Smartphones/PDA vs. Blackberry

[Mordy]

Um...Can you point me in the right direction? I got the ROM cooker to make me a version of the regular t9 since xt9 was too slow for me. I typed too fast for it to recognize everything. Anyway, yes I use t9 and not a full keyboard and I need to type the apostrophe's myself (by pressing 1) and it would be nice not to have to.

So what software can I use? Thanks.

I'll be honest, its been a while since I used a t9-based smartphone (g0d I miss them so much) so I don't even know what's available anymore.

In my day of using them, we didn't have kitchens. I patched together pieces of roms manually using various tools, than used a modified RUU to load it.

But you shouldn't really need a new rom for that. I think its something that can be loaded via .cab files.
At least, that's the way it is now on ppc-edition devices. Sorry, been out of the WM-smartphone edition loop for a year now (I left right around the release of the smartflip... *sigh*).

[Charles The Govenor]

I have the 8830 with sprint great battery life with the treos I just have issue after issue

[Mordy]

Charles, that's great, but a BB can't replace the features of a smartphone unless all you're interested in is straightforward access to email.

[Charles The Govenor]

So what do u like so much about the smartphone if not for email

[Mordy]

*sigh*
Well, I could just say "Scroll back and read the darned thread", since the last 5 pages have been about just that, or I could be nice and just quote the good bits here.

Basically, any new features you want you can add by writing or installing a program, whereas the blackberry will always be limited to what it does out of the box.

Case in point: When wireless stereo was becoming a standard, new phones were coming out that supported it so you could play your music on your home or car stereo in high quality without wires using a variation of bluetooth audio technology. My 3 year old smartphone had bluetooth, but not the support for the stereo profile. I installed a program and BOOM, I had bluetooth stereo support (A2DP). Then I wanted to be able to browse shoutcast internet radio on my phone, so I installed a media player that allows that format. Then I wanted an easier way to look for stations (their site is hard to navigate on a mobile browser), so some friends and I starting writing our own shoutcast program that parses the information and makes it easy to search and find and play internet radio stations.

There's an endless amount of features you can add to a smartphone/PDA to make it work better for you, its the customization that makes it worthwhile (I've even designed a system for someone to open their garage door with the smartphone). I beleive that what someone needs varies from person to person, so that level of customization is a MUST for me. However, I do recognize that many people do not want or care to spend the time to tweak their phone to be perfect for THEM. In that case, the blackberry is a much simpler straight forward platform. It has less features, but many less-technical people will see that as a g-dsend.

I'm not sure if I'd go this far, but I've heard the blackberry referred to as "smartphones for dummies".

There. I do hate repeating myself, so in the future please read the thread you're posting in.

As far as what I personally do that you can't do on a Blackberry:

• MochaFTP - run an ftp server from your phone (not a client, a SERVER...you can drag/drop files to computers without even being near them!)
• Streaming Media and A2DP - Not only can I play my phone's music playlist just by BEING in the car (no wires, connect automatically via BT when the car turns on), I can also play streaming internet radio stations, and play that over the car stereo.
• Logmein - arguably the BEST remote desktop client there is. I work from the road on an almost daily basis, and this gets me my office or home PC's desktop to appear on my phone.
• Slingbox/Orb - placeshifiting media. Also good as a "limitless storage ipod";I can play any video/audio that is on my home PC as long as I have reception, without using up any of my storage space
• Skype - we all know what VOIP is by now.
• Portable WiFi Router - forget tethering over USB or configuring a BT dial up connection to get online when travelling. Since my phone sports a Wifi antennae, I can run an app that takes my cellular data connection and broadcasts it as an access point for other devices to connect to. Then any laptop, PSP, heck even a Nintendo WII will see the phone as a wireless network and be able to connect to it and get online(obviously you should turn on WEP encryption before doing this).
• Full Office Support - native word/excel/powerpoint suite
• Choice of browsers - I can pick whatever browser works best for what I need to do that moment. For example, Opera for speed browsing, Picsel for the iphone style kinetic scrolling (which pre-dates the iphone by 2 years, btw), IE with flash extensions for playing youtube and other streaming sites full screen, and SkyFire for sites with interactive flash/java. Yes, you can install Opera mini on the blackberry since they make a java version for generic phones, but that's it really.
• Full PIM sync over the air with Exchange - BB Enterprise edition has something similar, but its not as good when it comes to syncing what is on your desktop to your phone in real time over the air. Plus, I can run my own server.
• THE FREEDOM TO DEVELOP YOUR OWN APPLICATIONS! - This is the biggest deal. I've run and helped developed stuff to make all sorts of unconventional things happen on my phone. For example, I can text "GPS" to my phone, and it will return an sms with the current coordinates via the built in GPS and a link to where I am on a google map page. My wife can find me on my way home without having to answer the phone (this could be a mixed blessing), and if its ever lost/stolen, I can find it. I also mentioned earlier that I helped someone create a system to open his garage door with his phone. This is the stuff  you can't do on a standard phone, or even your ordinary blackberry.

Now, I understand ordinary people might not have any interest in this stuff. And that's fine- for those people, the OS might even be too complicated, and that is why phones like the Blackberry exist.
But, make no mistake- a smartphone can be an alternative to a BB, but a BB is NOT an alternative to a Smartphone.

[Charles The Govenor]

I understand I apologise for making u rewrite it I guess it just comes down to a personal prefrence

[Charles The Govenor]

And treos a lot of times just randomly restarts itself.

[Mordy]

eh. the more complex a system, the more there is to go wrong.

I personally run firmware I designed myself on my phone. things go wrong all the time, but its so much more powerful than the stock rom...

[Eli]

I stand firmly that the BlackBerry is the *best push e-mail in the world.*

What I mean is that with a BB you know that you will always get your e-mail. You don't have to worry that maybe you were on the phone and the device tried to sync and then didn't realize that you got off the phone and therefore didn't try to retrieve your e-mail. You don't have to worry that the internet will just get stuck, and for some unknown reason you have to reboot your phone to get anywhere. You won't have to worry that after you hang up from a call, if you make another one too quick (within about 30 seconds) yourt device will not have enough time to do a sync. All those things happen all the time with a WM phone, and NEVER EVER with a BB.

Mordy, I'm trying so hard to agree with you that direct push from Windows Mobile is a better solution that blackberry, but I absolutely cannot get myself to agree. I cannot tell you how many times in the last week (well, really in the last two years but in the last week I've been especially looking out for it) I looked at my phone only to see "Not Connected - Check Status" and it says something like the network connectivity was unavailable or a voice call was in progress. A voice call in progress?? So just sync when I'm off the phone! But no, if it tries syncing when you're on the phone it will not try syncing automatically when you get off the phone (to be honest, sometimes it does, but not usually) rather it'll wait until the next scheduled firewall timeout or whatever it uses to figure out when to sync.

The blackberry will ALWAYS get your e-mail within seconds after getting off the phone. ALWAYS. I've never had a "network connectivity" issue with a blackberry besides for that one fateful day when there was a blackberry outage.

I'm sorry to all the Windows Mobile Smartphone fanbois for saying this, but "if you need rock solid, reliable, always connected e-mail, you gotta go with the blackberry."

And this is coming from a guy who's been using a Windows Mobile phone for the last two years...

[Mordy]

Oh come on Eli, did we learn nothing from our previous conversation? You have a bad experience with your setup. I know people with broken blackberrys- does that mean RIM fails as a push service for everyone?

Mordy, I'm trying so hard to agree with you that direct push from Windows Mobile is a better solution that blackberry, but I absolutely cannot get myself to agree.

Whoa there... I didn't say it was better. How can it be better when there's nothing wrong with the BB implentation? They both do their job perfectly when configured properly, and in fact work in almost the exact same way.
 I've used both and had flawless execution from both.

I cannot tell you how many times in the last week (well, really in the last two years but in the last week I've been especially looking out for it) I looked at my phone only to see "Not Connected - Check Status" and it says something like the network connectivity was unavailable or a voice call was in progress. A voice call in progress?? So just sync when I'm off the phone! But no, if it tries syncing when you're on the phone it will not try syncing automatically when you get off the phone (to be honest, sometimes it does, but not usually) rather it'll wait until the next scheduled firewall timeout or whatever it uses to figure out when to sync.

Dude, I've tried to recreate your problem, and I can't! In my line of work I often ask people to send me attachments while I'm on the phone with them. As soon as I hang up, I get a little "tiddle-dee-dum" alert and new email is waiting for me.
After you told me about your problem, I even TRIED to mess it up by sending myself email whenever I was on a call. I can't do it man, the system just works flawlessly.
The only time I've ever missed an email on this setup is when I ran out of available memory because I left the device streaming music and I didn't know about it.

So, either you're doing something wrong or your software is flawed (I KNOW 6.1 was never released on the 3125, so you've got to be using some sort of hacked version since I think you mentioned you're running that build).

The blackberry will ALWAYS get your e-mail within seconds after getting off the phone. ALWAYS. I've never had a "network connectivity" issue with a blackberry besides for that one fateful day when there was a blackberry outage.

funny, my WM device will ALWAYS get your e-mail within seconds too, so I don't get what you're complaining about? And I've heard those "outages" happen almost annually according to Oreilly, btw.

And this is coming from a guy who's been using a Windows Mobile phone for the last two years...

Maybe its time for a new one?

Sheesh. I thought we settled this one?

[Eli]

LOL

I know my setup is E2K3 on a Comcast line but I don't think that's what is causing it not to pick up e-mails right when I get off the phone. You're saying it might be the hacked unofficial WM 6.1 for the 3125? I don't think so either. I've been having these problems since the European Qtek 8500, and then again with the 3125 even with stock firmware, and even with upgraded stock firmware. You get your e-mails within seconds? BS! Every time you hang up I want you to immediately go into AS and see if it started syncing. EVEN after a 30 minute phone call (I would put money down that it DOES NOT sync right away after a long phone call). Even if it does start syncing, when there's a new e-mail I want you to count how long it takes from pressing end till the phone vibrates. Now try it on a blackberry. Oh, My, God will you be surprised to see how fast the e-mails come through.

I guess this will just have to be one of the things we disagree about.

[Mordy]

You get your e-mails within seconds? BS!

Ok, so now you're just calling me a liar. Nice.
Are you really willing to see what will happen to this board if you make me prove everything??

Every time you hang up I want you to immediately go into AS and see if it started syncing.

Why? I just gives me the new email jingle, isn't that enough?

EVEN after a 30 minute phone call (I would put money down that it DOES NOT sync right away after a long phone call). Even if it does start syncing, when there's a new e-mail I want you to count how long it takes from pressing end till the phone vibrates. Now try it on a blackberry. Oh, My, God will you be surprised to see how fast the e-mails come through.

Again, you say this like I've never used a blackberry! Goodness!

I guess this will just have to be one of the things we disagree about.

I dunno... depends how stubborn you feel like being... ha!

[Cheap dude]

Lots of this conversation is now wrong.
Bb app world came out there are tons of apps and you can write your own apps (if u know how).

Blackberrys are just as powerfull as any pther smartphone.

[Mordy]

Wrong. You've always been able to develop for blackberry, they just made a store to making finding apps more convenient.
Problem has always been that you need to play inside the java sandbox, just like most standard feature phones (also referred to as non-smartphones or "dumbphones" - not my term of preference).

Case-in-point: you can make a silly little game or weather tracker in java that will work on a BB just like it would work on a Moto Razr. But how many Voice Over IP applications exist for BB? How many browsers that can play flash video? How many custom OS interfaces that can access the file system and launch other apps?

I'll admit that RIM has gotten better about what you can do via the application development, but its still a far cry from a true coding environment that lets you have direct access to the hardware. Smartphones like Android and the current iterations of Windows Mobile give you that power, the inner workings resembling something more like a desktop PC than a phone.
Don't get me wrong, BB is WAAAY better than a feature phone that happens to have a QWERTY. But it still can't do half the things I've been doing for nearly a decade on my Smartphones.