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Another day another Blackberry

// August 16th, 2008 // Tech

I’m a blackberry user – I make no apologies for it. I’m not a Crackberry Head and fairly frequently use the Phone Only setting or even turn it off completely but, as it stands, I am a blackberry user. I’m also a tech head and am very, very demanding of my phones. They have to do an awful lot of heavy lifting and they have to do it well, fast and generally keep my happy. I mean look at the history? I spent an entire weekend getting a phone to sync via bluetooth.

My first Blackberry was the Pearl. A dinky little phone that happened to have some nice email features. I actually fell in love with the Blackberry approach to phone OS and the messaging, call quality and feature set were superb – by far the best phone I’d owned until that point (and this includes the Pebl, a Treo, a Nokia flip thingy and the Ericsson). The only problem with the Pearl … ok the only two problems with the Pearl,first the more I used the email side of things, the more frustrated I got with the multitap keyboard entry method. It was quick but not as quick as it needed to be in order to actually be useful. The second – the pearl on the Pearl stopped working. This meant I was able to take my Jersey Telecom annual upgrade and grab a:

Curve – full qwerty keyboard and all of the features I’d come to know and love. Packeged neatly in a unit that was of managable size. I was happy with the Curve – it did everything I needed from a phone and was generally the best possible compromise between form and function … except for 2 problems, one, it was GPRS, EDGE only – no Wifi out of the box and no GPS. Sure I bolted a bluetooth GPS recieved onto the package but that meant another (albeit small) box to carry around with me. Secondly, the memory card was buried in the depths of the phone requiring a reboot to get at it (and anyone who’s used a recent Blackberry will know, a full power cycle takes about 3 minutes) not ideal. Sure I could mount the card via the USB on the laptop but I have a card reader built in and want the speed as provided.

Another JT Upgrade was due in May and I Umm’d and Ahh’d about the newer Curves with GPS & Wifi. I considered dumping the Blackberry completely and grabbing a HTC or even another Treo and in the end I went into the store an took a look at the options.

Surprise the first – JT were prepared to pretty much give me any phone if I took out an 18 month contract. Well I’d been with them for 6 years already so another 18 months doesn’t seem too bad. Score!

Surprise the second – the Curve comes with either Wifi or built in GPS – not both! Bummer to the max as I wanted the Wifi for business type reasons and the GPS for dicking about with sattelites and maps.

Turns out the only unit JT offered with both was the 8820… which I now have. It cost me nothing aside from the 18 month contract and so far is working very well indeed. The Wifi ensures top speed at home and at work, the GPS works well.

Plus the 8820 is a business oriented machine, which means VPN out of the box for secure mail when away from my home network and a load of other dinky features (including full support for my SSH client – remote control my servers from my mobile – pretty damn cool!)

Anyway, the 8820 should keep me mostly happy for the next 18 months, at least until such time as the Thunder and next generation of blackberries are available… then, well who knows!