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Blackberry Cellphones

Hands-On Look At the BlackBerry Storm 2 213

Barence writes "PC Pro has had time to play with the new BlackBerry Storm 2, and came away impressed. The new touch system garners the most praise, doing away with the mechanical click screen of the original Storm — the new screen gives a kind of localised haptic feedback which 'feels just like clicking a button.' The phone, announced today, also includes Wi-Fi, BlackBerry OS 5, and increased storage, so it's looking an enticing prospect. After the disappointment of the Palm Pre, could this be the smartphone to beat?"
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Hands-On Look At the BlackBerry Storm 2

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  • LOL (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Captain Splendid ( 673276 ) <`capsplendid' `at' `gmail.com'> on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:02AM (#29757609) Homepage Journal
    After the disappointment of the Palm Pre, could this be the smartphone to beat?"

    Um, yeah, let's not mention the elephant in the room, shall we?
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      I think it is understood in the reading that the iPhone is the smartphone to beat, it was very clear to me that they were referring to the promises made by Palm to unseat the iPhone from its iThrone around its release, and musing as to whether or not the Storm 2 has what it takes.
      • So this is the phone to beat, the phone to beat.

    • Re:LOL (Score:5, Funny)

      by mvdwege ( 243851 ) <mvdwege@mail.com> on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:32AM (#29758009) Homepage Journal

      It will indeed take some time to beat Nokia.

      Mart

    • Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shane112358 ( 1532293 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:35AM (#29758057)
      The Palm Pre was certainly only a disappointment to those people who expected it to be the second coming of Jesus or to overtake the iPhone within months of release. I have a Pre and it is the best phone I have ever owned. The OS is top notch. The hardware isn't perfect but neither was the iPhone when it came out. As someone else said, the problem is that you need to compete with the ecology of Apple - not just the h/w or s/w. So even if all the small shortcomings of WebOS are addressed, and the next Pre has none of the h/w issues of the first, and it's very popular - it still doesn't mean that it will "kill" the iPhone. It will take a while - at least a year or so - for the iPhone to be dethroned by any competing architecture. It will happen, for sure. Whether it's one year or ten years from now is up to Apple, their competitors, and shear luck.
      • It will take a while - at least a year or so - for the iPhone to be dethroned by any competing architecture. It will happen, for sure. Whether it's one year or ten years from now is up to Apple, their competitors, and shear luck.

        So you're saying that a new RAZR will kill the iPhone? Inconceivable!

      • I don't agree with the zero sum mentality of the X-killer remarks. Absolute dominance of a market is not necessarily a good thing, nor is a limited number of strong competitors necessarily a bad thing for them.

        I used to work for a company who made a specialized line of "supercomputers". We had about half a dozen competitors when I started there. One by one, our rivals went belly-up. Each time that happened, the CEO would throw a party (free beer!) and hold a mock funeral for the deceased firm. This always

    • Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Monkey ( 795756 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:43AM (#29758167)
      Yeah, let's not talk about Android. Actualy the way I cut up phone users by what they do with their phone:

      1) Cell Phones: people who make calls and take some pictures (aka my mom and dad)

      2) Cell Phones with Keyboards, text heavy IM users who make calls, (aka me, my wife, ect).

      3) Smart Phones: Appointments, e-mail, text msgs, perhaps twiter, and phone calls (My boss and his blackberry buddies)

      4) The iPhone: People who mostly use internet access and send messages.

      And on a related note, I was out for pizza the other night and counted over 10 iPhones. The reason they were so easy to spot was that people who had them were face to the phone and not talking for most of the night. Once it was the joke that Nerds would prefer to IM than talk, but in the collage/partying side of the restaurant it was all nose to phone, and in the back their was a Magic the Gathering group that was laughing and talking and interacting with each-other. Perhaps the next joke will be that every one likes IM and txt better, but nerds are trying to be all smart practice using their vocabulary and talk face to face.

      • by imamac ( 1083405 )
        Hm. I'm in 3 & 4 as are many others I know. Your assumption that they are separate is incorrect. The iPhone is a smart phone.
        • Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Monkey ( 795756 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @11:05AM (#29758493)
          I state them as separate because the people I know with iPhones use them differently than other smart phone users. I have had some one hand me their iPhone with a map loaded to show me how to get to a restaurant, something normally done verbally or with a quick sketch. I know iPhone users who keep their complete photo collection on their phone, most people use the phone to hold snapshots only. A friend of mine uses his iPhone to watch movies, no other smart phone user I know keeps movies with him. The iPhone is, in my opinion, a portable media computer with phone functionality. The first real attempt to make a Tricorder prehaps, but the difference between an iPhone and the average smart phone is as great as the difference between the average smart phone and my moms cell phone without a camera.
          • I can't dispute you on usage, and not on why many people have bought the iPhone. Hell, I only bought a phone after I learned I would be able to get on the internet with one. The iPhone was the answer to everything I wanted with features like Google Maps. I and many other photographers I know also looked at the iPhone primarily because we could keep our photos on it and show them off. Now we have our portfolio everywhere we go to show people. While on the bus, I read the internet and watch video. The questio
      • I just realized I went off on a tangent and didn't finish up my point. The iPhone is not, in my opinion, a smart phone, and so to de-iThrone the iPhone it will take something that isn't a smart phone, but something new and never thought of before. My bet is on some slick hardware running Android, as it is the most flexible combination I can think of right now. Perhaps something from Arochs.
  • by swb ( 14022 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:04AM (#29757627)

    If there was more direct data in/out to the device, versus "securely" routing everything through RIM. That model seems like it makes sense in a 1999 way, but now it just makes it awkward to use them outside of a BES environment.

    The iPhone may be a closed platform, but at least data I/O isn't forced through Apple's servers.

    • by loftwyr ( 36717 )
      Neither is the Palm Pre's It syncs directly to the server you want (EAS and others)
    • Generally, the entire point of a blackberry is going to be the BES or BIS. Why on earth would you get one if you arent using those? It doesnt support activesync, even!
      • by tweek ( 18111 )

        That's the point though. What's the point of adding Wifi to the Storm 2? Nothing will really take advantage of it. Why does the BB *HAVE* to use a BIS in this day and age? I can SOMEWHAT understand BES but honestly with ActiveSync and EWS, there's no point to BES anymore.

        The biggest reason I like my Storm is the feedback I get from the screen while typing. But that's slowly becoming less of a reason for me to keep it.

        • I can SOMEWHAT understand BES but honestly with ActiveSync and EWS, there's no point to BES anymore.

          Does Activesync let your IT department control whether you can use your phone's camera, or reply to text messages? Does it let them require you to use a password on the device, or wipe its data remotely if it's lost or stolen?

          A lot of what BlackBerry has going for it is not consumer-oriented, but plays well with businesses. BlackBerry trying to compete with the iPhone seems a bit misguided, to me. But since

    • by tweek ( 18111 )

      This is the biggest thing I've come to hate about my Storm (and the Storm 2). ANY push functionality has to go via RIM. The wifi is next to pointless on the Storm 2 the more that I look at it because I can't DO anything with it other than browse the web faster than over 3G. Oh Podtrapper will get my podcasts faster too. Whoop dee!

      I was strongly considering upgrade my Storm to the Storm 2 but I think I may hold off until Verizon gets the Wifi android phone next year. The whole BIS/BES + your PIN/physical pho

      • by Space ( 13455 )

        The current rumors are that Verizon will have a Motorola Android phone on Oct 30. The latest rumored date is Dec 1.

        • by tweek ( 18111 )

          Unfortunately that's not a wifi model. The last I read was that a WiFi android phone would be hitting verizon Q1 next year.

  • by toppavak ( 943659 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:06AM (#29757637)
    I was under the impression that the problem most users have with touchscreens isn't feedback after clicking, but before. I can touch-type on my blackberry, which lets me go a lot faster than on smooth touchscreens because I can tell my finger is on the right button by feel.
    • by Anonymusing ( 1450747 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:18AM (#29757823)

      I am so used to the iPhone "keyboard" now that I can essentially touch-type. Sometimes I fat-finger it and hit the wrong key, but the correction feature is pretty good about that. I'm not saying the iPhone is better or worse than other smartphones; merely, it's what I have now, and the typing does not feel much different than when I had a Blackberry.

      FWIW, I type roughly 85 words a minute on a full-size keyboard (with 95% accuracy).

      • by bluesky74656 ( 625291 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:46AM (#29758207) Homepage Journal

        I think there's something to the fact that the iPhone's auto-correction is more suited to a touchscreen than the Blackberry's. I've found that while the Blackberry's spell-check is very good for people who sometimes make spelling errors, the iPhone's is much better about fixing fat-finger syndrome.

        I would almost be tempted to say that the iPhone's spell-check puts more weight on where keys are located, while the Blackberry's is more of a straight dictionary search

        • would almost be tempted to say that the iPhone's spell-check puts more weight on where keys are located, while the Blackberry's is more of a straight dictionary search

          I think that's true -- probably one of the better insights of Apple's approach. This may explain why there are times I misspell a word out of ignorance, and it won't correct it, because it's not due to incorrect keystrikes.

      • I agree...the iPhone keypad has always been good for me. But I understand people who can type while walking or looking elsewhere...it's tough to do on a flat screen where you can't feel the keys. When I'm driving and texting, I always make certain to keep my eyes fixed firmly on the iPhone screen, because the auto-correct is good, but why take the risk your email might have a misspelled word? (sar-cas-m)

        • "Don't drink and drive. You might hit a bump and spill your drink."

          But, about the iPhone keyboard: my point is that I'm familiar enough with its layout that I can type without looking at it, as long as I'm holding the thing in the proper way.

      • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

        Wow, you can type on the iPhone's screen as if you had tactile feedback, without looking at it? Impressive.

        • Consider it "virtual touch-typing" -- I know where the keys are, relative to my hands' position on the device, so I can just type without looking. Similar to what I do on a physical keyboard.
        • by kurthr ( 30155 )

          Yeah... how else am I supposed to SMS while driving? ;^)

  • by nweaver ( 113078 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:09AM (#29757673) Homepage

    To quote MonkeyBoy, err, Steve Ballmer...

    This is why the iPhone has become so entrenched, it has the developers. Its not just a matter of building hardware that matches Apple, you now have to build an ecology to match Apple.

    Which is very hard: . Look at the MP3 player market. People have made plenty of players better than the iPod-of-the-time, but Apple has the ecology annd is now hard to displace.

    • Funilly enough, no-one I know has an iPod, or any other Apple-based MP3 Player. I use my phone (A non-smart phone too) as an MP3 player, as do most of my friends. Of those that do have an MP3 Player, they've got ones of a variety of brands. It's quite possible that Apples market-share is over-inflated in some peoples minds, either that or it's under-inflated in my mind.

      • It's quite possible that Apples market-share is over-inflated in some peoples minds, either that or it's under-inflated in my mind.

        Since market studies show it as 73% of the music player market, it may well be the latter. Of course that does not count cell phone sales. Apple sells about 10 million ipods a quarter and there are about 30 million cell phone sales, a subset of which are music players and about 4 million of which are iPhones. So if we combine the markets, Apple sells about 14 million of the 43 million combined phone and music player market. So (roughly) better than 1 in 4 music playing devices in use is an Apple device. If

      • Funilly enough, no-one I know has an iPod, or any other Apple-based MP3 Player.

        Most of the people I know have an iPod of some form of another, from the old Nano up to the new iTouch. Personally, I have an old-school 20 gig iPod with the scrollwheel and black/white screen that lives in my car serving as a way to feed my stereo with all my music. I also have an iPhone that I'll keep a few favorite albums on, but mostly I use it to podcast these days while at work.

    • To quote MonkeyBoy, err, Steve Ballmer...

      This is why the iPhone has become so entrenched, it has the developers. Its not just a matter of building hardware that matches Apple, you now have to build an ecology to match Apple.

      Also why it was absolutely brilliant to not allow flash, java, etc programming on the iPhone. All those developers now have skills which translate more or less easily to mac development.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mafian911 ( 1270834 )
      I agree completely. To me, the blackberry is a bit of a relic. They can dress up blackberry's with new tech and a fancy new OS, but I have to say, the developer experience remains horrible. I'm surprised that Blackberry still has the reputation it has, to be honest. They may have been the first "cool" smartphone, but they can't ride that wave forever. If they want to continue to be a player in the smartphone market, they may need to reconsider their content strategy. I suppose they can survive by holding t
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 7-Vodka ( 195504 )
      Oh yeah, Apple is so entrenched in the smartphone market they're almost a monopoly!!11!!

      data [mactropolis.com]

    • Nicholas - you're a smarter guy than I'll ever be but on this you're wrong. It's the hardware - it's sexy. It's thin, almost all screen, and all touch.
  • From my cold dead hands! I love my Storm 1.

    Oh, and might I add: You damn, dirty apes!

  • Palm Pre (Score:2, Informative)

    by bbroerman ( 715822 )
    To me, the only disappointment in the Palm Pre is SPRINT!
    • They may not have a huge network, but where I'm at it's identical to my old Verizon outfit. In fact, I'd argue that since I'm paying just a little over 50USD for unlimited data, unlimited mobile-to-mobile (regardless of carrier), unlimited text messages and 200% more minutes I'm doing pretty damn good.

  • by brennanw ( 5761 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:24AM (#29757905) Homepage Journal

    ... I know exactly what you're talking about! After buying my Pre, I found that:

      - I didn't immediately lose weight
      - I still had to wear glasses
      - the damage to my hearing (after 20 years of listening to good music) wasn't repaired
      - my credit limit wasn't raised, and my day-to-day living expenses weren't reduced

    Sure, overall it's a great phone, as far as portable phones that store important information, take pictures, play music and access the internet go, but those four points stick in my craw. Fail!

  • ... they need to release it on a more relevant network. Just because Verizon claims to have the most subscribers in the US doesn't mean its a relevant market for blackberry phones. In particular the fact that Verizon is still clinging to old network technology makes it a bit of a burden for phone deployment in corporate environments. GSM networks are head and shoulders above the Verizon network in speed of phone deployment.

    If an employee drops their phone and needs to replace it ASAP, someone in the company can pull the SIM card, put it into a new phone, and the employee is back to work with minimal downtime - unless you're on a non-GSM carrier in which case you need to have the magic store deactivate the old phone, sell you a new phone, activate it, etc...

    If RIM doesn't realize that their terrible choice of carrier (on an exclusive deal no less) was a big part of the lack of success in the first generation storm, then they need to have their heads examined. Release the new phone on a modern GSM network and we'll see how it really fares.
    • by cabjf ( 710106 )
      The Storm doesn't seem to be a business centric phone like the rest of the Blackberries. So having it on a carrier without SIM cards isn't that big of an issue. Besides, there are probably plenty of people on the Verizon network (most subscribers in the US, like you said) just waiting for a decent smartphone to be available on Verizon's network. It really doesn't sound that complicated on a non-GSM carrier. You still need to obtain a new phone from somewhere, even if you have a SIM card.
    • by seanmeister ( 156224 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:48AM (#29758251)
      You can bash VZW's CDMA network all you want, but as long as they keep giving me 4 bars of EVDO goodness out here in the desert in rural southwestern New Mexico, they'll get nothing but love from me :)
    • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Apparently you're not from the midwest. The Blackberry smartphones have been incredibly popular out here in Verizonland - if, for no other reason, than there are no other smartphones worth half a damn available.

      With Verizon bandwidth fees and quality of service/bandwidth throughput, you're not going to be able to use an iPhone or WinMo phone anyway...

    • This is a relevant complaint, except in the case of Verizon it takes a 90 second phone call to support (or use of an automated tool) in order to change phones. As long as the new phone is compatible with the network, they will switch it over no questions asked. Your hyperbole about how much easier this is to accomplish with a GSM SIM card is pretty, well, hyperbolic. You may have had a point if you told us that contact lists in non-SIM enabled phones are harder to transfer, but again there are several to

      • it takes a 90 second phone call to support

        they will switch it over

        several tools thanks to Verizon

        Sure, the Verizon network is happy to take your money and switch your phone for you. But that is not convenient in a multiuser corporate environment where there may be many business issued phones that need to be available constantly for traveling employees.

        And if you are an individual user on the Verizon network, and you just broke your phone and need a cheap replacement, what can you do? Nothing. You get to go dish out full price for a new phone to Verizon because there is virtually no market for use

    • by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      "If an employee drops their phone and needs to replace it ASAP, someone in the company can pull the SIM card, put it into a new phone, and the employee is back to work with minimal downtime - unless you're on a non-GSM carrier in which case you need to have the magic store deactivate the old phone, sell you a new phone, activate it, etc..."
      If the SIM is from the same carrier or if the phone is "unlocked".
      CDMA is a better technology than GSM. In fact the new high speed GSM modes are based on ... CDMA.
      Verizon

    • by rsborg ( 111459 )

      If an employee drops their phone and needs to replace it ASAP, someone in the company can pull the SIM card, put it into a new phone, and the employee is back to work with minimal downtime

      Try this with the iPhone... it is a GSM phone but this does not work (you need to call the carrier). This is relevant as the new blackberry is trying to compete with the iPhone. In fact, SIM locking is very common in the US and not limited to the iPhone (though the iPhone has the most restrictive implementation).

  • by m0s3m8n ( 1335861 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:30AM (#29757981)
    As a former Storm owner I think RIM has gone a long way to fixing several of the idiotic design choices (compromises) in the Storm Mk1. I never had a problem with the click screen after applying some recommended fixes. I hope the build quality had been improved as I went through 4 phones before giving up. Probably the biggest issue I had with the phone (as a smartphone) was the terrible memory management. Blackberry, while they advertize several gigs of internal storage, use a small dedicated memory pool for the OS, program storage, and data (email) storage. On the original that was 128 MB. Just turning the phone on dropped that to 50 MB usable and after loading several apps, it would drop to 10-20. At that level the phone became very sluggish. And the OS have a propensity to leak memory so that as the day went on your usable memory level would continue to fall to the point where you had to pull the battery to reset the phone.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      And the OS have a propensity to leak memory so that as the day went on your usable memory level would continue to fall to the point where you had to pull the battery to reset the phone.

      My Storm seems to have a feature that automatically resets the phone at random intervals. It handily solves that problem, but can be annoying when you're actually trying to do something with it.

      Seriously, though, the sluggishness of the phone is a big drawback. If it could keep up with how fast I type and not randomly reset I would be very happy with it.

      • by tweek ( 18111 )

        That's the thing I never understood. There was NOTHING preventing RIM from putting more than the measly 128M memory pool in there. It was a cheap shitty move. Even bumping up to 1GB may not solve the problems...just push out the time needed to reboot. RIM was dragged kicking and screaming out of the pager market and the hardware occasionally shows that.

        We'll see. I've not loaded OS5 on my current storm yet so I have no idea how much better or worse the memory management is.

  • by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:36AM (#29758065) Journal

    Does it support IMAP/POP/SMTP natively or are you still stuck with the pile-of-crap BIS/BES services for email (or using Web interfaces or third party java apps)?

    I won't even consider looking at this model for the rest of our small (16) corporate team unless we can use our own (postfix-based) mail servers. The fact that we have to hand over our email account usernames and passwords AND pay just so the Vodafone BIS server can pick up mail and kindly pass it on to the Blackberries (and vice versa) is simply crap, a security risk and a PITA if a user changes their password via our mail server's Web interface.

    That is why I have an HTC Rhodium (Touch Pro 2)!

    • Don't you find it interesting that all the open source proponents here turn tail and defend RIM when it suits their purpose?

    • LogicMail [sourceforge.net]. Open source loves you (it's a great program)!
      • Thanks - knew about that but it's not 'native' and falls into "...or are you still stuck with the pile-of-crap BIS/BES services for email (or using Web interfaces or third party java apps)?"

  • by Maury Markowitz ( 452832 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @10:36AM (#29758075) Homepage

    > After the disappointment of the Palm Pre, could this be the smartphone to beat?

    Does everyone already forget that the Pre was going to be the one to beat after the disappointment of the Storm? Clearly the Pre 2 will be the one to beat after the disappointment of the

    There's nothing wrong with the Pre, and the "disappointment" has little to do with the phone. The disappointment is that it didn't stop the iPhone from clobbering them in the market in spite of the hue and cry from the haters and fanbois alike. If you define your disappointment by the lack of relative sales, then my guess is that this is going to be a disappointment too.

    It's not about the phone, it's about what you can get onto the phone quickly and easily. Anyone that's Midomi'd a song while walking past a bar patio and then instantly downloaded it from iTunes knows what I mean. Consumers get this, and it seems only the self-declared "experts" who are missing this forest.

    Maury

  • by jht ( 5006 )

    The Storm may be a great Blackberry, but that doesn't make it the smartphone to beat. That remains the iPhone until proven otherwise.

    Individual phones may have great features (The Pre has its relatively unrestricted development environment and multitasking, Blackberries have the BES for corporate management, etc., and Android has whatever the hell Android has), but until you take the full ecosystem that Apple's spawned and replicate most of it elsewhere they're still the king of the hill.

    It's not that Appl

    • Android has Google.

      Is that better than RIM? wow. Good question.

      But the pushback against using RIM for your corporate services is interesting.

      Imagine you're actually using your 'smartphone' for business. With BlackBerry and Google, you get backup of contacts, calendar, email, as well as Web access with Google. Reasonably good availability worldwide, certainly competitive with all but the very best corporate IT efforts.

      With Apple?

      Palm Pre is still too new to know how reliable it is.

      Those Sidekick users who

    • by ianare ( 1132971 )

      "has a touchscreen, runs bajillions of apps, is shiny and pretty, and can be my media center". AKA iPhone.

      No, there is another. Or rather, there will be another very soon : the nokia N900 [nokia.com]. Oh, and as an extra bonus, no vendor lock-in !

  • by edmicman ( 830206 ) on Thursday October 15, 2009 @11:36AM (#29758911) Homepage Journal

    Serious question - I'm a dumbphone user finally wanting to move to a smartphone, and in the next couple of months. I have to (read: want to) stay on Verizon, and don't want a Windows Mobile phone. I've decided on either the Storm2 or the upcoming Android phones, but am not sure which to go with.

    Essentially what I want is a phone that I can email/message/facebook/twitter/do tasks/organize my life with. I want to be able to browse the web, but I don't see myself spending lots of time doing that; usually I see it just looking up something quick. I also don't see myself as a big apps/games user, but then again having never had that experience I don't know - maybe I would if the opportunity were there.

    From what I can tell, my impressions are:
    BB pros:
    better build quality
    good (best?) messaging/email ability (I don't really know, but figured that was their background so it must be very good?)
    relatively proven track record for phones like this

    BB cons:
    lack of webkit browser (aren't they supposed to be working on this? when? would the S2 get it eventually?)
    generally "closed" system
    I have the perception there's less consumer app development for BB than with other platforms

    Android pros:
    webkit browser
    open system
    app development seems to have more potential, especially with consumer apps

    Android cons:
    how is the messaging? Does it work well?
    still young...although that doesn't bother me that much
    from what I have seen of the VZW leaks, the form factors don't seem as nice as the BB.

    Having experience with neither, I don't really know if I have a preference between hard or soft keyboards.

    Thoughts or advice?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Voyager529 ( 1363959 )

      despite the HTC Touch Pro2 [verizonwireless.com] running WinMo, you won't know it unless you intentionally go there. VZW already has a Winmo 6.5 update, and the XDA chefs are great as always. I had an older WinMo phone and I absolutely, unquestionably understand your aversion to the platform. But unless your concerns are philosophical (i.e. ABM), go give it a look. Seriously. I had an iPhone and couldn't believe I had tortured myself with one for as long as I had. A co-worker of mine owned a Curve and a Storm. He played with min

    • by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      I think you get the pros and cons wrong.
      The new Android phones for VZW are from Motorola. Motorola over all builds really good handsets that have been dull as dirt. They tend to have great build quality and sound quality. This shoals hopefully will live up to that standard.
      From what I have seen messaging on the Android is very good.
      Age? The BB is older than dirt and frankly is falling behind.

      The Blackberry is great for exchange email. If you live and die by email then the blackberry should be high on your l

    • BB - been out in the wild, I see lots of users every day, it's a proven and reliable system. And frankly I hear very few complaints from blackberry users. (other than the Pearl & original storm).

      Android - I have yet to see someone with one in the wild. Granted I live in an area not well serviced by T-Mobile, but the fact remains, I have yet to see ONE in use in the wild.

      I've seen more Pre's than I have Android based phones. I know there are more on the way, but with Verizon, I can't help but thinkin

      • I've seen more Pre's than I have Android based phones.

        I think it's down to your living where there's poor T-Mobile coverage. I have a bunch of friends with Android phones, but I haven't seen a single Pre.

    • by Tyr_7BE ( 461429 )

      I was under the impression that there were *many* more apps available for Blackberry than Android.

  • There was a segment on the daily show recently where Stewart showed how CNN would allow people to make spurious claims and then say "ok, we're out of time!" without making them back up their claims. That's a little how I feel here. How is the Pre disappointing? My impression is that most people who own one really love it and are very cognizant of the advantages over the iPhone (multitasking, open development environment, using the data connection for things that are actually useful).

    So I'm wondering if t

  • As a BlackBerry Curve user, here are the things I find most annoying about the phone:

    • The OS requires all applications to be resident in system heap the whole time. This means that even though I have 2GB of flash memory free in the phone, I'm down to a couple of hundred KB of space for any additional apps I want.
    • Apps that perform background processing can interfere with voice calls.
    • For some unknown reason, TCP/IP over cell network has a different API from TCP/IP over wifi. That means apps have to be sp

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