You've got to be kidding me
 

I have been a hardcore BB user for a number of years and I just got my first taste of the Storm, working on an employee's phone. TERRIBLE PHONE!!! The keyboard straight up sucks!!! Not only that, but since we do not run a BES, I typically log into BIS and set up an @vzw.blackberry.net account, and forward Exchange email to the newly created address, and set up a signature and reply to address that matches the company. This phone cannot use BIS!!! You have to set it up on the phone itself and the keyboard is simply abysmal. Had to go through 3 times, because it kept closing out when we were trying to reach the secret question. Holy crap, this phone is an exercise in futility!!!

Sigh. Moved to Rants and Raves.

Not a good idea to use the carrier supplied address:

1. Totally unfiltered and if it gets out, you will get more SPAM than you want.

2. You can't take that address with you when and if you change carriers. Once the account is closed, good bye email address.

3. The only way to read email on that account is via the BB. There is no webmail option and in the event of a data outage (and they do occur) you are without email until it comes back up. And the chances of lost email increases.

Why do you say the device cannot use BIS? What error message are you getting? Perhaps the user has already set up one?

1. With the lack of BES I have accomplished this without SPAM. Don't ask me how, but this has been the case for me.

2. Who cares. I'll just create another one, it's just a temp address.

3. That's what it's for, getting email to the BB without forwarding their Exchange company email to Yahoo or Gmail and mixing it with their personal email. It's strictly to get company email to the phone. If there is an outage, I don't care, the user can get to their email through Outlook Anywhere or OWA.

Here's the error:

http://vatofknow.com/images/bb.png

That's not really an error. That indicates that you need to go through the Email Settings Icon on the device.

you get that error till you setup a password on the device for bis. then you can login on the web with it.

Exactly what I DON'T want. I want to be able to set up filtering, signatures, reply-to, etc. You can't do this through the phone that I'm aware of.

Thanks so much, I'll check into this.

You absolutely CAN do this through the Email Settings thick client ON THE DEVICE. The thick client has been available since OS version 4.7 (and maybe some 4.6 OS versions).

Awesome. I don't think I would have the patience to even type in the reply-to address with that damn keyboard!!! Give me the BIS interface, that's all I ask.

Let's put it this way, it's a far cry from Swype on my Droid. As mentioned, I was hardcore BB for a number of years, and one of the best things it had to offer was a superior keyboard. Others were BES features that blow M$ Exchange's added features (like device wipe) away. I'm surprised M$ didn't get sued in fact, it's a blatant BB rip off. But with open source phones on the Android platform beginning to dwarf iPhone with multiple handsets, and increasing power and capabilities, I'm afraid BB is currently getting buried. BB is still great for government purposes, and company purposes for heightened security, but as far as features and apps are concerned, they've fallen off the map unfortunately.

Saw that BB is releasing the Playbook as well, but did not demo it at all. Hopefully there will be some development through Flash for it, as BB apps are far behind the rest as well. Hey I'm not knocking BB, it was one of the best smartphones at one time, they've just fallen behind. My Droid does about everything my laptop can do, and for the purpose of IT, that's important.

How's the battery life on the Droid. It is awful on mine. Love the phone, hate the battery life. And I have virtually nothing installed or running.

I dumped my Droid and went back to BB due to the battery. Even with making calls, SMS, some web surfing and Facebook, I can go 3 days before needing to charge my Tour.

I decided to try the T-Mobile G2 Android phone, since it had a pretty decent keyboard. Before I bought it, I asked the salesperson about battery life. She said, "Well, of course you can't expect it to equal your BlackBerry" (8900). I said, "I know that, but will it get me through a day on a single charge, assuming I'm not streaming media or using the Navigator much?" She said, "It might."

It didn't. During the time I had it, it never made it past 5:00 pm, even on days when I had no phone calls, and did little else but read emails and maybe look at a couple of web sites on the browser. I got one of those task killer apps, but it didn't make any difference.

For some people, this isn't a big deal. They can charge during the day without difficulty. For me it's a deal-breaker.

I also found the screen much harder to see when outside. Didn't expect that. They keyboard was fine. I missed auto-text, but I know there's an app for that. It doesn't do smart caps, but I could live with that.

Another deal-breaker was that it simply wouldn't accept my work email account. I had IT people from work and Tech Support at T-Mobile working on it, and it just wouldn't go. Tried same settings that I'm using on the 8900, but the G2 just couldn't validate the account and kept giving me error messages.

As much as I wanted that bigger screen, and better app selection, I'm simply not willing to trade anything for them. So I'm back to my 8900 and if the rumor of the 9780 coming to T-Mobile is true, I'll get that.

Ubizmo

I like my storm 2. It works.

I got rid of mine and went back to 9700, like it better