Results tagged “RIM” from Green Mesh

Sifting through today's BlackBerry OS upgrade, I keep finding improvements and tweaks.

With 5.0, the upgrade via the handset is no longer an option attaching us to the tether and Desktop Manager. A new option appears during the upgrade for an email alert which replaces the handset push.

The entire operation of backing up and restoring data, preferences and apps is accomplished by the desktop manager. Always do a backup first.

Blackberry OS 5.0 finds.

• A new startup screen with a status bar that measures the entire boot-up process


• Menus feather in and out with bouncy scrolls that are more responsive


• Horizontal word correction replaces the vertical making it easier to see all entries


• Larger icons in the media folder for photos


• A touch icon to send email


• Auto-focus now has a maco mode letting you focus almost down to an inch


• The camera responds quicker and the option to customize a physical trigger key is in the camera interface


• You can scale photos sent out via email. The scaled down .png files are as crisp at the full rez. Great for blogging! and direct posting


• Permission approval for apps appears before the download


• MMS/SMS is identified by a bubble instead of the email icon


• SMS has gone fancy with smiles and bubble threading - grouping a thread in the directory. MMS remains utilitarian. I'm not too thrilled with the tiny scrolling windows in the SMS. Pretty takes up too much space. (I have always wondered why if MMS costs the same as SMS and has a longer word limit, why not use MMS all the time?)


• The BlackBerry web browser has been updated


• Steaming radio volume adjusts with the physical buttons while running as a background program.


• The Alert icons have been updated so you no longer confuse medium sound with calls only

Best of all, the upgrade was flawless, free and the phone hasn't crashed or bogged down since I upgraded. So maybe the memory management has improved.

It's great to get a major upgrade just BEFORE RIM releases the Storm 2 giving Storm 1 users a taste of something new before the dulling the sting of hardware envy.

Now on to see how many programs I can run at the same time before it crashes....

So you are at the gym streaming internet radio via Pandora on your Blackberry Storm and you hear an alert for an email. Without stopping the music, you answer the email, then swap to your Twitter application, then send a text message and this all works fine. You still have Blackberry App World and VZ Navigator running from this morning in the background and decide it would be cool to shoot and upload a video of your feet moving on the elliptical via UberTwitter to Facebook.... and the world freezes.

The Storm has the ability to do alot of things at the same time and it has the ability for the user to destroy that experience pretty quickly. Some phone manufacturers increase stability by only letting you run one application at a time, RIM decided to give you the option of running everything and letting the user sort it out.

Multitasking operating systems have been around a long time. Windows Mobile, Android and Palm are other examples of a multitasking operating systems. It's a nightmare when designing a phone. Decreased battery life and draining memory. On the Blackberry, the ability to download applications from third party creators not necessarily approved by RIM adds a new twist of freedom and horror to the mix.

You learn pretty quickly how far you can push the phone and multitasking is probably the most common reason people hate the phone. "It's so slow !!" "It's crashing !!" This is also the reason why the store display phone is generally horrible as the day grinds on. Everyone who has walked by starts running a new application.

The Switch Application tool bar is your friend (see photo above). From the Blackberry button, this is accessible while running any application. It provides a widow into what is running similar to Crtl-Alt-Delete/Applications on a PC. This window allows you to jump between applications and CLOSE THEM DOWN if you don't need them.

So it is possible to listen to music and text and email, especially when running multiple email accounts though the Blackberry mail server system rather than using dedicated applications like Gmail, just shut down the navigation application you were using six hours ago.

I like the free application (Blackberry App World) QuickPull. It simulates a battery pull complete boot for the Blackberry Storm. You can schedule this complete cycle automatically in the middle of the night and it doesn't affect your alerts or wake-up
alarm.

Purge your email and text/picture/video messages. Multiple accounts with multiple attachments combined with text, pix and video left in for days eats up memory and makes the phone sluggish.

You can select the number of days you want to keep in the mail in each account automatically. I prefer a 15 day window automatic deletion window and to pick a moment when I have time and Delete Prior for each account. While you can delete messages from your native mail account account via the Blackberry mail server system, the mail that appears in the phone from your Gmail, Yahoo, corporate mail server, etc. is a mirror of that mail. All that garbage still looms on a server somewhere unless you decide to manually select a group of emails in your Storm and delete at the same time.

About a month ago, I decided to move over to a smart phone from a good 3.2 megapixel still/ video phone, a Samsung ACH-990. I wanted to forward between a work/home phone without cost, so my decision was slanted toward the Verizon offerings.

This isn't an endorsement or an ongoing comparison, but rather an observation of using a Blackberry Storm for better or worse to help anyone with one or considering options for a phone application.

I considered the iPhone 3G from AT&T, as it is the dominant player in the smart phone game. Other smart phones in the running were the Samsung Omnia (5 megapixil !) and the HTC Touch.

Why I picked a Blackberry Storm

A phone is a tool. Like my plumbing, electrical and woodworking tools, I use the tool that works best for the job. I am photojournalist who is always looking for new ways to refine and speed up the process of transmitting still photos, video and data. I use multiple email accounts, picture/video and text messaging extensively.

I was intrigued by the iPhone but it quickly fell out of the running. No video capability, no picture/video messaging and a 2 megapixel camera with no flash or mechanical auto-focus. No multi-tasking of applications, no multi-threading of multiple server and web email accounts all running at the same time. No turn-by-turn navigation. No insurance. No replaceable battery. I have been going through a couple of phones per year. One got destroyed at a fire last year.

The iPhone is a fine tool for people dedicated to the Apple platform and find innovative uses sifting through a billion applications, but there were basic necessities of being a picture/video phone that I needed before considering all else.

The Samsung Omnia had a horrible screen and I never could get the Windows Mobile based phone to work right at the store. Like the Blackberry Storm, this multitasking phone usually has every possible application running opened in odd ways by every person who has touched it that day. The Verizon salespeople wouldn't let me cold boot the phones and they were tethered to an alarm/power source The Windows Mobile HTC Touch with a slide out keyboard seemed flimsy and cheap with a tiny screen.

Why I am writing this

While I have nothing against the iPhone, most of the reviews for the Blackberry Storm appear to be written by iPhone users comparing everything to their iPhone without connecting to the philosophy behind the Blackberry's design.

I want to share some tricks and observations that I figured out along the way without comparing the Blackberry Storm to anything.

Here's the tool, lets make it work.