[Hoop]

[doby45]

[blkberryboy]

BB7100t is Awsome. I wish for a camera feature, but thats about it.

TREO 650 Has camera but has Palm OS (yuck)

SKII- IMO enough said. Not for me

Any opinions?

[stonent]

This is a blackberry forum, what do you expect us to say?

The blackberry is much more "business" than the treo and sidekick.

[kaseiffert]

I have been wishing for a Nextel camera phone for business for a while. would solve alot of my headaches if the sales reps could take pictures of problems and bring them in, so I would be first in line for a BB with a camera.

But IMO take the BB and buy an inexpensive digital.... thats currently what I do. You'll get better pics anyway.

[Mark Rejhon]

A good link is "Why BlackBerry?" at:
http://www.blackberryforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=53

[blkberryboy]

Thank you mark. I was aware of that post, however I was intersted in "real" feedback. I know this is a BB forum and the anwasers will lean that was. But most posters seem to have a diverse background in both handsets and usefulness. I am all about the BB, I am just intrested in the opinions of those who have been on the other side. If this post to the moderators is reudndent please feel free to remove it. I wouls not feel slighted in the least as this is a great forum even withour my posts.

Cheers all

[blkberryboy]

PS... Still learning how to type and spelling 101 still elludes me

[denning]

My girlfriend just got a sidekick II. I have a 7280.

They are both great. Sidekick camera is suprisngly a nice feature as is build-in AOL.

The keyboard is no-where near as nice, plus you can't add software without buying it from t-mobile.

So no developed apps.

Huge plus for sidekick is true unlimited data and sms.

Sidekick has seemingly true push email, but many times she will get a message or two delayed a few hours. Plus she loses the network more.

Sidekick is what is, baby blackberry.

Great device, worth the money, but not a true blackberry.

[RyanNobrega]

Having been both a SK, SKII, and BB owner, here is my perspective:

Sidekick:

- Email. Contrary to what I hear and see frequently, the SKII (and SK) email client (for my use anyway) is the better option. It's a true POP/IMAP client with support for POP-SSL. Supports multiple email accounts, folders, filtering to folders based on receiving address and allows you to specify a separate "From:" address for each account configured. (I really miss this last one)

- Apps. The Sidekick came with a AOL client which is decent. The Free Yahoo! client is phenomenal (Yahoo! guys did a GREAT job in creating a feature-rich app that closely mimics the desktop version). Although it doesn't support mulitple protocols, the Yahoo! clients is far superior to Verichat for the BB. In addition, there is a great SSH/SSH2 app for $10. I haven't tried teh $600 Idokorro SSH client on the BB, but the $10 client on the SK worked very well.

- Form factor. Although the SK was too bulky for my tastes, the user interface (both GUI and the device itself) are very well designed. Very simple to whip through menus, select services, interact with apps - all with a very natural, consistent way of holding the device. The placement and use of the wheel on the BB is a bit awkward when comparing the two (I wish BB had a thumb wheel on the front of the device).

- Camera. The camera is nice to have, I wish the BB had one. But although the SKII has a camera (at 640x480) the pictures are relatively poor quality.


BB7290:
- Size. perfect size to fit in the pocket, keyboard is just as usable. Lighter weight.

- Battery. the SKII battery would need charging daily. My BB can go 3-5 days (depending on usage).

- Outlook synch. Synching contacts and calendar is a snap. w/the sidekick you have to use their web-based service (via my tmobile) for any of this data to be available on your SK.

- Open platform. Although I haven't taken advantage of the many apps out there yet, it's nice to have an open dev environment. As mentioned previously, the app selection for the SKII is very limited with big hurdles in the way for app developers to get distribution (you can't just build an SK app and offer it to the world last I checked).

At the end of teh day, although I really liked the SKII (and preferred it in some cases to the BB), I ended up switching to the BB b/c:

- battery life on the SKII was unacceptable
- no synch w/my existing Outlook contacts / calendar
- size / bulkiness of the SKII

I do have to say I really miss the email client. I wish someone would write a good pop client for the BB, pop'ing every 5-15mins (or on demand) is fine for me vs true push with the current limitations.

Ryan

[Mark Rejhon]

I think that by middle of 2005, there will be a much better POP client for BlackBerry, for those users who want to integrate the BlackBerry with push email.

The problem is nobody bothered to develop one, because BlackBerry email was great enough (Especially if you are a BES4 user using an Exchange Inbox -- wireless Outlook PIM/email synchronization is becoming a major selling point of BlackBerry)

However, BlackBerry is indeed a much more open platform than SideKick/Hiptop. It is powerful enough to allow you to write a POP client without needing a signature key from RIM. You can develop a POP client for BlackBerry without even telling RIM about it. (Unless, of course, you want to 'hook' into protected API's the vibrating/alerting system) If you are a developer, please visit the BlackBerry Development Forum ...

There is Reqwireless EmailViewer from http://www.ReqWireless.com which is the currently best POP/IMAP client for BlackBerry. Any new programs would have to have at least a feature or two that EmailViewer does not have... such as maybe full integration with the RIM Messages list, and full background alerting.

There was also Sparrow email, which was a great little email program for RIM950, but was not ported to the newer BlackBerries.

The good things is that BlackBerry development is exploding now. At the start of 2004, there were only 2 chat programs. Now, at end of 2004, there were over 15 chat programs.