I am a Blackberry fan boy at heart. I love the full qwerty keyboard, the enterprise level security, Blackberry Internet Service, BBM and the Bold II is still my phone of choice. However, I needed to replace my iPod and when I started shopping around I found it cheaper to buy a new iPhone 4 (price matched and staff discount applied) than to buy a new iPod. So I am not the owner (not so proud I have to admit) of a brand new iPhone 4. I haven’t used it much yet as it is currently sat at home charging whilst I deal with my hangover at work, but the UI is shiny and smooth; although is no where near as user friendly as the marketing bods at Apple would have me believe.
I won’t be using it much as a phone, but I will probably make good use of the fact I essentially have an iPod touch with 3g!
I have been itching to really get to grips with unleashing the power of my Blackberry device since I upgraded earlier this year. It seems this itch has taken a back seat as I have been busy with other things. That is until now.
The last week or so I have been experimenting with what applications I add to really make a difference to how I would normally interact with my phone or with the world at large. The Blackberry app market is not as saturated as the iPhone apps market, nor is it as easy to navigate and find the apps that you may be interested in. However, the apps themselves are as powerful as those for the iPhone and come with the massive benefit of not having to own an iPhone to use!
I am sure that as time goes on I will find soem more apps to add, but for the time being I have gone for a relatively small selection that really make a big difference:
WordPress for Blackberry – a fantastic app that allows full access to my wordpress blogs without needing to enter via the browser. This means you can write and edit the draft offline then when you are happy with the end result publish it in seconds. The features are pretty powerful and the UI is not bad to look at. Needs a little more work on the higher end functionality like adding media etc, but for text based blogging it is far easier than using the email functionality in wordpress!
Facebook – no Blackberry is really compelte without a social networking app. i have not yet worked out how to get it to tell me about new event invites, but it does let me synch existing events with my BB calendar.
Viigo – this RSS and news aggregator is a fantastic bit of kit. Took less than 5 mins to set up all the feeds I subscribe to and it also includes suggestions of related sites and feeds. The best bit about it is the almost complete control you have over how it displays your information. This really helps to prevent info overload!
Google Maps – BB based version of the popular web based mapping software. Ties in nicely with the BB GPS system.
Windows Live Messenger – a BB version of the IM software.
Gmail – Again, the BB app verison of the webmail service from Google. I actually don’t use it so much as I have my gmail accounts set up within the email system, but a useful backup none the less.
Installed and set up wordpress for Blackberry application. Now I can blog on my phone! Makes this update section far more useful!
I have just acquired my first new handset for ages! It’s two years since I upgraded from a Nokia N90 to the N95, which I then proceeded to lose at V Fest last year. Since then I have been using Liz’s old phone until my staff contract with O2 allowed me to upgrade.
My longstanding dislike of all things Apple includes the iPhone, so one of those was out of the question. There are a couple of Sony Erricson and Samsung’s knocking about that would probably have done the job. In the end though, I went for the latest incarnation of the BlackBerry Curve, the 8900 Smartphone.
I will hope to get a review of it out on the blog soon enough (though many of you are still waiting on my promised review on my Asus 901 – it’s almost ready, honest), but in the mean time just know that I am alrady loving it and can’t understand why I have never been tempted by a “CrackBerry” before!
