This blog post is quite late but none the less still appropriate.  I’ve had the BlackBerry 9780 for a few months now and want to share my thoughts on it.  This isn’t going to be a traditional review like most others, I’m just going to tell you what I like and dislike about it.  But essentially I liked it and would recomend it to someone who wants a good BlackBerry but doesn’t want to spend the big bucks to get the new 9900.

First off for the positives:

• It’s a BlackBerry so it obviously has a good keyboard.  It’s not the best I’ve used, that would go to the Nokia E6 or E71, but it’s pretty darn good.
• I like that it has a flash I can use as a flashlight (torch for my British friends) with the proper app.  But that’s something that should come built in to the phone from day one, it shouldn’t need a 3rd party app to be done.
• The screen is really nice, well at the time it came out I really liked it, it’s a bit dated now but none the less it does the job without a doubt.
• UMA is a life saver in my home/office.  It’s on the T-Mobile network in the US that seems to work everywhere but in my house even though the coverage map says it should.  So UMA makes it useable allowing voice and data to go over my wifi versus the TMO data network.
• Reception is surprisingly good though in my home even without the UMA, I’m still able to make calls but they do break up sometimes, where as on my Android phones I can’t even make a call.
• The feel of the 9780 is a bit bulky but very solid in my hand.  You won’t forget it’s in your pocket like you might with a BB Curve but if you like to FEEL your phone this is the way to go.
• Most importantly for me is the email, it is race car fast and always shows up.  If email appears on my iPhone or computer before the BB I think for a second, Is the BB broken? Yes it’s just that fast.
• Data consumption is minimal on this beauty, just like every other BB I’ve ever used.  I only used 35mb of data even installing new apps and syncing my expansive address book.  On other phones I can easily burn through hundreds and hundreds of mega bytes of data but the BB has never gone above 35mb.  This is key when traveling and potentially roaming in foreign countries where you are charged on a per MB basis from your carrier.  I personally use a Tru sim when I go abroad.  It’s literally saved me almost $40 on 1 single week long trip.
• Lastly and almost most importantly is battery life.  I’m a sucker for a good battery, something that will go the whole day, into the night and maybe even into the next work day.  Having kids I feel it’s a necessity to always be reachable and the excuse “my battery died” doesn’t help when your wife is calling frantically.  It’s also important when you’re jumping from airport to airport all day with no time to stop and play the iPhone game I like to call “Where’s the closest outlet?”.

Hours before I was flying home from Israel recently Dvir Reznik had just flown back to Israel from Amsterdam I believe and I was anxious to meet up with him.  He is the head of marketing at Onavo, it’s one of the most likely companies I see succeeding in the next 12 months.

Onavo is solving a huge problem for people with smart phones, data consumption.  There are limits on almost every plan you can get here in the US and Onavo compresses the data that’s being used, so 100mb may only consume 40-60mb over your phone.  Don’t ask me how they do it, I would have to turn you over to the Mossad if you found out.  But in all seriousness you should watch this video on your computer while you’re downloading Onavo on your iPhone, 3G iPad or Android device.  It has kept me from going over my allotment of data every month since I’ve installed it.  Keep in mind this is great for when your traveling to keep your roaming bill down as well as when you’re at home and don’t want overages.

I only recently heard the news that Steve Robertson is taking over as the new Tru CEO.  I have a long history with TruPhone as they used to be known and want to take a few words to let people know who might be reading about them for the first time who and what they are.

TruPhone started somewhere around 2005 as a mobile VOIP company that morphed over the years into an international roaming sim company as well as an app service for making VOIP calls with a little IM mixed in there.

I’ve focused a lot on their international sim over the years because that’s what has interested me the most.  It’s basically a sim you can get a US, UK or Australian number with and use it in over 220 countries world wide.  In the last year they’ve launched a BlackBerry sim as well which I’ve now used in at least 5 countries that I can think of.

Their big kicker is that you get better rates then if you used your local sim roaming abroad and I’ve always found this to be true.  I’m a big advocate of saving money and making my life easier and their sims have done just that for many many people.

I hope Steve can continue on this path and expand take Tru to the next level.  I know it’s hard and Tru in many cases is doing what no one else has done before.  Good luck to Tru and to Steve and I look forward to seeing big things in the next few months.

I’ve been writing about Truphone since 2007 and I suspect using it even longer.  I was called the biggest Truphone fan by Ewan MacLeod back in 2007 or 2008.  I wish I could remember when they launched but boy oh boy was it amazing back then. Fast forward 5 years (I’m guessing) and you know what I’m using now?  A Truphone (now called Tru) sim and you know what, they are a legitimate MNO, mobile network operator.  They have their own towers and everything, small as it may be, it’s growing.  Well their sim card has evolved and changed and I think I’ve had every iteration of it.

Just days before I left for MWC ’11 back in mid February I was graced by a new sim card.  At the time, from my understanding it was 1 of only a dozen or so in existence.  Well the beauty of this sim card was not that it could make calls, use data or send/receive SMS but that it could do all of that IN A BLACKBERRY.  Yes that’s colossal news.  It’s the first time that I’ve known any international roaming sim to support BlackBerry use.  I could be wrong though. Anyways, I was in a BlackBerry phase and couldn’t imagine going to Spain without using my BB as usual and this sim made that possible without incurring ANY roaming charges.  This was amazing, I tested the sim before I left the US and it worked great but the real test was going to be on the ground in Barcelona and low and behold it worked just as it was supposed to.

This new sim in my opinion opens up a whole new angle for Truphone, they can now go after the business user who is tied to a BlackBerry.  I had a very nice set up for the week I was gone.  I had my Phone.com (a client) phone number forward to my US Truphone number so I could receive calls like normal.  I got all kinds of business calls while I was there without ever skipping a beat in service.  And to make calls I used a combination of my Truphone sim plus I was running the Phone.com Mobile Office app which allowed me to make calls using just a tiny bit of data via my Truphone sim.  It is a setting in the Mobile Office app that sets the app to call back your phone versus calling through.  It’s not complicated and saves a ton of money.  I had the best of both worlds using Phone.com and Truphone. One of the nicest parts about the Truphone sim is that you get 2 phone numbers, 1 US number and 1 British number.  I used my Phone.com number for business but was able to give my UK number out so friends in Europe and England could call and text me on it for cheaper then to a US number.  Europeans are much happier to call a UK number and Americans feel the same way about calling a US number.  And in my testing I could receive text messages on both Truphone numbers. There are many more benefits to the Truphone BlackBerry sim but I won’t go into all of them.  I will say thank you to Truphone and give their service and sim card 2 very big thumbs up (as usual for them).  It worked for me flawlessly and I can’t imagine traveling without it ever again.  If anyone travels abroad much I would even suggest transferring your regular cell number to Truphone and just use their sim all the time.  Check the rates in your country but it’s definitely something to think about.

My friend Andy Abramson just yesterday posted “Staying Connected- Beating The High Cost of Roaming http://ow.ly/18lHO6“.  I wanted to bring any attention I could to his article because it highlights one of my favorite companies, Truphone.  I’ve been an advocate of theirs for many years now have enjoyed their service for as long as it’s been around.  If you are into saving serious money when traveling abroad whether it’s in the US or outside the US I suggest reading Andy’s article and giving Truphone a try.

Just to be clear

Here’s another late post to the blog.  This was taken back in February in Barcelona at MWC.  Touchnote is one of my favorite companies.  These guys can take your camera phone pictures and send them off as physical postcards to anywhere in the world.  Touchnote is currently abailable on the Ovi Store and the iPhone.

This is absolute genious to me, someone is finally bridging the gap of the internet to the physical world.  They are also helping people get the pictures they take off their phones.  This is honestly monumental.  No other company does it, let alone in this way as far as I’ve ever hear.

Imagine taking that special picture that you know Grandma would love and being able to send it to her even if she doesn’t know how to turn on a computer.  This is one of those apps that should be a household name, “honey have you Touchnoted those pics to Grandma yet?”  will be a phrase heard around the world thousands of times a day soon.  The verb Touchnoting will be part of our common vocabulary soon.  Well at least I hope it is because I think this is just brilliant…

On a side note, I was given some credit on from Touchnote and used the app.  It is everything they claim and more.  I rarely endorse a product but I give this one 2 big thumbs up.

I’ve been wanting to blog about some Truphone (one of my favorite services) news for days now and I’m finally getting to all the news.  Instead of writing 3 different posts I’m just going to condense it down to one short post.  Let’s get to it.

1. Truphone is in an MVNO relationship with Vodafone UK.  Meaning they buy minutes/data from Vodafone.  This gives them the ability to resell it to you when you use one of their nifty new sims.  This is great for people roaming in the UK, make sure to check it out otherwise you may get hit with one of those $700 roaming bills that we’ve all heard stories about.

2. Truphone Local Anywhere is also a great service for folks roaming around the world.  You will also use Truphones new sim and get reduced rates for your calls, sms, and data.  This is exciting to have another one of the big boys in the roaming sim game.

3. Truphone is releasing a new build for Android and this will make it the first VOIP app on the new Google Nexus One.
Update on the release for Android: It has some kind of glitch, but instead of sitting on their hands Truphone is working hard to get out an update ASAP. Personally I love when a company listen to their users and react quickly instead of pretending they don’t know about problems.

I used to do a great deal of travel for work when I was producing events almost every weekend.  Since then I don’t fly nearly as much as I used to, sometimes I miss it but now that I have a wife and 2 daughters I prefer staying home.  My airline of choice is American Airlines though I flew all different airlines which means I was accruing miles on all those random airlines.  Now, I’m a sucker for a loyalty program and I hate to lose the milage I have earned.  So what do you do if you haven’t flown on an airline for many years but don’t want to lose those precious miles.  I have been able to keep mine by doing 2 things.

Whenever I rent a car or stay in a hotel I push the points that I get to an airline who’s miles will expire soon.  For example I stayed in some random hotel while on vacation in Utah this summer (btw, one of the most beautiful places in the world) and had my miles pushed to United Airlines which I rarely fly but have a great deal of miles on.

Another trick to keep your hard earned miles is to shop online.  What am I talking about you ask???  Almost all the different major airlines have an online mall.  Meaning you can click thorough the airlines website to shop on many major and some minor web stores.  I have many times shopped at Target and Staples to keep my miles active.

Anyways, I hope this is just my first installment in my travel tips.