BlackBerry Bold 9900 At A Glance

I just got the brand new BlackBerry Bold 9900 delivered to me from RIM (Research In Motion) and I wanted to give all y’all a quick few thoughts about the device and my experience in switching from my trusty BlackBerry Torch 9800 to this new hawtness. As you can see by the date of the previous post, I won that BlackBerry Torch 9800 in late September of 2010 and received it in October 2010. Let’s be clear, this is not going to be an extensive review it is merely going to be a little glance into the differences I have noticed thus far and what delights me and disappoints me about it thus far.

BlackBerry Torch 9800 (open) next to Bold 9900.

First things first, already I am sort of in love with this new device. The keyboard is amazing and it is surprising how the couple extra cm? mm? in the device’s/keyboard’s width makes such a huge difference for typing. (Clearly it doesn’t matter what anyone tells you, when it comes to cell phones size does matter!)

Dear RIM: Enough With These Tiny Email Attachment Size Limitations!

 

Me with the @BlackBerryScene Team @ Yonge & St Clair Toronto after I won my 9800 Torch (that's what the card in my right hand is).

As my regular readers know, I use a BlackBerry Torch 9800 and I love it quite a bit. Heck, I’m using my Torch to write this post right now. I am a BBM addict and love the keyboard. But there are certain things about BlackBerry devices which are really, really starting to grind my gears. One of these is the email attachment size limitation both incoming and outgoing. The email size limitation on any BlackBerry running BlackBerry 6 Operating System (OS) or earlier – this means any BlackBerry which came out before the recently launched BlackBerry OS 7 devices – has a limit of 3 megabytes (MB) for the size of attachments that can be received and sent from a BlackBerry device. Even if your device is running the brand new OS 7 it only ups the limits to 11 MB.

As well, message content gets truncated (cut off) at 60 KB (kilobytes) with the older OSes. With OS 7 you are allowed 300 KB before it gets truncated. At first glance 60 KB sounds like it should be more than enough. After all, as each character is only 1 bit and there are 8 bits in a byte, 60 KB means you have (roughly) 60,000 bytes * 8 bits/byte = 480,000 characters. That works until you realize people send HTML based emails which take up A LOT more space.

These sizes are WAY too small for the second decade of the 21st Century

Dear RIM: Marketing Idea For All Y’All – Market To Celebrity Security

 

Many of you have probably heard the news that Scarlett Johansson recently had her phone hacked and she is enlisting the help of the FBI to track down who the perpetrators were. She is probably pretty pissed off about it because nude photos of her were taken off the hacked phone and posted online. Scarlett is not the only one, however, Mila Kunis’ phone was hacked and some not family friendly pictures were also leaked from her phone of her and Justin Timberlake as well as one of an unknown gentleman’s genitals (Justin Timberlake has denied that that picture is of him).

According to CBC, Scarlett is not the only celebrity to enlist the help of the FBI to find out who hacked her phone. This article on the CBC’s website says that the “U.S. agency is investigating a hacking ring responsible for as many as 50 breaches of celebrity email accounts, including those of Jessica Alba, Miley Cyrus and Christina Aguilera.” 

I know, after being at the launch of the BlackBerry 7 devices – #BB7FanNight – in Toronto (see my review of that night on BerryReview here) that Former Toronto Blue Jay Joe Carter is a huge BlackBerry addict as is his whole family. Other celebs are known to be CrackBerry addicts as well – such as Jennifer Garner who was recently seen in an Apple Store playing with her BlackBerry – and all the other celebs listed under the Celebrity Sightings tag on CrackBerry. There is even a whole blog CelebrityBlackBerrySightings.com devoted to pics of celebs with their favorite secure device!

Now, with all these celebrity security issues going on right now I have a brilliant PR & marketing idea for you RIM…but you have to strike while the iron is hot!

Now is the time for you guys to be reaching out to all these celebs and sports figures and offering them free BlackBerry devices!

Your devices are known to be the most secure and if all these celebs are feeling the heat of their phones & devices being hacked now is the time to put BlackBerry devices in their hands!

One key thing though, and this is why you got to move quickly on this. You have to encourage the celebs whose security has been compromised to say that they’re switching to BlackBerry devices now because of the security features.

The reasons this is so key is obvious and not so obvious. The obvious reason is because celebs pushing your product is good exposure. The other reason is because the stuff taken from the phones was stuff that many of us have on our phones. (Pictures that are private is what I am referring to, of course.) I am thinking this is key because it will make it appeal to a more general demographic. It will also highlight a key aspect of BlackBerry devices.

What do you think readers? What do you think BlackBerry? Going to get on this? I think you should!

BlackBerry #BB7FanNight Event In Toronto On Wednesday. I’m Excited!

To say I was excited when an email bearing this graphic appeared in my inbox is an understatement. Reading the few words on it also made me salivate a bit:

Faster. Smoother. Sleeker.

More Responsive than Ever!

Seven words that describe the new smartphones with BlackBerry 7 OS

The full invite read as I have posted below – with

How To Build The BlackBerry PlayBook App Ecosystem – My $0.02

I love the BlackBerry PlayBook I won in the #PlayBookCHI contest. I love using it to read my Google Reader RSS feeds; watch TV, movies, and other media in HD; and browse the web. I love how it is small enough to fit inside most winter coat pockets and barely weighs much when I throw it in a messenger bag yet it is still big enough to have a screen on which I can fully enjoy watching media. However, there is one big problem that I find as a user of the PlayBook – the app ecosystem. The PlayBook app ecosystem – or number of apps available for the PlayBook – is still quite low.

BlackBerry PlayBook App World

According to a CrackBerry forum discussion here there were 2,653 PlayBook apps available in the BlackBerry App World catalog as of June 22, 2011. While that number DOES keep growing every day, in order for RIM (Research In Motion) to really make their offering attractive to consumers they have to step up their game in pushing the creation and release of apps for the PlayBook.

Help Me Win A BlackBerry PlayBook So I Can Blog Better On The Go!

OK, so here’s the deal. Research In Motion (aka RIM) the makers of BlackBerry smartphones released a tablet device onto the market this past week called the PlayBook. In celebration of the release of this device they had launch parties for the socialites and cool people but they also are running a series of contests via Twitter for regular shmoes like you and me!

The first of these contests was right in my neck of the woods, in Toronto, but somehow I completely missed out on it. #EpicFAIL by Dan, I know. The FIFTY winners of the contest got to go to a party with 3 friends held by RIM in their respective city and drink free booze, eat free appetizers and at the end of the night the 50 winners (not their guests unfortunately because I was one of those) got a FREE PlayBook! Ya, I was pretty annoyed I missed out on this contest especially when everyone told me how easy it had been to win and how little effort they put in to getting themselves retweeted and mentioned with the hashtag. In fact, my very writing of this blog post – if they are to be believed – is a waste of time and energy but hey I wanted to write it anyway!

Back to my point, the next three parties and contests/are being held for Washington DC, Chicago, and Atlanta. I really, really want a PlayBook because I totally see the use of having something that is bigger than my beloved BlackBerry Torch to view and edit media – and browse the full internet – but yet not as big as my Dell Studio 1558 laptop (which I also freaking love). Thankfully, I have a number of friends in Chicago, friends I haven’t seen in a long time and that I would really like to hang out with and visit and who’ll provide me with a warm bed (I hope, I should probably ask them). As well, Chicago is a totally drivable distance from Toronto – and it is within a reasonable driving distance: 8 hours and 59 minutes according to Google Maps. So I figure if I win I will take a road trip for the PlayBook, see some friends in Chicago and attend my second PlayBook launch party – the first being the Toronto one which the lovely Corina aka @corecorina invited me to join her as one of her +3.  Unless, of course, someone out there wants to pay for me to fly to Chicago and put me up in a hotel there – that’d be awesome but I don’t expect it to actually happen. I have driven to New York City a BUNCH of times and it is about the same amount of driving in hours so this shouldn’t be too bad. I have done the trip solo and with a group so I am not expecting any difficulties making this drive.

Tomorrow the contest enters its final day with ‘voting’ ending at 5pm Eastern Daylight Time (this part of the contest sort of confuses me, as Chicago is on CDT or Central Daylight Time an hour behind EDT which is Eastern Daylight Time). So, all I ask of you folks is if you’d be so kind (and have Twitter), please will you either retweet this tweet located here: https://twitter.com/#!/TheDanLevy/status/61070691994312704.

That tweet linked above reads: Plz RT & #help me win @BlackBerry I wanna go so bad to #PlayBookCHI I’ll #roadtrip 10hrs & cross international borders to attend! #TrueStory. 

-OR-

You can tweet anything you want as long as it includes 3 things:

1. My twitter name @TheDanLevy
2. BlackBerry’s twitter name @BlackBerry
3. The hashtag #PlayBookCHI

So if you can copy and paste the sequence below into Twitter and tweet it I will forever appreciate it!

#PlayBookCHI @TheDanLevy @BlackBerry

I grant you the above is completely nonsensical and I do not recommend tweeting that, I suggest adding SOME words to make it into a proper sentence but I think you get the gist.

Remember, if I win and I go to Chicago you guys get some (probably) amusing stories from the roadtrip and possibly more pictures like the one above and to the left! It also means I will be available to help everyone with their PlayBook questions and problems AND will be able to generate more content for this blog in general.

Dear RIM: What Is Up With Your Photo File Structure On BlackBerry?

My pictures from my BlackBerry in a folder on my Windows 7 PC. Notice how the dates of the pictures (based on the naming of the files) are completely out of order.

I am a BlackBerry user. I love my BlackBerry Torch which I won during TIFF from the good folks at RIM but one of the things that most annoys me about BlackBerry’s OS – and this has been every variation I have used of the OS, OS, 4.6, 5.0, and now BlackBerry 6 – is the way that the BlackBerry names and organizes the photos. It even affects the pictures once they’re on your computer! Check out the picture to the right and you will see what I mean on this. See how the dates of the pictures are completely out of order? It is because the BlackBerry names pictures based on some seemingly arbitrary picture number – also attaching the name of the city where it was taken in front of image number if a GPS lock was available when the picture was taken – BEFORE the date of the picture? This obviously isn’t such a huge problem on a full computer where it is easy to choose how you arrange your photos but on a BlackBerry itself it can be a huge problem when you aren’t in the “Pictures” app.

If you have ever tried to compose an email or blog post on your BlackBerry and then click on the “Attach A File” or “Attach Media” option you know what I’m talking about. If not check out the picture I have attached to the left. I was trying to write the blog post about my first caesar and I was doing it from my BlackBerry. While it is one hell of a device for actually typing out the text, having an unrivaled physical QWERTY keyboard for a cellular device, the media options are terrible. Essentially, the only way to add a picture to a blog post or email would be to go to the pictures app on your BlackBerry and select a picture then click the “Send to WordPress” or “Send via Email” option. So why don’t I do this? Well…what happens when you want to attach more than one picture to an email or blog post? You have to then use the photo browser to I pictured. Look how disorganized it is…the organization of the list makes no rational sense that I can fathom. starting from the top of that list (this wasn’t the very top just the part where I took the screen capture) we have a picture taken in Toronto in on January 30. 200; then comes a picture from February 3, 2011; a picture from February 20, 2011; 2 pictures from March 13, 2011; then finally the cut off one from February 24, 2011.

WHAT.

THE.

HECK?!?!?!?!

RIM, I do not and cannot understand how you set up this file system. This is something I really, really hope you fix soon. I don’t know how it has gone on this long and no one has said anything about it to you. I don’t know how no one in your company has noticed this yet. Every Blogger I have ever spoken to about it who uses a BlackBerry talks about how crappy the system is. The issue is such a huge FAIL for any device in the modern age it has to be taken care of immediately. There isn’t even a search option for adding media files on the BlackBerry you have to manually go through the entire list to find anything and attach it to a blog post – if there was I could at least forgive RIM the organization of the files.