Here’s a quick unedited unboxing of the BlackBerry Bold 9900 by AT&T.  It’s rough, I didn’t get a chance to edit it but enjoy my Spielberg level video.

I have to say, I know a lot of people are down on BlackBerry these days but this is a great device.  It’s slick, responsive and incredible to look at.  The battery lasts for at least 2 days and the keyboard is a pleasure to use.  I’m truly suprised at the level of responsiveness of the touchscreen as well.  If you’re traveling internationally I highly suggest using a BlackBerry to keep your data consumption down to a minimum.

My only single gripe at this point is that Google and BB have not yet been able to get the read/unread status of your email in order.  No matter what I do I can’t get the bloody email to sync its status.

Anyways, if you’re considering getting a BlackBerry I recommend this one.  Go get it.

In the recent weeks I remembered why I love using a BlackBerry so much, it’s reliable to a fault.  I was in San Diego for CTIA and was having a really hard time not having a reliable phone with me in terms of battery life.  My iPhone is great if I know I’ll be around electricity later but that’s not the case at a trade show.  I usually carry a BlackBerry as my second phone but I haven’t had a sim for mine in a while now.  So I was jonessing for my BlackBerry fix.

So when I got the press release today about the new BlackBerry’s AT&T is launching I got kind of excited.  Here’s the mandatory snip from the email I got,

AT&T delivers the broadest portfolio of the latest 4G BlackBerry smartphones, including three models – the BlackBerry Bold 9900, the all-touch BlackBerry Torch 9860, and the previously-released 4G BlackBerry Torch 9810.  On AT&T’s 4G network, the three 4G smartphones are capable of speeds up to nearly four times the network speed capability of previous models.

By the way they range in price from $29-$199.  The Bold 9900 (AKA the BB I want) and the Torch 9860 both are scheduled to be available on Nov. 6.  the Curve 9360 should be available on Nov. 20.  All 3 devices run the BlackBerry 7 OS so you’ll have all the newest and coolest features.

So I’ve got my eyes fixed on the Bold 9900.  I’ve played with a few of them and they are S.L.I.C.K.  It’s a serious business device and I plan to write email and roam the world with it.

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?”.

So I’m a huge BlackBerry fan.  I have been for a while now and used a BlackBerry as my primary device until my Nexus One got Gingerbread.  In that time I’ve switched from AT&T to T-Mobile and now back to AT&T.  The bottom line is I don’t have a BB plan on my account any longer and I’m of the understanding I can’t add it to my iPhone sim.  So I’ve put a spare sim into my BB and it works on many fronts but not for email.  I figured this would be the case and unfortunately BBM doesn’t work either but I can live with that.  But I can’t live without email, that and a battery that will go the distance, at least 1 full day is what I need from the BB.  Battery isn’t an issue but email is.  I’m currently using the Gmail Mobile app which is ok and liveable because it’s not my primary device.  My 2 issues is 1 not having color coded tags, yes I know, the iPhone doesn’t have that, but Android does and I want the best of all worlds.  I can live without it for now.

What I can’t live without is the Push.  I can’t live without it on a BB if I’m going to take it out and about like to a trade show.  I live in my email especially at trade shows and must have Push support.  I was told by a good friend that he uses this app for some of his email on his BB and I got the feeling he had is being Pushed.  I could have misunderstood him but that’s what it sounded like to me.

So my question to my readers is, Is there a way to get the BlackBerry Gmail Mobile app to sync more often and hopefully at near instant speeds?  I guess I could live at a 1-2 minute delay but not longer then that and that’s really pushing it.  Thanks!

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.

As I fly home from a long week of meetings, parties and the over abundance of mobile phones I think I’ve seen the future. I imagine this is the same all over the world and in many industries and that it will trickle down into the general population.

Every year I see a trend and find that I’m noticing 1 phone stands out more then the rest in that it’s more commonly seen during MWC being used by the mass of people there. I will say I’m still shocked at how many feature phones I see at this show from people in the mobile industry, it’s amazing and not in a good way. Last year it was the HTC Nexus One (that could have been because Google gave a ton of them away at the show) and the year before that it was the Nokia E71 and the year before that it was the Nokia N95 and N95 8gig. Every year I see lot’s of iPhones but they’re not everywhere like you might imagine if you live in the US.

Well this year was unique. The device to have was not a phone. The most popular device to have that I saw was the iPad. It seemed like everyone had them. Some people told me they had a laptop in their hotel room to get serious work done and others said that that’s all they brought with for computing. Now here’s the interesting thing. It wasn’t just the iPad I noticed, it was a combination. It seemed like many of the iPad users had a BlackBerry to compliment their iPad’s. With the iPad you get all the greatness of iOS and it’s similar to an iPhone but with the BB you get a great email experience enhanced by the QWERTY keyboard and battery life of the BB. It’s a match made in heaven and I can definitely see why people go for it. Additionally BB’s use much less data then an Android or iPhone which is great when traveling abroad.

I see this as a combo that might last an entire year we just might see it back at MWC again as the combination to have. Or maybe it will be a BB combined with a Rim PlayBook.

Stay tuned for much more MWC ’11 coverage.

So I’m still an uber newb to this conservative new world of BlackBerry.  But I learned something tonight that is very exciting to me.  It makes the BB an even more appealing device and a money saver for me and anybody who doesn’t want to pay for roaming.  I am on T-Mobile in the US who runs something called UMA which stands for Universal Mobile Access and allows the user to make calls and send/receive text messages over WiFi.  This is a great benefit for someone like me who makes business calls on my cell phone and expects them to sound impecable.  I don’t have the best T-Mobile reception in my home so this replaces it.  On top of this UMA can be used anywhere in the world where you can get on a WiFi network and it acts as if you are at home on your WiFi.  So I can be relaxing in a hotel room in Tel Aviv and if I’m on the WiFi I can make calls and send/receive SMS as if I’m in a hotel room in the US.

Ok so what I learned tonight after playing with this BlackBerry 8520 is that I can turn off the access to the T-Mobile network and leave on the WiFi so I can still use the UMA.  This means when I travel abroad which I do at least once a year and usually 2-3 times every year I can still use the BlackBerry over UMA without being concerned that I’ll roam and get charged a bundle from T-Mobile because I won’t allow the phone to access their network over a cellular connection but only via WiFi.  I’m not in a corporate job where the company picks up my mobile bill so I do have to watch my pennies and this will help.  It will allow me to call and SMS home to my wife without racking of the big roaming bill.

This entire BlackBerry experience has been 85% great.  My only qualm is the Gmail email sync problem but it may just be my specific device.  I’m hoping to get my hands on a 9700 or 9780 in the very near future so I can test it against the 8520 I’m using now.  So if you travel outside the US and are on the T-Mobile network using a BB I suggest checking out this option for yourself and maybe save a little money.

I’ve been noticing for many months now, maybe even years that BlackBerrys are everywhere.  I used to think they were intentionally going after the young crowd like the teens and early 20′s but now I know they are.  I’ve been seeing kids, yes 12 year olds with BlackBerrys.  I’ve also been seeing many many more 20 somethings with BB’s.  I was at a night club last week in Santa Monica, California (first time in a LONG time) and my gosh, everyone had a BlackBerry.  My wife actually noticed herself.  I’m not really even sure what advertising RIM had been doing for the last few years but they’ve been doing something really right.  Somehow BB are sexy and hip (yes it’s been this way for a while now) but I think it’s gone up a notch in the last year.  Over the summer I took the pic above pimping BlackBerrys to really little ones.  Is this RIM’s doing?  Are they secretly running a covert subconscious advertising campaign aimed at the youngest mobile users, trying to hook them young and make them lifetime BB users???

Even I have succumb to Berry Fever.  I’ve been using a BlackBerry for the last 3 weeks or so and I’ve been loving it.  They’re not perfect, the email sync with Gmail is ridiculous as well as the browser.  But I like getting my email FAST as well as be able to reply to it and this little old BB 8520 allows me to do that.  I’m astonished at how much I’ve been enjoying this device and disappointed I haven’t been using it for more then just the last 3 weeks.  I’ve been told for years that I should give BB a try and never thought I’d like it but low and behold, I’ve gone Berry.

Have you noticed that RIM is advertising like crazy?  Currently there are so many Torch commercials I want to get my hands on one to play with.  Their ads are working and working well.  A close family friend is trying to decide what to upgrade her old BB with, a Torch or an Android device and I’m telling her go Torch.  What do you think?  Are you a BB user?  Have you moved on past BB?  What are your thoughts?

I’ve been using the Blackberry Curve 8520 on T-Mobile here in the USA on and off for a few weeks now.  I see how and why so many business people are such huge Blackberry fans.  My family and friends call me a power emailer so I was very excited to get my hands on the 8520.  Almost every aspect of it is nice.  From the screen to the fact that it has 3.5mm headphone jack.  I like that it comes with however small a memory card.  The track pad is pretty nice.  It charges via a MicroUSB plug.  The battery life is amazing.  There is no shortage of Twitter apps for it and the app store seems to be useful.

My favorite part about the BB is that it has UMA, meaning it connects to a wireless router and let’s you make calls over the net.  I have almost zero reception on T-Mobiles EDGE network in my office (though 3G is alright) and I was able to make and receive dozens of calls.  From my understanding you should be able to use the phone via UMA overseas on any wireless network.  Plus you can get unlimited calls on UMA if you pay T-Mobiles added fee.  It’s a great deal if you are a heavy talker in my opinion.

The 1 thing that has me down on this phone is the keyboard.  Writing so many email on my phone I want the best keyboard possible.  I understand that the Bold keyboards are the lowest end versus the the Tour for example.  That’s not ok for a phone company who’s key focus in the past has been mobile email.  Every single BB device should have the TOP of the line keyboard.  I sometimes spend 2 hours on my phone reading and responding to email and I want a top of the line keyboard from a BB who’s supposed to have the premiere email devices.

As a whole I liked the Curve but it’s just not for me JUST because of the keyboard.  If you like the keyboard then by all means, I would recommend it to anybody.