One of the things I discovered yesterday, and I think I knew already somewhere in the back of my head but chose to ignore, is that is has a maximum of 128 MBs of application memory. Before you freak out, let me explain. The device comes with 1GB of built in memory. The 1GB is then split up into data memory and application memory. The data memory is where you can store pictures, music, videos etc. and the application memory is used for all your applications. Of course the device also supports a Micro SD card of up to 32 GBs.

This is of course a major problem. In fact, it might be a deal breaker for me. When I got the Bold, one of the reasons I said I prefer it over the iPhone 3GS is its ability to run background apps. However, if the device only supports up to 128 MBs worth of apps, out of which over 80 is already taken up by the OS, the languages, and other things preinstalled, having the ability to run background apps does not help me very much. Like I said, I am discovering new things about the Bold daily, some better than others.

On to  better topics. Some of the amazing things I have discovered is that the BlackBerry in general, and the Bold specifically have a lot of very useful shortcuts and capabilities. The thing is, a lot of BlackBerry users use their device mainly for email and do not even approach its full potential. In fact, someone asked me yesterday how to easily lock the device, which I figured out in the first 5 minutes using the device. I therefore decided to share some useful tips on how to maximize your experience with the BlackBerry Bold, and I am sure a majority of the following tips apply to all BlackBerrys as well.

The following is a list of the most important BlackBerry usability tips:

• Lock your Device: Everyone knows that one of the biggest advantages of using a BlackBerry is its spacious and comfortable keyboard. However, it wont be so comfortable if it dials your boss’ number while in your pocket when you are supposed to be out sick, and you are at the mall. So to lock your device, simply press the * button for two seconds and walla, your device is locked. To unlock it, as the phone tells you, press the * and then the “Send” button.
• Silence your Device: Another very crucial shortcut. Press the # button for two seconds and the phone interchanges between the last two profiles you used. So if you usually use the General and the Vibrate profiles, pressing the # for two seconds will activate whichever one of those two profiles is not currently active.
• Maximize your Home Screen: The home screen of the BlackBerry is where you spend most of your time. If there are certain features or apps you use more often, they should appear on the home screen, so you do not need to dig through the menus every time you want to use them. To do this, you need to find and select the respective icon, press Menu then Move. You then move that icon to to the top of the main menu, and it will appear on your home screen. Now here is the catch, the default theme displays 5 icons on the home screen. If you use 10 apps regularly, you need to find a theme that has 10 icons on the home screen. There are thousands of free themes to be downloaded. You can start by searching here, but good old Google might pan out to be a useful tool.
• Optimize your Battery Life: This is not as unique to BlackBerry as the previous tips, but with the advanced features offered by most BlackBerrys and smartphones, battery life has become an issue. To preserve your battery, set your screen brightness to its lowest setting. I know it might sound like it would affect the clarity of the screen, but trust me, mine has been like that from day one, and the clarity of the Bold’s display still blows my mind. Another tip is when you are at work or in front of a computer, turn off your data, so your 3G/Wifi is disabled and not drowning your battery. You can do this by going to Options>Mobile Network>Data Services and turning it off. Lastly, this is something I only recently discovered, to save more battery life, make sure your GPS radio is turned off. You can do that by going to Options>Advanced Options>GPS>GPS Services and turning Location off. Obviously, don’t forget to turn it back when you want to use the device’s GPS.
• Monitor your Background Apps: As I mentioned, one of the greatest advantages of the BlackBerry and most smartphones over the iPhone is the ability to run background apps. This means that if you are a Twitter user and choose to be notified when someone replies to you, you do not need to sit in front of Twitter all day, you just run a Twitter app in the background. Same goes for IM, Facebook, or any other app. The problem this causes for most people is that they run an app and when they are done, they press End, sending the app to the background where it continues to use data, battery, and memory. If you want to know what is running in the background at any point, press Alt and the Back button, and you will bring up a nice display of all your running apps. You can then select one, and exit it. In general, a good tip is to exit every app properly by clicking Menu>Exit from within the app.

There are literally tens more of useful tips and shortcuts available on the BlackBerry Bold. Anything from switching input type from letters to numbers, to freeing up some application memory so your device runs faster. One more thing I would tell every BlackBerry user to do is read CrackBerry daily, they always share great info on new apps, tricks, and firmware upgrades.

If you have anything you want to know how to do, please ask in the comments, but you can be sure this is only a first post in a series about useful BlackBerry tips. If you know of a good tip, what better place to share it then in the comments below?

See some more useful tips in the video below!

-Hillel

When the average person hears the words email and mobile, they automatically think BlackBerry, and rightfully so. BlackBerrys are the ultimate email machines. You receive your emails faster than you can say the word “email” and they are pushed to your device and stored on the phone’s memory. This of course provides a superior email experience, which is the primary reason people buy BlackBerrys.

On another note, when people hear the words “email” and “Web”, they automatically think Gmail, and rightfully so. Gmail is the most advanced and user friendly email web service, and it has also become the fastest growing one, both in terms of capacity and users. I love Gmail.

So, putting one and one together, you would think the world’s mobile email leader would offer full support for the world’s leading web email provider, wouldn’t you? In fact, I would think that RIM would offer features available only to Gmail users. What I have found is exactly the opposite. The BlackBerry’s support for Gmail is outdated and not practical.

When you initially configure your Gmail with your BlackBerry, you are only presented with the option of using the primitive POP3 protocol. Now, let’s talk a little bit about POP3 VS. IMAP4. To simplify things, I will just explain why I only use IMAP. In today’s technologically advanced world, people are accessing their email accounts from numerous platforms. They check their email from their computer, their laptop, their cellphone, their iPod, should I go on? IMAP enables all those platforms to stay in sync with each other. So if you are at a cafe and you check your email on your iPod, the email you read, archived, or deleted will appear that way in your Outlook as well.

Imagine having to see every email you read appear as a new email when you open your computer or laptop. That could get very annoying, not to mention confusing and inefficient. IMAP solves this issue and keeps all your platforms in sync. There really is no reason to use POP3 anymore.

However, Blackberry users, the consumers who buy the expensive phone so they can have the best email experience are a little stuck. As I said, when defining your email on your BlackBerry, you are only presented with the option of defining a POP account. If you figure out a workaround, which took me a few weeks to find, of leaving the password field blank when setting up an email, you can then define your advanced settings manually including the IMAP protocol. OK, so no big deal, right? Wrong! Once you set up IMAP on the Blackberry, your problems are just beginning.

Now that you have IMAP set up on your Blackberry, your device should sync with your Gmail on the Web. What I mean is that when you are working at a computer and reading emails all day, any action you take in your inbox on the Web should be reflected on your BlackBerry. Unfortunately, it is not. Once an email arrives on your BlackBerry, it stays there until you delete in manually. What ends up happening is that I see every email twice. This might not seem like the biggest deal to you but if you think about different scenarios and how this could affect them, you will realize it can be a huge inconvenience.

I have read up a lot about this issue and it is a known problem with no solution or even acknowledgment from the part of RIM. I am surprised that BlackBerry users around the world are not kicking and screaming about this. In my opinion, as much as I love my Bold, this might be the one factor that gets me to abandon BlackBerry for another phone that supports full IMAP (Android’s IMAP experience is seamless and pretty close to the Push experience you get on Blackberrys in terms of the lack of delay.).

One of the solutions to this issue, I have to add, is to use the Blackberry Gmail app. The app supports full IMAP and gives you access to all your folders and contacts. In my opinion, this is not a viable option. That app works on almost all phones, I do not think there is any point of owning a BlackBerry if you are going to use that app. It does not support real Push technology, which means you will have a delay of a few minutes before receiving emails, which again, is not the end of the world, but why buy a BlackBerry if you do not have Push? In addition, as comfortable as Gmail’s interface is, I prefer the BlackBerry email interface, so the Gmail app is a no go.

I find it very hard to believe that RIM is completely ignoring this issue, there is even an online petition to solve it (sign it). I HAVE to believe that a workaround exists somewhere. If you know of one, and please do not tell me to forward my emails to Yahoo, please share it in the comments.

-Hillel

The reason for the quotation marks in the last sentence is that I was to find out later that the new phone I received and am now using was neither new nor free. Now, let me say one thing before I go into the small details. I think Cellcom deserves props for even reading the blog and even bigger props for actually searching for my number (mistakenly, I did not leave a number in the blog post for them to contact me), and contacting me. It shows that they are on the right path and are not completely ignoring the blogesphere.

Having said that, it is a good start, but that is where it ends. They have a lot more to improve before I can say that their service is even satisfactory. When I got the call, the manager was extremely nice and professional and I chewed his ear off telling him the whole story and how horrible my experience was. It is true he had already read about it on the blog, but it was important for me to repeat it to him with all the details so that he understood how ridiculous the whole thing was.

So he told me he would like to compensate me. At this point of the conversation I cut him off (apologized of course) and said that this conversation will end in one of two ways. The first option is that I will thank him for fixing the phone and use Cellcom till my contract is over then say goodbye. The better option is that he makes such a  good offer that I am thrilled and stay with Cellcom and even give them some good PR. He opted for the second and offered me a choice of 5 phones from which to choose. He explained to me that this will not be considered an upgrade and that I am being given the phone for free with the hope that I stay with Cellcom as a happy customer. I was of course thrilled, till I heard the 5 options.

As nice as it was, he knew he was talking to a tech blogger, so you would think he would give some reasonable options, but the best option he gave was a Samsung F480, which is a decent phone, leagues above my last Nokia 6288 (the one I was replacing). The phone lacks a keyboard of any kind, not hardware and not virtual, nothing. It is borderline impossible to type on. It lacks Wifi, which is not the end of the world as it has HSDPA, but is Java-based, so no normal apps. All in all I was ok with it. He told me to go pick it up and the whole ordeal would take 5 minutes at the Cellcom center…YEA RIGHT!

Went to the store and 5 hours and a lot of yelling later, I had myself a refurbished F480. They guaranteed me it never left the store and it was just from display but the scratches on the screen say otherwise. Now, at this point, I was a little upset, but again, it was free, so how can I complain? This is where the story gets interesting. Approximately, 24 hours after I took the “new” phone and singed on for another 18 months with Cellcom, Orange, Cellcom’s biggest competitor called me.

To make a long story short, he offered me a free Blackbery Bold. I almost fell off my chair. As you know if you read my blog, I LOVE the Blackberry Bold. I told the representative that I had just signed with Cellcom and I am committed, to which he replied “No worries, we will pay your fine”. At this point, I thought I was on candid camera. I told him I would find out what the fine is and get back to him. Turns out finding out how high the fine is for leaving Cellcom is NOT an easy task. After days of phone calls, I found out it was around $400. Orange offered to pay it and give me the Bold. But, as always, there is a catch, I need to sign on to Orange for 18 months including a package for calls (around $70), data, ($10 for 100MB), and Blackberry service ($30).

I told Mr. Orange that he knows I am a tech blogger, and there is no way I am signing on to any particular phone for 18 months, even if it is a Blackberry. I explained to him that I have no problem committing to Orange that if and when I get an iPhone, I will use an Orange SIM card, but to commit to Blackberry service for 18 months was unacceptable. He said I am pushing my luck as they are already offering me a free Bold, and he is probably right, but the bottom line is I will be paying more monthly than I am paying now, so free or not free, his  offer doesn’t seem so appealing unless they cancel the Blackberry service contract.

Where it stands now is that I am waiting on Orange’s answer whether I can take this “present” with no contract on the Blackberry service. I hope I get an answer soon and I hope the answer is yes.

<Taking a deep breath> To summarize, both companies have impressed me with their initiative to take bloggers seriously. Cellcom has disappointed at the end of the day and as for Orange, stay tuned!

-Hillel

With 2008 coming to an end and the fact that I have been asked countless times by friends what phone to buy, I figured I would try to offer some information on what I think are the all around most impressive cellular phones to date.

Before I start, let me say that this is just my opinion, and there is no real way to determine the absolute best handset. Also, I am going to try to categorize the phones based on your needs and what kind of user you are.

Let me also say that there is a huge marketing aspect to all of this. For example, the N95 was marketed so well, that people think that it is still one of the best phones, when in reality it is far from being in the same category as the phones I am going to discuss. So, I am trying to ignore marketing and hype and stick to the specs and user reviews when listing these phones.

Blackberry Bold: It is extremely uncommon to find a phone that has no negative reviews. The Bold is one of those phones, which is very interesting, considering that its successor, the Storm is one of the few phones that has only negative reviews. Obviously, the Bold is aimed at the business sector, with its RIM push mail and amazing full QWERTY keyboard. However, besides its lacking media options, it can serve as some serious competition for the less business-oriented phones out there.

The specs are pretty unbeatable with every possible connectivity option built in. That includes HSDPA or 3.5G, which is the fastest cellular internet connection available. Wifi, GPS, and just in case, the Bold has an EDGE connection. It has a 2mp camera with a flash, but the pictures look leagues above those taken with the 2mp camera on the Curve. The battery did really well in all the tests and the Bold also offers A2DP or stereo bluetooth, enabling you to listen to your music, no strings attached.

The interface is supposedly one of the best out there, and offers the best Blackberry user experience by far. One thing I really love about the Bold is that it syncs with iTunes.

If I had to choose things I do not love about the Bold, I would say that it could be a little smaller and thinner. The camera could be a little better and a few gigs of built in memory would have made it the perfect phone.Nokia E71: Aimed at the same type of user as the Bold, the E71 impressed me from the first second that I held it. The pictures really do not do it justice. Instead of repeating everything I said about the Bold, let me just list the differences. For starters, the E71 is much smaller and thinner. The camera is better and so is the battery. Oh, and it is at least $300 cheaper than the Bold. Sounds like a no brainer right? Not so fast.

The E71 runs on Symbian and if you look hard enough, you can find many reviews that include negative comments about the E71′s interface. I played around with it, and definitely thought it needed some work. Let me give you an example before all the Symbian fanboys jump down my throat. If you want to pair a Bluetooth device like a headset for example, and you navigate to the Bluetooth menu via Settings, which is where it is generally located, you will not be able to pair the device. However, if you navigate to the same Bluetooth menu via Connectivity, the paring tab will show up. I don’t know about you, but I do not think there should be two ways of getting to the same menu, especially when one of the options does not include all the available tabs.So, here is where your needs come in. If you need a smaller phone with a better camera, get the E71. If you want a smoother user experience with the famous seamless Blackberry experience, get the Bold. Whichever one you decide, you will not be disappointed, they are both extremely impressive phones.

iPhone 3G: I know you are very disappointed to see the iPhone  3G on the list, and you are probably thinking, “Enough already”, but it is not for no reason that almost every review of every phone, includes the question, “how does it compare to the iPhone”? The iPhone’s user experience is still with no competition. There have been phones that came close, like phones that use HTC’s Touch Flo, but none of them are really there. We all know by now what the iPhone does, so let me talk a little about what it does not do. Look at its shortcomings and decide if these are things you can live without.

The iPhone does not allow you to copy/paste any text. You cannot take a picture and send it to another phone, no MMS capabilities. You cannot listen to your music wirelessly, no stereo bluetooth. You cannot take a picture at night, no flash. You cannot take a video clip, no video camera. You cannot view a site with Java or flash, it is not supported by the iPhone. You cannot make video calls, no secondary camera. You cannot edit any Office document, no Office editor. Finally, you cannot put a memory card in to expand the memory, no memory card slot.

Having said all of that, I think the iPhone’s offerings overpower its shortcomings, by far. I am not going to bore you with the details, but to highlight two things I just love about the iPhone, its interface is nothing short of genius and revolutionary, and the app store makes you forget that you cannot copy and paste (as well as everything else on that list).

I am not going to tell you which of the above phones is the best, because it really depends on your needs. To sum it up in two sentences, if you want seamless email use in a beautiful but large device, the Bold is for you. If you want a smaller device with a better battery and camera, that will meet your business needs, but might take a few seconds more, get the E71. If you are more of a private consumer that wants a phone you will love and never want to put down, even with its multiple disadvantages, get the iPhone 3G.

-Hillel