a bit of a wank & doesn't always work.

What I didn't like... The inbox view imo is shit, you can't distigush between email or sms. It also doesnt present them clearly, considering that's the things main task I would have thought that'd be better. My biggest gripe would be suretap.. which is BB's version of predictive text. On a BB you have 6 extra keys so each key has 1 or two letters. So you know how for the last 8 years you've been pressing the 2 key for the letters A/B/C, top middle... yeah well forget that shit, cuz it'll fk you up. Now A's over to the left & the shit's all over the place.. sorry but give me the 8250's predictive text or a full qwerty any day of the week.

There also seems to be a few little glitches with the sw, inc one nasty one with the caller not hearing you for the first 5 seconds. Happening all around the world & newer firmware seems to do the job.

As for outlook.. well all BB's have done a good job at syncing up with it. That's their main job so you won't have any problems with notes, tasks, memo, cal & address book. If your company has a BB server it'll do all that stuff in real time wirelessly.

Battery life for it is the worst of any blackberry, but that's to be expected with it's flashy size & screen. You get about two days or maybe a day & half with full on use.

The main problem is the cost of running the things. The cost of the device is good at around $600 but the ongoing cost is the kicker. It doesn't just do pop mail like your Nokia does, you need to subscribe for that which is around $30/40 a month for some carriers. That's just your email cost, no calls.

Alright.. there's a bit of food for thought.

[IMG]http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/nvgrfx/BBpearl.jpg[/IMG]
Blackberry Pearl (8100)

Thanks for that.

I was looking at the 8707 cause a couple of other people I have spoken to also had the shits on with the small keypad.

I am waiting to hear back how bad the data charges are on our mobile account. We have 60+ services so I am sure that I can lean on them a little.

Brendon

Ahhh the 8707.. the Optus ones ;)

Telstra does the 8700 which isn't a 3g phone (either 2100 or 850). They didn't release the 8707 since the pearl was right around the corner.

Saw the new replacement for the 8700 today... looks like a fatter version of the pearl with the full qwerty, wifi & some other nice features. Probably another 6 months away tho unfortunately.

Even tho your talking bout the 'berrys ... have you looked at the I-Mate JasJam (Next-G) i got one not long ago, i've had about 5 imate devices so far, and honestly can say this is the best yet, it doesn't have any of the sound clarity issues the older ones had, it's not sluggish like they used to be (i guess that doest also count on how many apps you have running at once) but it's got everything, full qwerty keyboard, 2mpixel camera, it's UMTS (HSPDA) which means basically CDMA coverage, but with ~1.8Mbit internet access (apparently moving to 3.6Mbit early this year ... and apparently later on 14.4Mbit) it's a pretty impressive unit, and i've got mine setup with an exchange server for push email, works flawlessly, i get my emails on my phone usualy before gmail notifier pops up with 'em . so i cant complain... but go have a look if you havnt had a look already, i've got a couple of my clients on them now they love 'em (and this is coming from your average business user who previously had nokias)

Cheers,

SiriX

The device I use as my every day'r is the K-Jam, (same as the Jas in every way except for HSPDA).

We also support Good mobile solutions which is an application based service similar to BB. I'm a fan of the Jam.. WM5 is real easy to use & the full qwerty means you can whip out some pretty quick msgs.

Being windows also allows you to run some cool apps like TomTom sat nav or games. Even has a terminal service app so I can access my home LAN anywhere (tho the screen is soo small it makes it pretty much useless). But like a PC it's only as good as the applications you run on it.


But all this coolness comes at a price.. size. Using the peal made me question if I needed all the stuff the jam has going on... I'd have to keep checking it was in my pocket since I was so use to the Jam weighing me down.

The pearl would be more expensive to run & harder to compose messages on... but it has definite sex appeal.

I guess this is sort of off-topic as they won't even be available in the states till mid year and god knows when down here...but the new apple iPhone just got announced. Looks interesting... [url]www.apple.com/iphone[/url]

iPhone looks nuts, but at US$600, it'll be pricey.