Upgraded to Blackberry
After dealing with 6 windows mobile based smart phones over the last year, Verizon has finally upgraded me to a Blackberry. Of course not without some cost on my side, but it was worth it….I feel so free. I am only on my second day of post-windows mobile life, so there might still be some surprises in store for me. Here is my hit list of things I have noticed from the change.
Things I Miss From My XV6700
- Windows Mobile has better Outlook integration. While blackberry redirector will send you your mail, it doesn’t have the same depth to allow you to organize your mail into folders from your handset and have that be done when you get back to the office. Something I used to do regularly. Also I can’t accept an appointment from my handset, and I haven’t figured out how to sync my calendar yet.
- VPN directly from the phone. Although most of the time when I tried to use this it was flaky at best.
Things I Don’t Miss From My XV6700
- The crashing and freezing. I haven’t had the Blackberry long enough to know if it suffers from the same fate. I hope not. Or I will be going back to a standard flip phone.
- Every email being sync’d. I get a lot of automated emails from my systems. Probably in excess of 200 a day. They are put into sub-folders in Outlook by rules. I don’t need them on the handset, and Blackberry lets me filter which emails come to the handset.
- Volume levels that are too quite. I had problems with both ringer volumes not being loud enough and in-call volume not being loud enough on my xv6700.
- Batteries that don’t hold up. Typically I would have to charge my XV6700 anytime I wasn’t out of the office. Typically if I didn’t charge during the day I would get home at the end of the work day and be down to 40% or less. If I talked in it for any sustantial length of time I would have to charge throughout the day. My Blackberry, with talk and email and not charge during the day was 70% when I got home. So my battery life is at least twice as long.
After owning a Blackberry for 2 days, I already understand why it has been so successful. It has a well thought out design. For instance the keyboard keys are smaller than they were on my XV6700, but I can type faster on the blackberry. It also has cool shortcuts on stuff like typing in email addresses. user(space)domain(space)com is translated to user@domain.com. The trackwheel is a great interface, allowing many of the functions to be done with one hand.
I could keep going on and on about little things they have thought of from a business user point of view, but I will wrap up with one last comment. The Blackberry has Tethered Modem Access to Verizon’s Wireless Broadband. It is an extra $15 a month charge, which I’m not crazy about, however, it works well (much better than bluetooth tethering ever did with my XV6700). Plug it into your computer with a USB cable and hop on the Internet. I was clocking speeds of 400-500KBS in an EVDO coverage area yesterday. So loosing the VPN capability from my phone really wasn’t a big deal because I can get online with my laptop whenever I need to.
November 22nd, 2006 at 3:33 pm
I can personally vouch for the fact that your ringer on the XV6700 was loud enough.
I actually mixed all my own ringers for my phone from MP3s and volume increased them by about 30%–it’s worked like a charm.
November 23rd, 2006 at 3:27 pm
I won’t dispute King Wulfgar’s assertion that my ringer was very loud on my XV6700. I don’t typically like to wear my phone on my belt. So it is usually in my pocket, which means I need a loud ringer to hear it.
The only reason the ringer on my XV6700 could get remotely loud enough was that I took the ring tone, applified it 500% (not exagerating) with an audio editor and re-uploaded it to my phone. The built in ringers are pretty quite.