In a previous post, I spoke about how I was irritated by my phone device (Nokia E75), and was going to try out a Blackberry Bold 9000.
Well, I tried it. And I have been trying it since mid-December. And, I have to say, I get it. I get the whole Blackberry phenomenon. It does e-mail really, really well. Its simple to use, and has a decent superficial skin. Poke a bit deeper though, and you quickly hit the smartphone equivalent of a DOS prompt; long linear lists of text, with obscure configuration options with no decent help.
I have activated it using my employer's BES server, and thankfully, they haven't gone down the whole "lets lock everything down" route; its relatively untouched and was actually quite a slick process. There are some issues overall though.
- there is no way to switch off e-mail syncing - ever
- the battery lasts about 1.5 days if you're a light phone user, a day if you're a moderate user and not a minute longer
- if you use a BES, you are forced to browse and access the Internet through your corporate's network
- your device experience is only as good as your IT department's competence
- the default "blink red for every e-mail" notification is annoying, and should be disabled
My summary; I've put the equivalent of a pay-as-you-use card into the device, and will continue to use it as a "work" device. It fulfills this role perfectly, and if I ever go overseas, I know I'll use this device a lot because of the unlimited data plan. But as the overall personal/work device, this isn't there yet.
