Switching from Sprint BB to a T-Mobile BB

This is for many reasons... I may name some over the course of time in comparisons, but here are some initial thoughts:

1. My current Sprint BlackBerry will simply go to my wife, so no loss on equipment and all that.
2. My biggest reason for wanting the T-Mobile Curve is because it has WiFi!! Pretty much all cell phone carriers signals suck where I live (except Verizon, but I've grown to hate them and am canceling my service with them... I believe I wrote in previous posts why I dislike them). With WiFi, I don't have to only rely on the carriers signal strength as I can simply use ultra speedy WiFi. This obviously goes far beyond just my house (hotel rooms, etc), but I work out of my house when not traveling and therefore spend probably 90% of my life in my house.
3. T-Mobile has seriously upped their signal game... it looks like I will have a better signal in my house than in the past, so that's a plus.
4. T-Mobile offers @Home for $10/mo. This is essentially making your house a T-Mobile HotSpot and allows your cell phone service to route through your home WiFi!! It provides unlimited calling @Home, and obviously removes the concern of signal strength. ;-)
5. T-Mobile is MUCH less restrictive on their network than Sprint and especially Verizon who is the most prohibitive, even disabling many features on phones.
6. T-Mobile seems to be keeping up with BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) software updates better than Sprint, as my friend & I upgraded our Curve's to the latest BlackBerry OS (4.5.x at the time of this writing) which offers many feature enhancements such as HTML email and real web browsing. Setting all the right things in my Sprint Curve, I just couldn't get those features to work at all (same old ugliness). The T-Mobile Curve worked with all of it (to get those features, the BIS server has to be on the latest version... or at least a version that supports those features).
7. While Sprint certainly created some great plans as far as pricing and features (passing Verizon for value), T-Mobile seems to offer even more for less. Sprint may have some services like the Sprint Music Store (ugh) and SprintTV (even worse ugh... why bother), and I'm betting their cell data speeds are ultimately higher in average (based on signal strength of course), the features that matter most to me are at T-Mobile.
8. Lastly, I found the T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve on Amazon for $25... BEFORE the $100 mail-in rebate!!! That means I will actually MAKE $75 by buying the phone (if I send in the rebate and after the 6-8 week delivery period). Buying the phone from Sprint or T-Mobile costs you $249 up front, then there is the $100 mail-in rebate. To get a phone that will work better for my needs for so little... I couldn't pass it up. The biggest downside, and it's killing me right now because I'm SO impatient, is that it's not in stock and my estimated delivery is between September 11-17... to top it off, I will be traveling the week of the 11th... so my new shiny phone could be waiting for me at home while I'm on the road. :-(

Anyway, these are some of the reasons... like I said, I will probably list more in comparison posts. For now, if someone is trying to decide where to buy the BlackBerry Curve from, I'd say buy it through Amazon and get the T-Mobile Curve. ;-)

BlackBerry to replace my iPod

Well, that title has more sensation than reality. ;-) However, my playing with the media player on my BlackBerry today put it in a very good light. The sound quality is damn near as good as the iPod for songs in the same bit rate (if not as good). Because I only (currently) have a 4GB card in the BB, I decided to limit the quality of songs to 192kbps (I mean, it IS for *mobile* use, so I doubt I'll really hear a difference with so many other noises around me in those situations). I synced my BB through WMP11 (Windows Media Player), so it automatically converted the songs higher than 192kbps for me. I tried to sync a playlist from WMP, but it did not show up in the BB. This honestly doesn't bother me because I generally listen to whole albums at a time anymore. If you have a ton of playlists and really like that feature, you may want to try something different. I believe there is a sync utility from BlackBerry to allow you to sync with iTunes and all it's playlists. I stopped using iTunes a while ago and I'm not looking back.

As far as playlist capabilities are concerned, I was actually really impressed with the BB's feature set on creating playlists. It allows for both Automatic and Manual playlists. Like I said, this isn't a driving factor for me, so what it has is plenty good for me.

The fact that the BB Curve has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack is AWESOME! It allows you to use much higher quality headphones without having to buy or mess with an adapter. ALL phones trying to provide media playback should have this. Listening with some higher end headphones produced sound that (I believe) equals the iPod on the same exact file and bit rate. I also used my two Bluetooth Stereo headsets that have the ability to control the media player functions aside from normal call functions. Their sound was great through the BB Curve, but they are obviously no match for the higher end wired headphones. However, the fact that there are no wires and you can control the media player from them makes up for a lot in convenience. Good for several activities. Lastly, I tried the stereo headset the BB Curve comes with. Their drivers were obviously more sensitive, so had higher volume levels, but the sound really wasn't very good (as can be expected).

I had the Verizon LG Chocolate2 which was *supposed* to be like an iPod phone... no thanks!! The media player ABSOLUTELY sucked... and that's saying it lightly. It had proprietary connections and more. It didn't even have the ability to read the ID3 tags and determine the songs track number to play them in the correct order... instead it played songs alphabetically. WTF?!?!? The BB has no such issue. In fact, the only complaint I would have about how it organizes songs is that for Artist, it uses the individual song artist instead of the "Album Artist" value which is a better way to sort in my opinion. It's really not a big deal, and some people may prefer this way.

I don't see this replacing my iPod any time soon, mainly because of storage limitations. My iPod is 60GB, and the most you will ever be able to get in a BB Curve is 32GB when they eventually release microSDHC cards that high. For now, I will most likely get an 8GB card (I don't think I can wait for the 16GB ones due out later this year... partially because they will be much higher in price for a good while). When 32GB cards are available for reasonable prices, I could see me carrying my iPod less and less. The iPod will probably always be a "better" media player... but convenience and only carrying one device has to count for something. Being mobile and travelling taught me that.

Just couldn't take it... Switched to a BlackBerry Curve

There were several things that bugged me to the point of deciding to switch from the Treo 700w and Windows Mobile devices in general to a BlackBerry Curve from Sprint. I'm not sure I can capture them all here, but I'll give it a shot.

1. OS and Apps crashing - I updated to the latest firmware for the 700w. It was still WM5, and I don't know if WM6.x solves these issues, but I didn't want to risk spending more on a new device to find out it's the same old same old.
2. Battery Life - The battery just wouldn't last long (not even a full day) and that's without push email working (more on that later). I did not set it up to automatically download email either because the battery would drain even faster. When traveling, there are MANY instances where there is no opportunity to charge... I also can't be without a phone when traveling.
3. Push Email not working - This was not the fault of the device or WM, but rather my companies inability to get Exchange ActiveSync working. HOWEVER, that would *only* enable push for work email, not any personal accounts... so getting those personal accounts emails still required manual intervention or no battery life. That's just not acceptable to me.
4. Beautiful Apps with great features/functions... that don't always work - I can say, after only a couple days of using the BlackBerry and the apps (some the same as the WM apps), that the WM versions are MUCH prettier to look at, and in some cases have better feature sets (Viigo as one specific example). However, these apps seem buggy and prone to issues. I don't think it was the application developers fault, but it is what it is. Maybe I'm even alone on this finding and those apps are working perfectly for others on WM, but my experience was not good... and this follows back through the history of Windows CE, PocketPC, etc. Some of the apps I'm referring to have a pretty long history on Windows Mobile through it's life stages... so with that kind of history, shouldn't they work better?
5. Multi-tasking and pitfalls - One thing WM had over the Palm OS was multi-tasking... but the BlackBerry handles that in spades now. WM seemed to have issues here if an app was posing problems, which happened frequently enough. I don't doubt that the BlackBerry could run into these same issues, especially bumping into a memory limitation, but if the apps are more stable, I have to believe it will happen less.
6. Touchscreen functions as opposed to hardware buttons only - I know there are WM phones that do not have a touchscreen, but I'm certain they are plagued with many of the same issues listed above. The problem with the touchscreen is that you have to change your input method, and in MANY cases need to pull out a stylus and use that because whatever you need to press or click is too small for your fingers. I set the touchscreen to lock when in a call on the Today screen... but then it displayed a lock message over some of the on screen buttons and I couldn't tell which was which to mute the call or put it on speakerphone. All of the touchscreen functions REALLY bugged me to no end. Any way I sliced it, I was getting a phone that did NOT include a touchscreen. (for those out there in love with their iPhone and touchscreen only input... good luck. I have a friend who's iPhone touchscreen stopped working in certain sectors of the screen, namely the unlock slide, and also the "one (hardware) button" eventually broke. When he went to speak to the Apple "Geniuses", they told him there was nothing they could do to fix it and he would need to buy another one... WTF?!?!?)

So, I am VERY happy with my choice thus far and plan on posting my findings about the BlackBerry. I also plan on detailing things I liked better on Windows Mobile than the BlackBerry and vice versa. I'll probably discuss apps for it and review them as best I can.

Obviously, everyone's mileage and opinions vary... this is just mine.

Viigo... acting funky on my Treo

**Update** See the comments... you'll never believe this...
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If you missed my post on Viigo, check it out.

Well, I know this is still beta, so I'm truly not upset... but I thought I'd share something that has been going wrong with Viigo on my Treo. My guess, too, is that this is more an issue with WM than it is on Blackberry devices.

Because Windows Mobile has the ability to multi-task, or have multiple applications running at the same time and switch between them, I think Viigo is getting confused or something. If I run Viigo and do not leave that app, it seems to work just fine and great even. However, if I turn off my screen or try and switch to another app, it seems Viigo is actually crashing. I say "crashing" because it doesn't appear to close cleanly. The app takes up the full screen, so even the WM title bar at the top of the screen. When Viigo crashes, it leaves the Viigo app covering the title bar. So far, the only way I found to get the title bar back was to do a soft reset on my device (essentially rebooting it).

One other thing that I noticed, it's not the fastest app on my Treo. This could be for a couple reasons: 1) Memory?, 2) CPU speed, 3) The app is not optimized enough for WM?

Working on the theory that the app is not optimized for WM, I think this may be it because if I have Viigo running and go to the start menu and select it again, it starts another instance of that app. This may not be the best way to get back to an app, but all my other apps in WM will get me right back to the running instance if I select it from the Start Menu and it's already running. The reason I use the Start Menu is because it requires the least amount of steps to get to it (it has a hardware button and then select the app, instead of bringing up the task manager, selecting the app, then clicking "Activate").

Anyway, I'm not trying to take anything away from how awesome Viigo is, just throwing out a possible bug with the current beta version.

NoviiMedia... dud on my 700wx

As I posted, I installed and tried NoviiMedia's remote application.

At first, I thought maybe I wasn't using the correct code bases for my electronics, but after everything failing from my couch, I decided to get up close and personal with my electronics and see if it was a distance thing (the NoviiMedia site showed the Treo 700wx having an effective range of 6-12 feet). Once I got right up to it, the remote did in fact work.... ummm, isn't the idea of a remote to allow you NOT to be within arms reach of the device you are trying to control?!? ;-)

Oh well, I wasn't THAT hopeful it would work. It would have been cool, but it's not that big of a deal honestly.

So, my advice to ANYONE with interest in this app: Try before you buy (I did and am glad).

I know they had SD card IR sensor add-ons for the Treo 650, but I haven't looked for that and quite frankly I don't think I'd go to all the trouble of pulling out my current SD card and inserting that thing just to get a semi-decent learning remote with limited macros. I'd rather spend the $99 and get the Logitech Harmony or the XBOX 360 centric Harmony since I have a 360 hooked up to my Vista Ultimate PC. ;-)

Treo 700wx bummer...

I searched around for a SDHC driver for my 700wx and found one. The problem is, my 16GB SDHC card is being seen as only about 3.5GB (before it wouldn't recognize it at all, so I guess it's progress). My 4GB (non-SDHC) cards show the whole thing though.

I was really hoping that I could use my 16GB cards with this so it would be a better media player (without switching cards around). I don't think I'd try to have it replace my iPod since it really wasn't designed specifically for media player capabilities... but mobile Window Media Player is still a pretty solid performer. And my firmware update gave me stereo bluetooth support which works well.

Welcome | Viigo | Living Life Untethered

Welcome | Viigo | Living Life Untethered

Once again, as with most things, my BFF turned me on to another very cool software/service. Viigo does so much I don't know where to start. For one, it's an RSS reader, but it can pull in sports scores live, subscribe to podcasts and vidcasts, provide weather and they are constantly adding additional features.

The fact that this is free blows me away!

Remember everything. | Evernote Corporation

Remember everything. | Evernote Corporation

I couldn't find any screenshots of the WM Evernote client, but it rocks. Being able to capture thoughts and web pages, etc, then have them synced up to the interwebs is sweet. It syncs with my Windows PC's as well, and I can just go to the web page and get at my notes from anywhere!!

You should certainly give this a whirl.

NoviiMedia / Pocket PC Solutions / NoviiRemote Deluxe for Pocket PC

NoviiMedia / Pocket PC Solutions / NoviiRemote Deluxe for Pocket PC

So, I think I already created a post that I'm getting back to this blog because of several reasons. The main reason is because I am switching phones, back to a smartphone.

Currently, I switched back to my Sprint Treo 700wx which has Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 Phone Edition. I have to say that Palm REALLY does a great job customizing the OS and Today Screen to make it more user friendly as a phone, since ultimately that's what this device is and needs to be. The PDA functionality is just icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned.

And speaking of the icing, I'm going to try NoviiRemote Deluxe to see if I can use my phone as a customizable remote with macro capability. It looks like there are limitations on how much you can do with the macros, but some macro ability is better than none. ;-)

I'll try and post my review soon.

Wow! It's been a while...

A lot has changed for me, but I still use my n800. I have, however, stopped using Linux on my desktop PCs and switched to Windows Vista on my desktop and Windows 2008 Server for my server. I have been VERY happy with my change back to Windows.

On top of that, I am now switching back to a smartphone after having abandoned the idea and switching to a more standard phone. I'm switching back because I've started texting and the lack of a real keyboard was starting to piss me off. So expect to see some posts regarding that and other posts on how my outlook and computer use has changed.

So check back soon... maybe tomorrow I'll actually have a new smartphone.