Very Impressed with BlackBerry!
This week I bought a new device. My PPC-6700 had seen better days and I was ready for a change. I considered the Mogul, but I was tired of messing with on-screen keypads and wanted a device with the QWERTY thumboard on the front, rather than as a slide out. I was also looking forward to benefiting from the value created through context with location based applications, which the 6700 lacked and the Mogul doesn’t support.
All of these requirements led me to the RIM 8830 Blackberry. I may never take advantage of the phone’s international capabilities, but I love the size and form factor. The 8830 features RIM’s new trackball interface and works over Sprint’s EV-DO mobile broadband network.
My biggest fear was learning a new operating system. I bought the very first Palm Pilot, introduced by US Robotics back around the time USR was getting acquired by 3Com (remember all that?). It was a cool device, but when Microsoft introduced the Windows CE operating systems, I bought one of the very first devices to support it. I’ve been a Windows Mobile user ever since. Several years ago, when I joined Sprint, I switched to a Treo because Sprint didn’t yet have any Microsoft devices. But the pain of relearning the Palm OS was debilitating and as soon as Sprint introduced a reasonable Windows device, I switched back.
Amazingly, there was no learning curve for me on the BlackBerry. The trackball makes selecting applications and moving around within them as simple as any point and click interface. All applications consistently use the menu button, the “back” button, and the exit button.
The first application I purchased for my BlackBerry was TeleNav’s navigation software. It’s great. The turn-by-turn directions are as helpful and accurate as the expensive system built into my wife’s car, but at $10/month, TeleNav is a bargain. Not to mention that I’ll have my navigation with me even when I travel or am in a friend’s car.
Bottom line - I’m loving my new device!