Smartphone Round Robin: BlackBerry 8310, Ciao!

Well, my time with the BlackBerry 8310 is over now, so it's time to wrap upwards my feeling about the lilliputian reddish wonder. Yes - a wonder. I used to think that RIM "but got lucky" with the BlackBerry. They were the first with a real push button email solution and managed to "lock in" a whole slew of businesses early on. I thought that this was pretty much the source of the BlackBerry's success: simply a whole lot of people who were resistant to change.

Having actually, you know, used one for a week and a half has inverse my mind about that analysis. While it's true that a lot of people are sticking with BlackBerries because it'southward what they know, information technology turns out that just as many are finding that the BlackBerry is easy to get to know.

(Quick Smartphone Round Robin note: The contest to win a smartphone of your selection by commenting on any Circular Robin post has been extended - now whatsoever post made by December seventh qualifies! Yes, that as well means that our "coming domicile" manufactures will probable exist pushed dorsum a week also. Y'all try switching phones once a week - it's tough! ;))

More later on the intermission!

(This is role two of a Windows Mobile Guy's await at the BlackBerry 8310, find the (slightly more than comprehensive) Office I here.)

Old School

Despite a sleek and great-feeling grade factor, something about the BlackBerry 8310 feels, well, former. It'south something near the text-rendering that feels somehow bare-bones. I can't quite put my finger on it.

What I can put my finger on (non literally, since this isn't a touch-screen) is the cursor. A big, orange, square cursor on darn near every screen with text on it - whether I'm actually able to enter text or not. Information technology screams "control line" only I love it anyway. It's useful, of class, allowing you to select text for copying (accept that, iPhone, you're the only one who tin can't do that) or for other purposes.

The cursor, the lack of a touchscreen, the text, and my own preconceptions of BlackBerries equally "evolved e-mail pagers" all combine to make me think of the BlackBerry as more than of an "email appliance" than a smartphone. I fully admit that's neither off-white nor exactly authentic, but there information technology is.

...Which sounds similar I'm knocking the BlackBerry, but I'grand non, actually. I capeesh that information technology's eschewed fancy gradients and graphical whiz-bangery for straight-up blackness-on-white text for almost things. I like that when y'all open upwards an email all you see is obviously-jane text instead of a carte bar at the meridian and lesser of the screen. However, it does feel a little bare-basic sometimes. Even quondam-schoolers want just a smidgen of whiz-bang every at present then.

Media

Browser

The BlackBerry 8310's default music player is nigh on par with the Treo 680 and with Windows Mobile. I'm not in beloved with it, but it'll do.

Basically, I'm plenty happy with the default library browser, which you can admission directly with "Music Player" or via the "Media" app. The library browser automagically sorts music via ID3 tags - this sort of thing is standard at present - merely it's a footstep up on Windows Mobile in that information technology assumes (rightly) that you desire all of your music in ane big list. With Windows Mobile, you occasionally have to specify that y'all desire the library to grab from your memory card, which is silly and annoying.

Also squeamish is that the browser's text is big and easy to read. I mention this considering that's how text should be when yous're browsing music (to make life easier for runners and drivers). I likewise mention it because, frankly, it was a welcome change from the text rendering elsewhere on the BlackBerry. Try as I might, I still can't seem to find a font setting anywhere that doesn't experience antiquated and slightly hard to read.

Player

Anyhow, once you're actually into the music role player proper, you lot will often be greeted with album art. Windows Mobile also does this - but for some reason I can only get album art to evidence on WM intermittently. On the other hand, Windows Mobile's thespian doesn't crave you to go into a freaking menu for next and previous song buttons - they're right there on the screen. Yes, I know, the "n" button on the keyboard is a shortcut to side by side. Yet, a button on the keyboard is weird and not almost as intuitive as the "correct" button on a 5-way.

Video

I managed to get video working too - though only after I admitted defeat and used RIM'due south desktop-based converter. I don't actually count this every bit a knock, though, as the 8310 supports a decent assortment of video formats. There's just a whole somewhere in its MPEG-four support that my movies kept falling into when I created them on my Mac. Video standards are all the same the wild wild west, and then I can't really exist sure where the trouble lies.

Camera

The camera is squeamish - the wink is bully. Somebody tell me how much that little LED flash costs. If it's less than $ii per device, and I'm sure it is, then I will begin writing letters to every smartphone manufacturer that isn't including a flash on their phones. That'south near of them, past the mode.

I know that these cameraphones aren't designed to be serious cameras and that a flash isn't going to make them that much better - but it'southward ofttimes the difference betwixt a "dang, won't work" moment and a "sugariness, I got the motion picture!" moment.

The Must-Dos

1. Editors must use their assigned smartphone as their "main encephalon" and may non use any other smartphone OR music device (such as an iPod) for one full week.
   Done and done - although certain functions that I used to be able to do on my chief brain concluded up getting shifted to my desktop. Mainly e-mail shuffling, since I never managed to fully become IMAP working properly on the BlackBerry. However, I take seen that this tin can be done, then I should leaven my previous "merely one mailbox" issue from the earlier commodity a piffling. Merely only a little. ;)
2. Editors must effort to sync their phone to their estimator, syncing all PIM data.
   This worked out but fine - though I do wish there were an easier, consumer-level, "cloud-based" PIM sync. I'g sure there are options, but this is dead-simple to do with Windows Mobile and any hosted Exchange server.
3. Editors must endeavour to set up their email on the smartphone
   Done. See my First Expect for a not-so-brief overview of what I remember of the e-mail on the BlackBerry.
4. Editors must attempt to use their smartphone to get directions at to the lowest degree once.
   TeleNav is groovy, though (as usual) I wish it were a little more than configurable. It's also surprisingly easy on the battery, which I didn't really expect to be the case.
5. Editors must endeavor to use their smartphone with a bluetooth headset.
   Done. Not as well shabby, certainly better reception than the Treo 680's bluetooth setup.
6. Editors must try to install at least ii 3rd-party apps (if possible) on their smartphone.
   Opera Mini (swoon), the CrackBerry.com shortcut (of course!), and JiveTalk (double-swoon). Installing apps is fairly easy, though somehow it still feels unfamiliar to me.
7. Editors must attempt to play a game
   Yeppers. BrickBreaker is expert stuff.
8. Editors must try to scan the internet
   Yeppers again. You would have seen an extended series of increasingly unhinged paragraphs in this space about the default web browser on the 8310, how I never thought I'd find a browser worse than Blazer, and how RIM just doesn't "get" that the web is simply as important, if non more of import, than email to a lot of people these days. Luckily, I installed Opera Mini and saved us all that hassle.
9. Editors must attempt to add music to their smartphone and use information technology as their music device.
   No worries there, well, no worries worth mentioning again, let'southward say.
10. Editors must try to scout a video on their device.
    Done and washed - afterward I allow RIM'south desktop app do the converting for me.

Wrapping Upward

...And at present I'll be going from a non-touchscreen, forepart-facing QWERTY keyboard device with GPS built-in to a ....non-touchscreen, front end-facing QWERTY keyboard device with GPS congenital-in (with 3G). The Blackberry 8310 and the BlackJack Ii are crazy different to me despite their outward similarities and functionalities.

At the terminate of the day, both do virtually identical things, yet I practise take to admit that I am able to wring more than functionality out of Windows Mobile than I can out of a BlackBerry. By "functionality" I don't but hateful "able to get GPS on Google Maps while I practise my taxes and check electronic mail" (simply I practise hateful that too), but also I tin can tweak the BlackJack to be more usable and user-friendly.

Maxim BlackBerry isn't the meridian is user-friendliness is sort of hitting BlackBerry where it's strongest (merely like my earlier thoughts on electronic mail). I really do prefer the default Windows Mobule user interface to Blackberry's. I like the today screen, I similar Pocket Outlook. Most of all, though, Windows Mobile has a wider variety of interfaces that you can install and tweak away at if you don't prefer the default. These different options in both interface (and grade factor) are what make me love Windows Mobile.

If you desire a device that "merely works," and so the BlackBerry 8310 is probably for you. Merely make certain that yous want "merely works" in both senses of the word "just." Every bit in

• simply: without having to futz around as well much with settings.
• just: without existence able to futz around too much with settings.

The reason I adopt Windows Mobile to BlackBerry is that latter bit. As for the sometime, well, I retrieve that WM is really close, just not quite in that location nevertheless. (I'll discuss this point much more next week in my "coming home" commodity - because I don't desire WM to be pigeonholed as the "tweaker and power user" OS.)

So, aye, the BlackBerry "just works." That's a great thing for people who don't intendance about the 2nd definition of "only." I'll even grant that in that location are people who do intendance nearly the second definition who are happy with the BlackBerry Bone - I just think they'd be happier with Windows Mobile. ;)

Don't forget - every day yous mail a annotate yous are entered to win in the Smartphone Circular Robin Competition!

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/smartphone-round-robin-blackberry-8310-ciao

Posted by: suzukiwhourpel2001.blogspot.com

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