I Cannot Stand The Blackberry Pearl

I cannot stand the Blackberry Pearl! I know it is a really small phone, and it is a Blackberry but it drives me crazy. The only reason to have a Blackberry is to use it for email. I think all other functions of it are sub-par as smart phones go, so to have an email device without a full keyboard is driving me up the wall. My office gave me a brand new Verizon Wireless Pearl when I started and I tolerated the horrible keyboard since it was the nicest phone they had. The last straw was about two weeks ago when I was writing my boss and the dam predictive text or whatever you call it could not type out LAN, nor could I cancel out of the options it was giving me.

Early last week I had our telecom person switch me to an Blackberry 8800 that my predecessor had. That phone is huge, and kind of sucks but it has a full keyboard. I will use it until we can figure out why we cannot get the iPhone or any other Wireless Active Sync device to connect to our Exchange 2003 server.

The Nokia N95 Experiment

OK, so the idea of me getting a Nokia N95 turned into a bad idea. As much as I think it, in this day and age I need a phone with easy text imput. That means a keyboard, or maybe a touch keyboard (aka iPhone). The concept of a blackberry pearl or even just T9 text input from a Nokia N95 just doesn't cut it. As much as the N95 was a great phone in every other way I need the ability to input data quickly.

And you guessed it, that means I returned my N95 last Friday. I am stuck with the limitations of my Nokia E61i until the iPhone 3g comes out. Hopefully that will be an improvement over the original. If that is a failure I can either try my luck with the Nokia E71, the 61i replacement, or wait a really long time for Palm to get their act together and come out with their new OS.

Until July 11, I will try and figure out how to keep managing my tasks on the E61i.

The Curve

I have only had the Blackberry Pearl for a short time, but it is now out! I now have a Blackberry Curve from work, and I am very happy. Yes the Pearl is really small, but the Curve is not much bigger. It is only slightly wider. The rest of the dimensions are the same, and it has a full keyboard. That makes all the difference to me. That means my Pearl goes up on Ebay!

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Blackberry Pearl Hard Reset Update

Apparently RIM is not as smart as other hardware vendors. When you do a hard reset of a Pearl you don’t actually get all the programs refreshed to the factory default. I would argue that it isn’t a hard reset, but whatever. It boils down to the fact that when you mess up an install you can’t fix it. It took me a while, but i was able to get the lost applications back after following the instructions from this forum post.

My issue isn’t even 100% resolved since i lost the new AT&T phone theme i had with my Pearl and instead have the older not as nice looking Cingular theme on the phone since the software I was able to get the restore to work from must have been older than what was on my phone. In any case I am all better for now.

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Blackberry Pearl

After being fed up with issues on my Treo 680 I went out and bought a Blackberry Pearl. This was an impulse buy, since it is a short term solution until work upgrades my Blackberry for me. Until then I am using the Pearl. My first impression is that this phone is small. It is the size of a regular phone. It fits in my pocket. That is nice. The call quality is good, and the screen is nice and bright and sharp. I am still getting used to the keyboard, so the jury is still out on it.

In the long term I will use the Pearl for my work email, and maybe get a larger screen PDA phone for my personal mobile. I know, why have two? Well I can’t port my personal number to my work account, and I don’t want to give up my personal mobile number. I really like it, and everyone knows it. Right now I have been forwarding my call from one phone to the other so I can keep one phone in my bag and not have to carry it all the time. But as good as the Pearl seems, it doesn’t do tasks very well. I like the Windows Mobile or Palm for that so I might get some other device. I just know the 680 is not that device. It crashes and is too dam slow just too often. I am eyeing the Apple iPhone, or the Windows Mobile 6 Treo with the newly announced Blackberry emulation software running on it that might come out this fall. I guess I am always on the hunt for the perfect PDA/Phone. So close, but not there yet!

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