My experience with BlackBerry Torch (9800)

As expected in my post titled Android, no more..., when my mobile phone contract was due an upgrade I didn't go with an Android device, many factors affected my choice, mainly "out of the box" Arabic support - I got myself a BlackBerry Torch (9800) ! If you want a list of its specs you can check them here.

 Below is a list of factors that made me go with BlackBerry.

1. Arabic support out of the box. Having suffered from lack of Arabic support on my previous Android device, it became the first thing to check when choosing a new mobile phone. I was happy when testing the device in the store, I browsed to Arabic web site, and it displayed as expected, no more squares ... I could read Arabic emails, websites, tweets, etc... without having to install anything at all.
2. Push technology. This meant I receive emails instantly for any email address I setup. On the other side, this will save battery life as email was "pushed" to the device, rather than the device "pulling" emails.
3. Webkit browser. When it comes to mobile web browsing BlackBerry devices with OS 5 or earlier, aren't the best, but with OS 6, Webkit based browser (same browser used on many platforms, including Android) was introduced, though still lacks "Flash" support, but it's way better than previous versions, especially when used with the touch screen.
4. Response time. As we're talking about my experience, honestly, the response time on my previous device, there was about a second or so lag between when I press a button and actually get the response; whereas on the Torch, it was so fast that it felt as if it responded before my finger touched the screen!
5. Battery life. Again, switching from Android device, where I had to charge the device at least once everyday, this was definitely an advantage.
6. BBM. I ran Instant Messenger on mobile phones before, but having an IM application running in the background (keep pulling the data), your battery won't last long, with BB it didn't really affect the battery at all. 
7. Touch screen / slide-out keyboard. This is one of the things I liked most, as you can use the "on screen" keyboard (portrait and landscape), which is useful when typing in Arabic (or any other than non-Latin character language), and or the hardware keyboard, which once used to, it is so comfortable, and the typing accuracy rate is high.

The above list is only some of things I liked about BlackBerry Torch. There are many other things that I like that aren't listed above, and I'm more than happy to share my experience if you ask.

My relationship with my iPOD Touch 3G 64GB

How it all began:
I got it as a birthday present. At first I thought, this is the best mobile thing in the market that plays music. How accurate was that?
A few months afterwards*, I found myself not only downloading music on my iPOD Touch, video clips, and short YouTube videos but best of all came in the form of my favourite anime shows. Today my iPOD has more than 10 different anime series, some of them are more than a 100 episodes. Lately, I harnessed a new iPOD addiction- downloading free apps from the apple store!
Some apps include games, puzzles, dictionaries, encyclopedias, audio books, touristic info, TV and radio broadcasting stations (including a few news channels). Yet, the most alluring ones were hypnosis apps! Indeed you can get hypnosis sessions from the comfort of your couch! Now how effective those are is yet another matter. My experience of them however, was one of sheer amusement and delight.
To conclude, today I share with this little device a part of myself. I have develpoed an irreversible relationship with it. I reach out for my iPOD whenever I need anything from How to Make Suchi to Whats Happening in Ouagadougou. And yes, my friend (who is a new iPOD Touch owner and who's status on Facebook recently changed back to "single") had a point when she expressed, "with the iPOD Touch at hand who needs a boyfriend"!

Eva

* for an IT phobic like me, that's actually quite fast!

Android, no more...

Android, that nice "mobile" / "smart phones" operating system....

There are many things I like about it, to name a few:

- Google Contacts sync: few years ago, if you reset your phone, it means you should have a backup copy of your contacts (and many other things to that matter) to restore them after the reset. For contacts, you don't have to have a backup... recently, I had to reset my phone, and shortly after logging in to my Google account, my contacts were synchronised and ready to be used on my phone. The other thing I like about Contact sync is if you update a contact on your phone, it'll update on Google Contacts, so you won't have different entries of one contact; I have to say this is great.
- The browser:  based on WebKit, (in my opinion) it is one of the best built-in browsers for mobile phones!
- The Market: loads and loads of free useful apps and nice games, almost anything you think of, there is an app for it, and most probably, it's free. Some of the free apps, ConnectBot (SSH client), AndFTP (FTP, SFTP and FTPS client), Twitter, Seesmic (Twitter client), Voxofon, Spotify, Wikidroid (Wikipedia client), Kindle (read ebooks) ... the list is endless.... I think I've read it somewhere that Android Market is most popular with its "free apps" as iPhone market is with its "paid apps".

The list of  things I like about Android goes on, but for me, Android does lack one essential component, ability to read / write Arabic (technically, as it's an open source, it's ready but lacks the required Arabic fonts due to internal memory size). Anyway I won't go into much technical details...., I couldn't read anything (emails, websites, Tweets, etc...) that contain Arabic characters! You basically see squares instead of the Arabic characters.
Due to this fact, a guy logged an issue on Android site, Arabic support was logged as an "issue" (and it's considered an "Enhancement issue" and its priority is "Medium", with all the Arabic users that use Android, really!
You can get Arabic on Android if you "root" your device, which voids your warranty! But then again, why would I want to loose my warranty while I can get Arabic natively supported on other devices? (Blackberry 9700, iPhone 3G - I assume 4G does include it as well-, etc... even my SonyEricsson T715 can read Arabic natively).
Honestly, when I bought the phone, I didn't check whether it supports Arabic or not, I didn't think that it may not ! Especially that Android is a Google product and Google has support for all languages, even translation and transliteration, this led me to my false assumption that Android must have support for Arabic; I was wrong !
This situation (lack of Arabic support on operation system) reminded me of Windows 3.1 where the original set of floppy disks that contained Windows 3.1 was English only, and if I wanted Arabic support, there was a different set of floppy disks (with two floppy disks more than the English version) that contained Arabic fonts etc...that was roughly early 90s! This is 2010 !

Given the above, (apps, features, bells and whistles, etc... available in an Android phone), when I'll buy my next mobile, unless Arabic is supported natively, I don't think I'll consider an Android phone.

Andoird 2.1 upgrade

I have T-Mobile G2 (aka HTC Hero).
I bought this phone round about October 2009; it had Android 1.5.
I kept hearing that we'll get an update to the firmware which had many benefits along with performance improvement. The first upgrade was supposed to be 1.6, but it got delayed, then delayed again, then further delays.... until Android 2.1 was out.
Personally, I was looking forward for the upgrade mainly for three reasons:
1- "Hoping" the new release will support Arabic
2- Performance
3- Battery life

On Saturday 10 July 2010, I received a pop up on my phone to upgrade the firmware; having waited for so long, I was so glad to see that prompt; it downloaded with no problem, but failed to install; basically, part of the setup was to reboot the phone (automatically), once rebooted, I got exclamation mark inside a triangle, and nothing happens.... the only way to get the phone back to remove the battery and put it back in.
I left it for a week hoping I'll get the prompt again, but nothing...
I called T-Mobile support (a week later, on 17/07/2010), they suggested leave it till the end of the month, as I should get the prompt again, and it should work....
A week later (24/07/2010), I got the prompt again, and exactly the same thing happened as the first time.
I called support again, ... they suggested many things, and I tried them all, and nothing worked. even a factory reset, didn't work.

On HTC website the T-Mobile section, was providing ROM version was 2.73.110.26, which I already had (the exact version) on my mobile.
Being so desperate to get the upgrade, I downloaded it and installed on my phone (even though during the installation it said you don't need to install this if you already have it). It installed with no errors.
I got the prompt to upgrade again, and this time, it took longer, but at the end I had Android 2.1 :)

After the upgrade, I had an issue with Facebook HTC Sense and Google Contacts sync. The issue was, some of my Google contacts not appearing on my phone, some were, but without their Facebook "thumbnail" image showing next to their name.
WARNING: I didn't mind removing all my contacts, as I just got the firmware upgraded after a factory reset on the phone. Don't attempt this on your phone!
I got it resolved by deleting Facebook for HTC Sense deleted from the phone (Menu -> Settings -> Accounts & sync -> Facebook for HTC Sense -> Remove account), and on Facebook, I went to Application Settings, and deleted the HTC Sense application, then I re-added them (on the phone and on Facebook), and left it.
That fixed it for me, but I didn't see any change till the next day.

- Performance was a lot better, response time, etc..., having experienced the slowness, it's really nice to see that improvement.. it felt like it's a new hardware.

- Unfortunately, still no Arabic support, which is odd. If you browse a web page with Arabic contents, you'll see squares.... iPhone, Blackberry and many others come with Arabic support as default. Not having this support in Android, is a really drawback for Android.
Honestly, I didn't expect Android not to support Arabic by default. If I knew that it didn't support Arabic, I would have second thoughts about buying the device.
To read more about Arabic Android issue, click here...

Many have Arabic support on Android, but they rooted their phone, something that void the warranty! Why would someone want to void their warranty for something not available in Android phone, but is available on most other platforms ?

- Battery life, I didn't any notice improvement as I still have to charge roughly every 24 hours, maybe it's down to my setup and applications that I have running.

Overall, many major improvements from Android 1.5 to 2.1, mainly (for me) the response time..., but lacking Arabic support (still), is a major drawback.

What I didn't like about BB 9700 - SW

Continuing from my previous post, this one is about what I didn't like about the Blackberry 9700's software.

In general, it was good, but there were few things to mention:

- Internet connection is required for some applications to launch. Twitter, WeatherBug, etc...  won't launch if no connection is available (i.e., no signal or WiFi)

- facebook Blackberry client too slow, receiving notification was OK, but getting News feed update was too slow (could be related to the proxy - see below), opening pictures was slower, even if connected through WiFi.


- Proxy: I didn't like the fact that even I was using my own WiFi connection, it was going through proxy server, that I didn't set it up (it was set by default), and I wasn't able to find a quick way of changing it.

- Only one row of shortcuts: Though shortcuts are customizable, you can only have one row on your main screen (mine contained 6 shortcuts - this is the Blackberry OS 5) but the good this is in the new version Blackberry OS 6 to be released soon), you'll have more.

This was the last  post in this series, I hope you'll find it useful, my next post will be my overall user experience with the Blackberry 9700.

If have any question regarding this, please leave a comment and I'll reply ASAP.

Thank you for reading.

What I liked about BB 9700 - SW

This is the third post about my experience with the Bold 9700; if you haven't done yet, you might like to read the first and the second post.



The software

The social media software were available (for many reasons, I didn't expect them on a Blackberry) like Facebook - Twitter, etc...

- "Auto on/off" feature; with this feature I even got the battery to last longer; the phone will go into "sleep" mode with minimal battery usage, and will it turn itself on automatically, on the time I specified.

- Push, email, Twitter (mentions and DM), Facebook notifications, etc... Arrive almost instantly (though it depends on the connection I had at the time, there were times where it took about 15 minutes...).

- Interface - I changed the main screen background image and put the most used shortcuts /icons on the main screen; it was so easy to figure out, even without reading the manual.

- Sending emails/SMS: I found sending messages from Blackberry so easy, I had multiple email accounts setup, selecting a new email from the menu is easy, writing it was also easy (once I got used to the keyboard), to select who to send it to, you start typing first few letters, and it suggested names from my contacts, if I had a contact with multiple email addresses, I'll get a prompt to choose which one I want to send to. what I liked most about it, is sending an email n a "non signal" area (i.e., on my daily train journey, the signal is bad); I just write the email and send; it acts as my desktop email client, the email goes to the outbox, and once signal is back (connection is established), the email will be sent automatically; unlike many other email clients that complain about "connection not available", etc....

- Sound Profiles: I setup a "Sound Profile" that gets the device to ring only when incoming call was from a specific person, and the device was in its holster (I can setup the profile to ring/vibrate/"do nothing" differently if it was out of its holster). I could control the number of vibrations (1, 2 .... up to 10), sound level (high / low / silent), ...

With so many notification the phone can generate (from Facebook, Twitter, calendar reminder, emails reception -btw I had multiple email accounts and I can specify the notification on each one separately- SMS, Instant Messages, .... the list go on.... this level of notification customization is great.


- Windows Live Messenger: Always online, (the desktop version in your pocket, so convenient to stay in touch), yet doesn't affect the battery much; the only 2 things I couldn't do on the mobile version (but can on the desktop) are: video call and audio call. Other than that, everything is the same. ah.. one option that's not available on the desktop, I can specify an "alert" for an offline person, so that whenever they get online, I get the notification. (note this application is developed by RIM).

- PIN messages: As every Blackberry device got its own PIN number, this functionality is very similar to an Instant Message client (where you can send a text or MMS or even a voice note to any Blackberry user anywhere in the world). Honestly, with this device, the line between text messages and emails is getting blurred.

- Search: being able to search emails and text with "advanced" criteria was really nice (and unique) experience on a mobile device.

What I didn't like about BB 9700 - HW

Continuing from previous post, here is what I didn't like about the BB 9700 hardware. Again, this is my own personal experience / view.

- Screen size, relatively and compared to most smart phones, it is small.

- Trackpad, while I was using the device, I wished I had other ways to use the device than the trackpad. 1st: unless my fingers are totally dry (I.e., just washed my hands, or had to catch the train so I ran and now on the train but sweating; in both situations my fingers aren't totally dry) using the trackpad is difficult and won't point to what I intended accurately, sometimes I had to try few attempts before I could select what I wanted. 2nd given the screen size, even though my fingers were dry, using the trackpad in applications such as twitter or facebook for BB wasn't easy, for example, in facebook, I pressed "like" many times when I didn't intend to!

- The speaker is located on the back, above the camera and the word "Bold"(in the middle). I think every speaker has to have a magnet, and most phones do. I noticed this by chance. I put the device down next to a coin and when I pulled it back up, the coin was attached to it!

I think this is related, not sure though... I answered a phone call with the device on my ear (i.e., not using earphones) after about 5 - 6 minutes, I started feeling uncomfortable in my ear; few minutes after ending the call, the feeling in my ear got back to "normal", (this might be related to me only).