Blackberry Torch 9800 long term review

English: BlackBerry Torch opened (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It has been a year of owning a Blackberry torch 9800, so I thought I would do a long term review of my thoughts about it. I have not been overly in awe of Blackberry, I was expecting something more from it but it just hasn’t delivered that knockout punch that would sell me as a brand ambassador for Blackberry.

As much as I am not overly impressed by Blackberry neither am I disappointed. The phone has done its job without any incident or faults in the last year. The much debated battery is actually very good, surprisingly, I can go about three days with lots of use out of it on a single charge. Typical usage for me includes phone calls, e-mails, browsing, Bluetooth wireless car-kit when driving, making occasional use of wi-fi networking in offices, so I use my phone for almost all of its capabilities.

The outage experienced last year by RIM did affect me, Blackberry messenger messages didn’t go through and browsing was painfully slow but for the 2-3 days it affected me, I could still phone people and just used my laptop for everything else, yes laptops still are useful.

Phone wise, I am content to bordering on happy with it. A good friend is still clinging to his Nokia and often his phone gives him some minor issues and freezes up on him, mine I think has frozen on me maybe four times. Where the Nokia is better and far superior is not so much the phone but in the Ovi suite. Blackberry Desktop Manager is dismal at best.

I don’t know why Blackberry even made such a useless piece of software. It looks and feels very much an afterthought almost like “...well Nokia and Apple have desktop software I guess we should do as well.” I wrote a blog post about a couple things to make Blackberry better and from almost a year ago to today and a couple of versions of desktop software later, it is still pathetic.

With Ovi suite you almost have full access to your phone. With Blackberry you can back it up and browse some files. I want to be able to use BBM through my pc, send sms’s, update my contacts and more but this is just not possible. Don’t even get me started on the maps, this also seems to be a case of our competitors have it so let us put a map system on as well.

Where the phone is great and is well beyond the iPhones, Nokia and Androids of this world is its e-mail support and BBM. Yes iPhones, Nokia and Android have good clients and their own chat applications but on this front Blackberry still comes out tops.

The Appworld is not vast and although I have not paid for an app and only downloaded the odd free one it is adequate for your average user. Apart from missing Angry Birds there are similar apps available to Blackberry as there are on other devices. It is also good to note that Blackberry was originally designed for the corporate market and was focused there for a long time before becoming consumer focused.

Another point I have to add is the fact that whilst Blackberry is certainly not indestructible they can endure a fall to the ground and even a kick, unlike certain Apple products that will crack and shatter and leave you with tiny glass shards in your hands if it takes a fall of anything higher than 5cm.

Something that does bother me often and this is not directly a Blackberry fault but more a fault on my service provider. The phone continuously operates on EDGE, there are random spots where I can get 3G signal but these areas feel like they are microscopic as moving the phone a few centimetres away results to reverting back to EDGE again.

In a nutshell, I am happy with the Blackberry a year down the line. I am still not 100% sold on it and will certainly look at other phones when I am due to upgrade but that does not mean I am not get another Blackberry.

Related articles

• RIM hopeful with BlackBerry 10
• BlackBerry Torch 9800: Meet Product Manager Annu Dawar
• Blackberry Torch 9800: The Business Mobile Handset
• BlackBerry 10 Will 'Win' Against iPhone and Android Says RIM
• As touchscreens dominate, Nokia survey says keyboard phones preferred

Nokia N9 - Nokia is back in the game

Image by Nokia RSA via Flickr

Work of Art Smartphone

The new Nokia Smartphone, the N9, is a beautiful piece of electronic wizardry coming together to
become a sure competitor to the much loved iPhone. The new N9 is really an impressive Smartphone; the interface is slick and so easy to use. After many years of falling behind in the Smartphone market Nokia have hit back.

Striking All-screen design

The phone is a perfect fit in your hand, the materials used in the manufacturing of the phone add to its appeal. Technically it is a single piece polycarbonate with a curved glass all-screen front. In reality the plastic used is made from the same material as ice-hockey helmets so that ensures the phone can take some serious damage without breaking. The glass on the front panel is the glass used on helicopters, giving you confidence the phone won't shatter or spider web on the smallest of falls like other smart phones would.

Another plus to the materials used is that the plastic does not block signal, so even with dodgy cellular service you can only blame the carriers and not your phone. The 3.9" AMOLED display makes the display great and gives the effect of everything appearing to float.

Image by Nokia RSA via Flickr

Effortless - just a swipe away

The best part for me about the phone is the way the phone actually works. In short it just does. You just slide your finger over the screen to move onto one of 100 apps permissible on the device. For example you are watching a video clip and decide you want to send a sms, just slide your finger up and select sms, the video clip will pause and resume again when you select the video clip again. Amazing!

The next big thing is NFC, near field communication. Imagine having a funky wireless speaker and you want to play your music through it. Easily enough just touch the top of the phone with the top of the speaker, the two devices will sync and the phone is now playing through the speaker.

The phone has so many other incredible features that you expect with smart phones these days but the thing makes Nokia better than others in this field is the Nokia Maps and navigation. The camera quality is brilliant, with a Carl Zeiss 8MP auto-focus, wide angle lens, allowing for HD quality video capture with stereo audio recording.

Having played with the phone, there is so much more to this phone than one can possible write about in this format. I really suggest you go and see this device for yourself; maybe some lucky people will find it in their Christmas stocking this year...

 Either way I am glad that Nokia have eventually brought a phone to the market that competes head to head with the iPhone and will most likely trump it in every way. However Apple's marketing and the popular belief that Apple is best will make Nokia's comeback very difficult but certainly not impossible.

Visit www.nokian9.co.za for more.

Related articles

• Nokia N9 Review and Nokia N9 Price (myjournal4all.wordpress.com)
• Nokia N9: last of the line (guardian.co.uk)
• Nokia Ships the N9, a Phone Without Apps (technologizer.com)
• Report: Nokia N9 not coming to the U.S. (news.cnet.com)
• Nokia promises several N9 updates, years of support (electronista.com)
• Nokia N9 Will Run Android Apps (appscout.com)

Clouds of 1's and 0's

Cloud computing is fast becoming the future of information technology. Everywhere you go people are talking about it, even people that would not normally speak about something technological are talking about it. Cloud computing and cloud based services are pretty impressive. This blog is done in the cloud, people have been using the cloud for a long time and may not have known about it even.

My initial thoughts on cloud-based services are less than favourable to using it from an enterprise perspective but from an end-user point of view cloud services are fantastic. My concerns are mainly around security of ones data mind you.

Why trust someone else to look after my data? What happens if the company whose hands you have willingly placed your data into fails? Big companies can crash especially in economic times we are in, think Lehman Brothers in 2008 or scarier Worldcom, the big telecommuncations company back in 2005.

Who is to say that the likes of Amazon, Apple, or Google may go bankrupt. Then what will happen to all that data and the businesses that have been reliant on their services being there and suddenly they are not.

At this stage there is no real security regulation of the cloud based services? We would like to think the corporations will look after our data but big companies are also targets for hacking groups which could led to unexpected down time of your business should you be making full use of cloud services.

The accountant may see benefit in moving things to the cloud but for the IT administrator / security engineer the cloud is a potential landslide of issues. In a country like South Africa where a decent internet connection is rare, why would a small business or for that matter a large business move to cloud based services.

Even if the Internet was better what about the issue of power, can we rely on Eskom to provide sufficient power. Sure UPS devices in businesses work for a shortime but eventually you will lose your Internet connection ergo your business. Not every business can have generators running 24/7.

In my opinion cloud based services are not for South Africa yet, the services will become mainstream in SA as they have elsewhere but only because the accountants think it is cheaper. This is until a Telkom outage or Eskom load-shedding incident occurs showing the folly of the decision.

We will not escape the cloud as it is the future. Microsoft are already designing and launching products aimed at the cloud and with pc's, tablets, and phones increasingly needing the internet it is not surprising.

The cloud is coming, will it be a big, grey and stormy one or a beautiful, soft and fluffy one we will not know. The cloud is there on the horizon looming large, lets wait and see what it brings.

Related articles

• Talkin' Tech: Cloud Computing (blogs.cisco.com)
• Everyone becoming a cloud provider: financial services (zdnet.com)
• Next-Generation IT: Why We Need A Cloud Middleman (bjconquest.com)

7 things to Make Blackberry better

Since I got the Blackberry Torch 9800 I have been wondering how it could be better. The phone works well and to date I have no complaints. However there are those little things that you notice over time that would be nice to have when you compare it to other phones and manufacturers.

My 7 things that I hope Blackberry introduce that would make it even better.

1. Improve the Blackberry Desktop Manager software
2. More apps in the App World
3. Improve the usability of Blackberry Maps
4. Voice guided navigation as standard with Blackberry Maps and not through an app
5. Bright, colourful icons
6. E-mail subject lines to scroll (so you don't need to open the e-mail)
7. Get the headset to ring when a phone call comes through

My first improvement would be to completely overhaul the Blackberry Desktop Manager software. Apart from making backups and copying folders across there really is not much more to be done with the software. Ok, you can you application maintenance as well but when you compare it to the likes of say Nokia Ovi suite, BB desktop manager is found wanting in just about all areas.

It would be great to have better access to your device, like being able to view your contacts on the physical phone, read and delete text messages with ease. Even integrate the Blackberry App World into the software to make purchasing apps that little bit easier.

Talking of the App world, when is it going to grow into the size of the Android, Apple and Ovi stores? Also why is not possible to get apps like "Angry Birds" for example. Blackberry needs to do more to get better apps onto the market.

Blackberry Maps appears to be something that RIM just added because others had it. Maps offers navigation but it is difficult to drive and constantly look at your phone for the turn-by-turn navigation and then realise you need to have manually moved the navigation checkpoint on after each point. Bring on free voice guided navigation. There are voice guided navigation apps in the App world but if another brand can do this why can't RIM.

Something that would be nice is nicer looking icons, where is the colour? The icons are boring, functional yes, but boring as hell to look at everyday. I am sure there is probably an app or something for this but surely as a default package you could add some choices.

When accessing the strong point of the Blackberry, e-Mail, something that would be nice is have the subject line scroll so you do not need to open the mail to remind yourself what it is about. This would save time due to peoples poor e-mail etiquette.

The last thing that I believe would make Blackberry that much better is something that seems small and obvious yet RIM have not implemented. When you have the headset plugged in, make sure the phone rings in the headset. This is very annoying when driving along with your headset on and the phone rings and you do not know it is even ringing.

Let me know what you think would make the BlackBerry devices better.

FNB Smartphone App for Blackberry

FNB has launched a South African first, a smartphone and tablet banking application (App). The good thing going for it immediately is that it is free (for now). It is available for registered FNB online banking customers who have a compatible Android, Apple or Blackberry smartphone or tablet device. Symbian device support is coming soon.

As stated on the FNB website:

The FNB Banking App allows you to view your account list and balances, transfer funds, make payments and get detailed transactional history.

The FNB Banking App also brings you additional value added benefits like the ability to access a FNB directory and make free calls to any FNB Call Centre. You can also locate FNB branches and ATMs on a map using Location-based Services.

My first impressions of the FNB app have been good. The Blackberry App world allows for an easy installation of the app. On your side all you need to do is provide your banking username on the app and then login to FNB online banking and link your phone with the site. Once done you login to the App on your phone and access all the content and functions mentioned above.

When starting the app on the Blackberry Torch there is a little delay in opening but there is a decent splash screen and you are welcome to a nice slick and simple to use menu. All the buttons are self explanatory and the interface makes navigation very easy.

On the down side, the app is a little sluggish in changing screens and did make my Blackberry hang upon accessing the app the third time round. The phone did recover without any issues and use of the app continued. Given that I have not used the app all to much yet, my first impression of the app is that it is very good but only time will tell.

Kindling has taken - Kindle books selling faster than print books

The sale of Kindle books has overtaken the sale of old school print books according to Amazon.com. Amazon.com started selling books, softcover and hardcover, in July 1995. Kindle was introduced in November 2007.

It toook just three years to out sell hardcover books and a further six months more to overtake softcover books to become the most popular format on Amazon.com. Today less than four years after the launch of the Kindle, Amazon.com customers are buying more Kindle books than all print books combined.

Since April 1, 2011 for every 100 print books Amazon.com sold it sold 105 Kindle books. This is excluding the free books that Kindle offers. Amazon.com has sold more than three times as many Kindle's so far in 2011 than it did in 2010.

Kindle books let you "Buy once, read everywhere" on all generation Kindles as well as on other platforms like Blackberry, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, MAC, PC, Windows Phone, Android-based systems and many others.

However it will be interesting to see how the sale of Kindle books will be affected by an Apple issued edict that all Apps offering content for sale or subscription are required to do so through the App Store and not through external links to the sellers web store. In addition to this Apple also want 30% of sales through an iOS app!

The Kindle seems to be an amazing product and more importantly it means that people are still interested in reading books. Although the medium through which we read books is shifting from paper to digital it is still great to see that the Kindle is getting people reading more. Maybe not more people reading but at least people are reading.

7 Handy tips for Blackberry

Here are 7 handy tips to make using your Blackberry that much easier.

1. Using the QWERTY keyboard is great but is a pain looking for the . or putting in the ' but Blackberry will do this for you. All you need to is press the spacebar twice at the end of your sentence it will automatically put the full stop and make the next letter a Capital. If you want to put in the ' as in I'll then just type il. Other abbreviations are wel for we'll and isnt for isn't.
2. You do not always need to press Shift for upper case letters, just press and hold down the letter it will then change to uppper case.
3. Want to type an e-mail address faster without using the @ symbol. Type out the address and hit space where the @ should be, then space again for the . in the domain. i.e. john thepub com for john@thepub.com. This works for URL's as well.
4. Want to search for something in your messages? Press S and you can search from there
5. Multitasking in Blackberry is very subtle and you often end up with numerous apps running. If you want to see which apps are running, hold down the Menu key. You can switch to applications from here too.
6. You can prolong the life in your battery by using the auto on/off function. Choose Options > Device > Auto On/Off; you can have different on and off times for weekdays and weekends.
7. Here is a nifty little feature, press Alt + Caps + H and you can view information like the signal strength, battery level, device pin, free space, space in use, IMEI, OS version and how long the Blackberry has been on for.

The above tips work on a Blackberry Torch 9800 so shortcuts and menus may vary on different models but the functionality is still there.