Goodbye Palm, Hello Blackberry!

[turnbase]

Had the BlackBerry a year now, and very satisfied. When smartphones started coming out I never thought I'd need a camera, but it sure has been handy for documenting projects and family fun. Miss some of the cool stuff I had on the old big screen Palms, like planetarium, tide tables and other nifty apps, but the communications and pim functions have been very acceptableon the BB.

Still, I envy some of the features on those iPhones my friends have, and that iPad thingy does look most inviting...

[LandSurveyor]

It does have the virtue of simplicity. Including the simplest email setup known to man.

Maybe instead of an Ipad, you can consider the Playbook when available.

[Robert_27]

I am with nokia 1661 phone and I'm thinking to buy new smart phone. I heard blackberry is good for chitchat as I love too. I am thinking to buy blackberry curve 8520 (Link Removed) as one of my friend suggest me, but i want to cross check the review if any one had curve 8520 please tell me its original review. I want a perfect phone for this year as I have no more money to waste.

[r0k]

It does have the virtue of simplicity. Including the simplest email setup known to man.

Maybe instead of an Ipad, you can consider the Playbook when available.

I must agree that BB email is superior to iOS email. For instance, I receive all my email forwarded to a single gmail account that "aggregates" email from school, work, and several volunteer groups. On a BB, when I reply, there's no problem replying as the person the email was addressed to. Not so on iOS. On iOS I must select a "reply as" persona from a list of accounts I have set up on the phone. It sort of defeats the purpose of having an email aggregator whether it's gmail or even mobile me. I've found a workaround that required me to set up an imap server for each and every persona I want to "reply as". Rather clunky. When I went to the Apple store and talked to them about this, they consider it an "advanced feature." You're kidding, right? Still this isn't enough to make me ever go back to blackberry after the miserable app experience I had on my 8830. It was delightful for battery life and for email but it had less memory than my ancient Treo 650!

I am with nokia 1661 phone and I'm thinking to buy new smart phone. I heard blackberry is good for chitchat as I love too. I am thinking to buy blackberry curve 8520 as one of my friend suggest me, but i want to cross check the review if any one had curve 8520 please tell me its original review. I want a perfect phone for this year as I have no more money to waste.

You might want to avoid the physical trackball. It's great for about 6 months until it starts getting really dirty. Mine got so gummed up and I had to clean it so often I got used to doing it in the car while at a stop light. Imagine how useless a 'berry would be with its trackball rolling around on the floor of a moving car. Another reason to avoid older models is to get the newer OS with the webkit browser. If you care about using the internet, you don't want any BB OS older than 6.0.

[rkevwill]

Whichever BB you purchase, make sure it has at least 512 mb chip. You will need that to run the latest OS, BB OS6. Anything with less, and you might as well be in 2007.

[SyncRaven]

I am with nokia 1661 phone and I'm thinking to buy new smart phone. I heard blackberry is good for chitchat as I love too. I am thinking to buy blackberry curve 8520

The curve is a good functional phone. Personally I would be leaning towards a newer storm but it depends on if touch-screen is your thing .
The latest has a much bigger screen.

[Robert_27]

hey thanks friends for your kind suggetions, one of my friend suggest me "If you are able to, I'd suggest getting the 9300 instead of the 8520, mostly because the 9300 supports OS6, and the 8520 doesn't. The 9300 has 3g and gps too." As you rok and rkevwill suggest keep in mind os6. so i think have to go for 9300. what you say my friends is it right decision?

[r0k]

I think you are on the right track. When considering a BB, newer is always better. I remember walking around with a cheaper albeit older device and seeing app reviews at various sites like Crackberry and 9 times out of 10 they required a newer OS than what I happened to be running at the time.

[ptootill]

After a year with an N900 replacing my Palm TX, I have joined the BB fold. I have a Pearl 9105 3G. The specific reason is that I can use UMA with Orange UK at home. There is virtually no mobile signal and the ability to use all the normal phone functions (in and outgoing calls with my normal number - not Skype and SMS) is very liberating.
The more general reason is that the N900 is a sidetrack and the hoped for (by me) improved PIM apps have still to materialise.
I also wanted something phone sized that will easily slip in the small pouch in my jeans (I have never known what that was for). It suits me fine so far (I have had it for a month or so). Battery life is v good, the screen is too small but I have to trade that for compactness. The keyboard is multi-tap, like many other phones. Not ideal but it will do.

The worst aspect is, surprisingly, email. I don't have a corporate a/c and the IMAP client is severely crippled. I think that's a topic for a different thread though..