blog.ulfw.com

Another day - another phone… ? So why even mention the Blackberry 8800?

Because it IS corporate America’s toy of 2007. RIM is really on a roll here and no matter what other companies are doing feature or design-wise (Nokia E90, Apple iPhone…), RIM is hard to beat when it comes to easy IT deployment and manager-appeal.

So what’s new about it?

- It’s slicker and thinner. About 25% thinner than the older 8700 and finally up to par with the competition (re: Nokia E61)

- It’s got GPS built in. While not being a first - especially for CDMA - still only few GSM devices rock GPS. I can totally see people use this as an el chepo navigaton system in their leased BMWs and Consultants in their rental cars.

- The Pearl-esque ball is so much easier to use than the scroll wheel before. I know I know, many will disagree with this, but the addition of horizontal scrolling (as opposed to the old Blackberry-approach of only scrolling vertically) does open up new opportunities (all I say is… Google Maps…)

More about the Blackberry to come later. I’ll be attending the new AT&Ts and RIMs BB 8800 Launch party up in San Francisco tomorrow night - so let’s see what else they say to praise their new toy…

Update
- Party in the city was packed! I’m sure there were 150+ people, all waiting to see and get their new BB toy. Thankfully I got one too - The food sucked.

About the device
Positive:
- it’s a great form factor and the dark blue, black color is very attractive with the chrome sides
- the UI is fast, especially compared to my … yawn… Series 60 v3 UI on my Nokia E61
- Data applications work beautifully. It’s so great to run Gmail and Google Maps without having to click on ‘Do you want to grant data access?’ and ‘Please choose your data bearer’ each and every time I run an app

Negative:
- The device just doesn’t work perfectly. I lose data connectivity for no reason and then neither emails nor other data gets pushed. Maybe it has something to do with me being on TMUSA instead of Cingular, but still - it’s pretty unacceptable having to reboot the device to get data again
- Where are my missed calls/outgoing calls etc?
- GPS works beautifully. When it works. Problem is: Like data - it doesn’t work consistently.

I’m a Mac user by heart (and this is something, coming from years of Windows software development and excitement and even doing technical beta testing for Windows 95 all through XP). But there are moments when you still want to use Windows. For better or worse: it just has more software.

One really great software that I’d love to have on the Mac is Live Writer (beta) from Microsoft. It makes blogging a real fun event. And with Parallels’ virtualization software it integrates beautifully into the whole Mac experience. You should especially check out their new integration mode: ‘Coherence mode’. It makes the Windows desktop transparent, gets rid of the taskbar and background icons and integrates windows apps into the Mac dock. Alltogether it gives the seeming impression of running a Windows app natively in Mac OS X.

 So we launched the new Gmail/Google Mail for mobile devices app throughout Europe and other countries yesterday. People who’s primary language is something other than English, namely Italian, Spanish, French or German can now enjoy the virtues of Gmail on their phone now. One little task for you guys… I wonder if you find the easter egg on our German pages?