I’m thinking about getting a Blackberry PDA/Phone. Does anyone have experience with it, and do you feel it’s worth the money?
The biggest selling point is the ability to receive email anywhere. Many other phones have the PDA capability and Java support isn’t unknown either. If email is your killer app, go for it. Otherwise, think long and hard.
Oh, and I did want to ask if you are aware it can relay mail that is also going to your regular account on your desktop PC so you receive it in both places. Configuration can sometimes be a PITA, too. I’m kind of speaking out of my @ss but my dad does keep asking me to fix his and I have yet to actually immerse myself in the Blackberry world to fully understand the technology. All of my fixes for his problems have been pretty much whatever five minute ad hoc solution I could find in a 30 second Google search. YMMV
Be prepared for everyone to refer to it as your “crackberry,” and this will be the truth. You will become pavlovian when it vibrates or rings. In addition, the media (aided and abetted by those darn doctors) is now touting the dangers of “Blackberry Thumb.”
As a phone, it’s fine, but it is a bit awkward in size. My blackberry is supported by my company, so my support issues aren’t like sewalk’s. And, because I am an impatient person, I also tend to try to fix my own problems with a thirty second google rather than wading through our help desk (“are you sure it’s on?”) to get a problem fixed.
As sewalk says, though, if email isn’t your driving force, don’t do it. For email, it’s perfectly functional and actually kind of freeing. If I know stuff is still going on, but I need to leave, the blackberry frees me from my desktop and I can go have a bit of a life while still staying in contact. But it also means that I am constantly available, and am likely to get in trouble if I don’t respond quickly enough. “I knew you had your blackberry, so . . .”
If you need to see attachments on your blackberry, make sure you have that capability on the one you choose. Be aware that mine, at least (which is a blueberry) can’t really handle tables. It can only show one cell at a time, which is a pain. It basically means I have to go find a real computer to look at it. Mine also can’t handle tifs.
Also be aware that most if not all of them have terrible sound support, so if you want any kind of custom ringtone or audio playback you’re out of luck.
I have just started carrying a Blackberry 7290 for work. Haven’t gotten the email sync working yet, but should have it shortly. I am expecting that to be handy. In my case, our company supports them so we have a Blackberry Enterprise Server – if you don’t have one, you need to leave your desktop on and have it redirect your email, which kind of sucks.
For my personal use, I have a Samsung i600, which is a Windows Mobile phone – it does not have the full keypad, but does sync with Outlook for my contacts and calendar, and it offers really good media playback capabilities.
It really comes down to what you want in a phone: do you want PDA functionality like media playback and photo viewing, or do you want a go-anywhere email terminal?
You could also take a look at the Treo 650, which bridges both worlds.
This is confusing. I was very interested in getting a Blackberry because I thought they could send and receive email, and I went into a wireless phone store that was heavily advertising them and talked with both salespeople in the store a while about it (this was a quiet morning in the store).
They explained that Blackberries cannot send or receive email - they can only send and receive text messages with other Blackberries. This is not nearly as useful.
And there is no chance we misunderstood this point, as email would have been my whole reason for getting one, and so I did not get one. I tried to find some way around this, but no, absolutely not - no way to make email work on these, they both told me.
What gives?
The salespeople are morons. A Blackberry can send and receive email.
Buy it somewhere else.
Thanks for the replies. Very Helpful.