Archive for May, 2007|Monthly archive page
Blackberry 8830 keyboard
Comments (1)I keep forgetting that I wanted to make a blog post about my thoughts on the Blackberry 8830, so now that I am thinking about it, it’s time to post!
So i decided that even though I just picked up the Blackberry 8703e, I was intrigued by the nice slim design and great trackball on the 8830. Throw in the fact that it has 900/1800 GSM built in for world traveling, and I was loving it! Tuesday afternoon, i went into the Verizon store near me and played around with the phone. I was instantly very excited about the media player, and how easy it was to use the trackball to get around quicker. Then came the downfall, the keyboard.
I found that while the look of the keyboard was nice, I couldn’t type out a word without at least one misspelling! I don’t know what RIM was thinking with this, but the move from the 72xx series to the 87xx series was good as far as a keyboard transition, but this one is no good in my opinion. I think everyone has their own feel for keyboards when it comes to size and closeness of keys to each other. It was however a good eye opener to the advice that I give to everyone, make sure you test out a phone ahead of time before purchasing! You will be much happier if you do so beforehand and know what you are getting into, rather than having to use a phone that isn’t what you want for months/years to come.
The Cell Phone Junkie Show #52
Leave a CommentThe Cell Phone Junkie Podcast #52 39:45
Show Notes
Dave Ciccone from Mobility Today joins Mickey for a special show this week. We cover all the all the latest news and comments, plus some great discussion on the upcoming iPhone.
News
Alltel adds Enhanced Caller ID
iPhone available to Prepaid customers
Study states iPhone perceived to be superior
AT&T has iPhone for 5 years, what is Verizon going to do?
A nice place to keep your phone while you swim
Qwest now offering EV-DO service
Google Maps for Mobile gets GPS
Devices
T-Mobile Wing Link Link Link Link Link
Blackberry 8830 update
Software
Questions/Comments
Comment from Steve
Voicemail from Rob
Question from Travis
Comment from Bobolito
How to Contact us:
602-903-4116
How to Listen:
Vote for the show at PodcastAlley.com
Our first house!
Comments (4)I’m excited to say that Courtney and I are working on purchasing our first home together! We went out last weekend and looked at different places (OK, Courtney more than me) and we narrowed it down to 2. We then went back on Sunday night and looked at these 2 again. We decided on one that we loved, and made an offer Monday morning. You guessed it, they accepted! We have spent the week working though the process and are very excited about the progress that we have made. We had our inspection done yesterday and can’t wait to get moved in. Below are some video overviews of the house.
Backyard
Family Room and Kitchen
Master Bedroom, Closet and Bathroom
Den
Hallway and Laundry Room
Garage
Bathroom
Second Bedroom
Living and Dining Room
A special TCPJ show in the works
I’m going to keep the secret under my hat for the time being, but I have a special The Cell Phone Junkie show planned for this upcoming weekend. Make sure not to miss it!
The Cell Phone Junkie Show #51
The Cell Phone Junkie Show #51 52:30
Show Notes
Having the questions and comments in the shows each week is working out well for us, so we are going to continue on with it! Also, Motorola has a number of new devices coming to the market soon! And where the heck has Matt been?
News
Washington bans texting while driving
Blackberry CEO says outage won’t happen again
Sprint not happy about phones using maps
RIM to have Wi-Fi in Blackberries this year
Blackberry Mobile Voice System allows access to PBX
Devices
iPhone to be released in 2000 stores in June
Sprint Nextel adding unlimited plans to more markets
Questions/Comments
Comment from Harry
Question from Dan
Question from Travis
Comment from Rob
Question from Gordon
How to Contact us:
602-903-4116
How to Listen:
510-495-6352
712-432-3031 show number 183933
Vote for the show at PodcastAlley.com
The Cell Phone Junkie in a mashup!
So check this out, The Cell Phone Junkie made it into a podcast mashup! Karen from Karen’s Mashups posted this show about mobile technology, where she takes multiple podcasts and mixes them together in a series to create one podcast for educational purposes. A special thanks goes out to Karen for her great work on this show. Show #5, the one with TCPJ featured, is only about 10 minutes long. Head over to the site and download the show to listen, pretty cool!
p.s. My friend Dave Ciccone and his site Mobility Today were also featured as a valuable resource for mobile tech. Congrats Dave!
Mac Book Pro in the house!
After 5 months of debating, research and though, I finally decided that my next computer was going to be the Mac Book Pro. I went to the Apple store at Biltmore Fashion Park this evening and after talking to the sales person for about 30 minutes, I was paying for my new computer! I went for the 15 inch upgraded model that has the 256MB video card and 2GB of memory. I have spent the last 3 hours starting to learn about it, and so far, I am VERY happy with my purchase. Sure, there is going to be a large learning curve, but I look forward to the challenge. I already have ordered up a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and installed my required programs for my podcast. I am impressed so far with the great implementation that Apple does. I was up and running in less than 10 minutes from the time I opened the box. Now, just have to get the important photos and music moved over and I should be ready to go!
I’m sure the next few weeks and months will be full of google searching and reading on forums all about the OS! I’m really looking forward to using it to create The Cell Phone Junkie. It should be very nice!
Steve posts about TCPJ
A big thanks to Steve for putting up a post about The Cell Phone Junkie hitting show #50. Steve, I really appreciate your support of the show, and I’d like to have you on the show sometime to talk phones with us!
The Cell Phone Junkie Show #50
The Cell Phone Junkie Show #50 56:14
Show Notes
We finally hit a milestone, show #50! Mickey gets another new phone, and you’ll be surprised to hear what it is! Lots of great questions and comments on this show, thanks to everyone for sending them in!
News
Blackberry 8703e
Call Mexico, get out of your Verizon Contract
Free texting on Mother’s Day by T-Mobile
426K cell phones a day being thrown out
Nokia phones will tell you to unplug it
Devices
Sony Ericsson tosses out three new thin phones
Sony Ericsson Next Gen Smart Phone
Software
Windows Mobile 6 office suite for WM5 Smartphones
Blackjack to get WM6 treatment
Questions/Comments
Comments from Craig
Comments from Gordon
Comment from Jonathan
Voicemail from Jesse
How to Contact us:
602-903-4116
How to Listen:
510-495-6352
712-432-3031 show number 183933
Vote for the show at PodcastAlley.com
So what was wrong with the Treo?
Jerry asked me what was going on with the Treo, and why I was so quick to return it. I thought I would detail a few of my issues here for those that are interested.
1. Email-with my direct push email service through exchange, i was receiving emails intermittently at best. When I would look at the device, it would more times than not, show no new messages. Then when I would do a manual send/receive multiple additional messages that would have not been delivered to the device. 2 Hard resets and multiple soft resets couldn ‘t solve the issue. The issues that I was having are basically identical to the ones that were detailed here:
http://www.pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_print&t=reviews&id=793
by Chris Spera and commented on by Dave Ciccone early last year. Looks like the 700 series of Treos have not solved their issues.
I have come to rely on my email while mobile, and the intermittent functioning of Activesync on this unit was not acceptable to me.
2. Bluetooth-Unacceptable usage. The radio seemed very weak, and I would almost always have to hold the phone close to the headset to keep from getting static. Also, the A2DP was very flakey, and I would often have to soft reset the device to get it to work properly. The funny thing is, I don’t even have the feature on the Blackberry now, but don’t really mind at this point!
3. Network issues-I would often have times where the Treo would by trying to connect to the EV-DO network without success. It would seem that the connection would drop, and it would take either a manual reconnection to the data service, or a soft reset sometimes to make it work.
The device overall is a big step from the 700w (in terms of memory) but I feel that the biggest thing that I used (email) was so unreliable, that taking away some of the other features that I was used to are worth it to get a device that just does what it is supposed to.
