BlackBerry Myths Busted! The Modern 2005-Era BlackBerry (for Palm/PocketPC users)
 

Note: This is an article that I originally wrote in a Brighthand discussion board, they have an article "New Handheld Killer App" with a debate between PocketPC/Treo/BlackBerry users going on. I have posted the following for PocketPC/Palm users:

Nicely done. I have many mobile devices including BB 7510, PDA2K, Treo 650, and SE P910a. I agree Blackberries have come a long way. I am now waiting on my 7100g to get here.

The other device better watch out as Blackberries are coming on strong.

coreymcl:

I know this may not be the right forum to be asking this, but could you comment on the how good the web browsing experience is on the P910a compared to the Blackberry?

Let me answer this in a couple of days. As right now I only have an old 7510 BB. On Tuesday I should be getting my 7100g.

But in general the P9XX is more one handed operationable than other SmartPhones like a Treo. But this is not to say it is as good one handed as a BB.

Overall, the P910a is pretty fast loading pages. But like I said I would compair the P910a to the BB 7100g more than my old BB.

Blackberry vs Treo650
 

I have been a long time Palm user with many 3rd party apps and my company is going to blackberry and it appears I will be shut out for push email support (currently in trial right now and working great). I am pushing for dual support because for the general population I think the BB is a very good product and prob easier to use for getting basics like email. I have read your comparison to treo and have a couple of questions. You talk about the improved 3rd party calendar feature but is that compared to the fairly generic palm std calendar or to products such as datebook5? Datebook gives me such power and flexibility over the standard calendar im curious to which you were comparing it to. Another question I had was whether you can run office documents (word, excel and access) on a blackberry? PDF's and storage of these documents? As a technical support for my company I need to have more tools than the average Joe and my concern is whether the blackberry is capable of this. You mentioned that the power consumption is really low (palms used to be measured in weeks but as power was requested it got shorter) and indicate that it has a much lower cpu. If that is the case is it powerfull enough for the explosion of the mentioned third party apps that will bring it on par (flexibility wise) with palm and PPC?

There is no anamosity here at all, it's just that from all the people I have talked to during my travels and looked at BB's I am not very confident it will be powerfull enough nor flexible enough to do what I need.

I would appreciate any comments as long as they are fair. I would love someone that has good knowledge of both the treo 650 and a bluetooth phone enabled BB to compare and contrast the two.

Cheers

Keith

kajpkgeng, your concerns are definitely understandable! I am not anti-Treo, I'm just pro-BlackBerry :) .... I have friends who use Treo's and appreciate their multimedia (MP3 and video) capabilties, but I make sure they also appreciate my improved BlackBerry capabilites back too ;) ... There are clearly tradeoffs between Treo and BlackBerry, but surprisingly the BlackBerry is less of a compromise nowadays than many former Treo users expected... (Okay, not all -- but mainly Treo users who wanted MP3, Nintendo emulators, and stuff like that. Even an emulator is being tinkered with now, as the 7250 with a 250Mhz ARM9 is finally fast enough for emulation type endeavours.) .... But keeping that in mind, corporate priorities generally prevail and the BlackBerry is finally starting to get pretty good in many categories other than email...

Now in answer to the following:

(1) I'm comparing builtin PIM versus builtin PIM. They are finally more in par with each other now. It is true that third party PIM on Palm can be amazing (DateBk5) but third party PIM software such as PocketDay also provides similiar enhancements to DateBk5 too as well. Not quite as good as DateBk5 yet. But even I prefer to use PocketDay on BlackBerry than DateBk5 on Palm, just because I navigate so much better on a good BlackBerry keyboard, and prefer a thumbwheel paradigm over a touchscreen paradigm (Although I formerly preferred touchscreen, but not anymore). One thing to keep in mind that once you're used to the thumbwheel/shortcut keys paradigm, it's frequently faster to lookup information on a BlackBerry than on a Palm. (However, for firsttimers, it's frustratingly slow to use a BlackBerry, I can understand -- but you just have to go through the learning curve -- then it's much more of a pleasure. Although some people still prefer Treo's, the newer BlackBerries are much more capable of doing similiar things formerly limited to Treo territory)

(2) Yes, you can now edit office documents on a BlackBerry now. The software is called Dynoplex eOffice at http://www.dynoplex.com
http://www.dynoplex.com/IMAGES/new5.gif
Microsoft Word compatible word processor for BlackBerry (The ONLY BlackBerry app I wish I had a touchscreen for, but it's not that bad with a trackwheel once you get familiar with it). Also, there's another brand of excel editor called "miniexcel" if you want something cheaper than Dynoplex. I also heard there are more programs coming too as well.

(3) BlackBerries by default now include attachment viewing capabilities including XLS, DOC, PDF, TXT, GIF, JPG, TIFF, PNG, and ZIP (for viewing files inside ZIP containing the above extensions). Older BlackBerries can be upgraded to include this, using the free OS4.0 download which can be found in "RIM Software" area. For editing, you still need third party software such as Dynoplex, though. Storage is often done server-side, although there's third party filesystem addons. A useful filesystem for BlackBerries is Dynoplex eFile, and it can do a server-side virtual network-based filesystem, allowing you to access more than the BlackBerry flash memory can hold.

(4) Yes, it is true that BlackBerries have slower CPU's. The fastest BlackBerry, the 7250, only has a 250 Mhz ARM9, but even the slower CPU's are fast enough to handle most stuff. Just make sure you get good 2005-era BlackBerries and you will be fine. (Model 7290, 7250, 7520 and maybe the 7100 are the ones I recommend. The 7100 is the slowest of the 2005-era models though, I should warn, because of the higher resolution despite the smaller form factor. But even the 7100 is more than 2 times faster than the old 7750). Yes, it's true Java adds a layer of performance impact, but it's not bad on the 2005-era models.

So the rule of thumb to Treo users trying the "BlackBerry conversion", is get the good 2005-era BlackBerries. The conversion will be initially painful, with some tradeoffs, but most non-multimedia-oriented users have been pretty happy to live with the tradeoffs, for the BlackBerry benefits if you really needed good wireless productivity... The 2003/2004 era BlackBerries are very boring though with dull screens, so your users may protest... another reason to pay attention to the 2005-era BlackBerry models.

A case in point is I recently witnessed a BlackBerry user do a full Linux installing using a SSH session using his BlackBerry as a console. While SSH was running multitasking in the background on his BlackBerry, he was able to send/receive emails at the same time (BlackBerry uses a true multitasking OS which Palm does not), and even be on the phone at the same time. Even though voice and data are not simultaneously possible on 2.5G networks (even on Treo's) BlackBerry does a good job of queueing data temporarily while on the phone, and resuming queued data after hangup. That's a far better job than Treo's currently do, for example. This 6 hour Linux install using a Blackberry as a SSH console, was done completely untethered without a battery charge, and on Nextel which gobbles a lot more battery life than a GPRS BlackBerry (which can keep a continuous Internet connection for 75-100 hours nonstop untethered...). I have never yet seen a Treo user successfully make a telephone call of this nature in the middle of a SSH session, and while having a partially composed email idling in another BlackBerry "window". PalmSource is kind of late with getting thir new "Cobalt" PalmOS release out, and BlackBerry multitasks so much better than Treo, despite slowness, and lack of some multimedia capabilities...

On my BlackBerry, I recently ran a SSH application simultaneously with the web browser, simultaneously with a live running chat application (3 networking applications running at the same time with fully active, live true-Internet TCP/IP connections!). I haven't been able to do this multiasking on a Treo yet, surprisingly -- they seem to be more capable devices in many other respects considering there's more software on Treo, but I still can usually run most of them only one at a time... I should warn, I recommend a 2005-era BlackBerry for efficient multitasking, because multitasking is VERY SLOW on older BlackBerries even though it works all the way back to 1990's era BlackBerries - the famous 95X series! I switch between the simultaneous applications by holding ALT and hitting the side Esc key. That acts the same as Alt+Tab on Windows. Background apps are not paused, they keep running and processing. Which means you can download big OTA applications (you can install BlackBerry software wirelessly too) in the background while you compose an email in the foreground...

Another point of good news is you can keep both a Treo and a BlackBerry synchronized simultaneously to the same Microsoft Outlook, so you can use this to your advantage to make a transition less painful...

Thanks very much for your comments as they did provide some interesting insight. All in all I think I would still prefer my treo because of its form factor as a phone (I want to get one one device) but Im somewhat glad to know the capabilities have improved over what I have been seeing as of late (must have all been older models) and if forced to switch I'll have most functions.

I will say im not so sure about editing documents from the server side that has to be pretty slow if you need to navigate around a bit?

I also want to note that although I used to be a big grafiti and touchscreen person. with the 5way navigation button I am able to cruise all around the screen to what I need and rarely take the stylus out :smile: (might touch with a finger once a week).

I would love to put the two head to head with someone like yourself that is more knowledgeable about BB and not Pig headed to see what it can do. For instance as a frequent traveler I have American Airlines full airline schedule onboard my treo at all times to check flight times, Or the use of encrypted password data bases for computer emails, frequent flyer info..., and as well I keep a couple dozen techincal PDFs onboard a 1gig SD card that I can email, pull out and stick in a memory stick type device or show/use for onscreen reference.

Time will tell but thanks again for you comments and please feel free to comment more or if anyone else has thoughts I'd love to hear them.

Keith

Did you know that the 7100 series BlackBerries are the same size as a Treo now? Although not everyone likes the SureType keyboard. Understandably, a Treo user converting to 7100 is a hit-and-miss. Sometimes they get dissatisfied because of the SureType keyboard, and other times, they fall in love with the 7100 series. It's a lot safer for a Treo user to convert to, say, the 7250 BlackBerry because of the superior keyboard and the fact that it's the fastest BlackBerry at the moment. Although it's definitely true the 7250 is slightly bigger...

The document is not always stored serverside. You can cache a few dozen files on your BlackBerry for example, so you're editing locally, you just only need to upload it when done... I think that's how eFile works. Just remember your BlackBerry is limited to 32 megabytes.

Well, you understand my conversion from Grafitti to thumbwheel then. :)

The direction pad is similiar in the migration away from touchscreen, although I generally prefer the thumbwheel and hotkey shortcuts. You may want to know I was the fastest Grafitti writer in the "Dom Perignon III" contest operated by Fitaly, I went 40.1 words per minute with Grafitti ("Block Recognizer" on an iPaq really, but same thing as PalmSource's Grafitti1). I am now a thumb-touch-typist who can go up to 72.4 WPM on a BlackBerry thumb keyboard. I can't go that fast on the cramped TREO keyboard (or the 7100 BlackBerry keypad, for that matter). I do notice I type at roughly similiar speeds on a TREO 600 and the BlackBerry 7100 though (both same size devices). The Treo 650 keyboard has improved I heard, so I don't yet have quite an apples-to-apples comparision on 2005-era Treo's versus 2005-era BlackBerries, but this is a note worth mentioning, anyway...

Another thing I love about BlackBerry is shortcuts. For example, I can just type five keys "Crej<enter>" to start composing an email message to myself ("Mark Rejhon"). I can do this even when the email software is not in the foreground -- I can even do this right at the Main Icons (launcher) screen. The first C keypress instantly launches "Compose Email" and then jumps to addressbook which when typing "rej" finds the first match to a name containing "rej", hitting Enter finally puts me into editor mode. So there's a lot of poweruser keypress shortcuts on a BlackBerry get gets things done quickly. Keypress shortcut demons can fall in love with the BlackBerry if they take the time to memorize all of them. True -- some people hate doing things this way and prefer tapping at a screen, or slowly spinning the thumbwheel, or something else. People stubbornly more comfortable with a touchscreen, may take much longer to adjust, or might switch back to Treo...

Unfortunately, that 1 gigabyte SD card is something BlackBerry won't have for a very long time, because the government is a major customer of BlackBerries, and the lack of a card slot improves security greatly, but hurts users like yourself.

The next best thing is ultra-highspeed wireless networks (Verizon EVDO wireless 2 megabits, which many sources here mention is coming as a software upgrade to the BlackBerry 7250 later in 2005), and gigabytes of safe server-based Intranet-encrypted storage, with the 32megs on BlackBerry behaving as a cache or temporary directory. Wireless upload/download of data between fully secure and fully audited Intranet, and your BlackBerry... The government don't want an unapproved SD slot on a BlackBerry for example (although a separate "BerryMedia" consumer line of BlackBerries would have been nice -- to keep multimedia SD users happier). Secure infrastructure is the direction BlackBerry is generally going in, for security reasons, keep things secure while making users happy, and this will gradually become less painful with megabit-speed VPN access to your corporate desktop computer, so you can edit documents stored on your corporate desktop. Expect things like this to be happening around 2006 as megabit carrier wireless such as EVDO and UMTS become widespread, although Dynoplex is making things like this possible already... This is why some corporations are somewhat uncomfortable with Treo units, because of less secure infrastructure...

Along the same lines, theoretically, you could play your MP3 music off your office desktop onto your BlackBerry, probably, eventually, in 2006 ;) ....Or maybe 2007 (hah). Time will tell if RIM *will* enable the ability to play MP3 files, but it's a matter of time, I think. We'll see... It's true TREO's far ahead in music playback capabilities at the moment, and BlackBerries are becoming more consumer-friendly, so eventually these two points will have to meet somewhere, RIM keeping consumers happy.

And shockingly, maybe RIM may decide to spinoff a consumer company for consumer-based BlackBerry phones with an SD card slot, full MP3 playback, 3D accelerated videogaming, etc. (Note: I have NO INSIDE INFO on this particular thing.... this is pure speculation!) I've donned this the "BerryMedia" idea in the past...

Although I think RIM is content to just sell "BlackBerry Connect" to PalmSource, and let PalmSource preinstall "BlackBerry Connect" on Treo's. So you may not have to give up your Treo. RIM has settled with NTP, so PalmSource should be finally doing something about this at some point, I'd think. Who knows... One of the two Palm companies (PalmSource or PalmOne, not sure which one) already has a licensing agreement with RIM, so anything's possible! However, this wouldn't have the advantages of genuine BlackBerry hardware (multitasking OS, ruggedizness, battery life, full end-to-end security, CIA-approved secure equipment, etc)

I have now posted a related article:
Top 7 Most Important BlackBerry Requests for RIM's Growth Success

This is how I first became convinced to change over to BB. They were on Palm/Phone tethers (the plain-jane desk pushers) circa 2000-2001 and then switched over to RIM 950's. And they like those. (y)

I am curious to know if Cisco Systems is currently using Blackberry. Anyone of you guys know?

I'll chime in here, OT though it may be.

The P910 has a much better browser available for it. You can run Opera, for free, on a P910 - and its fast as hell and very capable. It is a much better browser than the BlackBerry browser. I've never used any 3rd-party web browsers on the BlackBerry however.

Note: P910's are GPRS devices. 1xRTT and EDGE BlackBerry's will be faster data-wise but to be honest I think the P910 will out-render them any day of the week.

7290 and 7730 screen and speed
 

Is the screen of 7290 brighter than 7730?
And is the speed of 7290 faster compare to 7730?
rgds,
corner63

What about the screen of 7230 compare to 7730. Is it the same or is 7730 better?
rgds,
corner63

The 7730 has a nicer looking screen than the 7230.

However, as of September 2005, the modern BlackBerry units with the "good" screens are 7250, 7520, 7290 and 7100. The 7730 also has a relatively nice screen, but uses older technology (slower, less memory, no Bluetooth etc)

Mark,
Thank you for your very fast reply.

I am about to buy one of them from ebay, but not sure which one. The 7730 bigger screen is nice, but were initially uncertain of the screen quality (brightness) compare to 7290. The only bb I've seen is 7230 in a retail shop under the bright light, seems ok, but I'm sceptical under low or dim light.
I will mainly use it as an organiser (heavily) and second as a phone, but not the email function (hah? yes strange isn't it?).Well the reason is I love the ease operation compare to my treo. My preference is easy to operate and simple.

My wife should use bb with email, because with her treo600 she uses 95% of it for sms only, and it's about 400 to 500 sms permonth. She is thinking about it now.

Besides the above basic progams, I will add other programs such as sheet (excell), word, conversions, time tracker, money, stopwatch, dictionary, and another 2 programs.

- Do you think the 16mb memory will hold all these programs?
- As mentioned, I've seen only the 7230. Hopefully the 7730 is birghter.
- The 7290 has 250mhz arm9. What about 7730 and 7230?
- With the 7290 bluetooth can we also sync it to the computer? Or is it just for earpace only?
-

Best rgrds,
corner63

Make sure the programs run without a data connection. Sometimes it's impossible. For example, a word processor on a BlackBerry is more likely to require an online connection in order to send/receive documents since not all of them transfer over the USB cable. Some of them indeed do, but you should check every application for compatibility in "Out-of-coverage" situations.

The 7730 is one of the slower BlackBerry devices (same speed as 7780). The 7230 and 7290 is faster. There's a BlackBerry benchmarks thread:
http://www.blackberryforums.com/showthread.php?t=4041

The 7290 Bluetooth doesn't sync with the computer over Bluetooth.

The 7730 may be good if you get a good price. The bigger screen is attractive although its performance leaves some to be desired.

Most people using organizer-only functions have definite PIM preferences, such as preferring to use Palm, however I know people who prefer the BlackBerry GUI over the Palm GUI, and the devices are pretty ruggedized with a good keyboard on almost every BlackBerry...

Mark
Very informative,Thank you for your info. It seems like 7290 is the one.
rgds,
corner63

BB rules, even to a smartphone addict
 

I just got my new BB8700r, having just came back from the post office where I HAPPILY mailed my Treo 650 to its new owner via eBay. The 8700 is my 4th BB after a 7780 and (2) 7290s (still have a 7290, great unit). I am a techno geek and so am surprised that my biggest gripe with the Treo was its mental overload factor, i.e. simply too much. A personal opinion, but that said there are a few key issues that really put me over the top:

- Very crappy phone. Drops calls all the time, often as soon as you press Send (often multiple consecutive times). Dialled number simply disappears. Also needs aftermarket software to boost volume functions to a usable level. Absurd.

- Tiny keys. I have tiny hands yet still was constantly mistyping numbers and text (infuriating since I am an SMS fanatic, 300+ / month). You can use the touchscreen to dial instead but this creates a new problem which is your ear inadvertently pressing virtual keys on the screen (i.e. "hang up in the middle of a call") when you don't have the screen disabled. Useless.

- Obsolete/abandoned OS. Despite the OS being over 10 years old, when using messaging you still have to force caps when starting a new sentence that is preceded by an exclamation or question mark. Autocaps work only when preceded by a period. Hello?

- Incomplete data export from Outlook. They don't tell you this, but if you choose to sync to Outlook instead of the seriously-obsolete Palm Desktop software, you only get some of the fields. Had to buy yet another expensive aftermarket app to bypass this. Garbage.

I'm just venting here but I am very happy to be back with the BB and its extremely mature, simple OS and interface. I love my 7290, but so far the phone quality of the 8700 is a big improvement, not to mention the upgraded screen. Only gripe so far is the cheesy SIM card slot under the battery (no more hinged holder but rather a slide-in friction-fit slot. Whatever.

Those still risking seduction by Treo might want to reconsider!

Multi-tasking
 

I do not own a BB, but I am considering making a change to one. I have heard a myth about BB. People have told me that you cannot multi-task while on the phone. Is this true? Is it possible to check appointments and do other things while talking on the phone?