The obligatory Blackberry thread

[MaxBurn]

Well we covered the other two mobile systems we might as well right?

OK so I have a rim 9650 for work as most of my workmates do and this email formatting thing has been annoying me quite a bit lately. If I sent someone a table the phones would butcher it. This appears to pertain to the rendering engine in their 5.x.x.x OS. Terrible.

 

[Mercutio]

Everyone I know who had a BB has some other non-BB thing now. I'm sure it will be around for some segment of business users for years to come but I suspect it's on a downward path now that will lead to it repeating the cautionary tale of Palm.

 

[MaxBurn]

So to fix the above email formatting / rendering engine IT upgraded me to OS 6.x.x.x. This did fix both email rendering and web page rendering/formatting. Both look much better now. Why at the start of 2011 rim couldn't get this right I don't know, all I know is that now in the last bit of 2011 I can finally read rich text email properly. Email was supposed to be the killer app of blackberry.

Right. So then on to two other things that upgrading to OS 6.x.x.x screwed up IMO.

System sounds: I was using, as far as I am aware, default system sounds in all my prior phones. I can think back and all the previous phones I had system sounds that sounded the same to me, calendar alert, ringer, pager app etc. After upgrading to OS 6 all the sounds changed to something else at random it seems. The sounds I used to have are still there and I can correct them but what the hell? People need to recognize what the phone is saying, I have no idea what noises this thing is making now and I am wasting time resetting the noises to what they were.


Home screen is a little less useful. I used to have what you see here plus calendar items in the middle. This is OS 6:

 

[MaxBurn]

Everyone I know who had a BB has some other non-BB thing now. I'm sure it will be around for some segment of business users for years to come but I suspect it's on a downward path now that will lead to it repeating the cautionary tale of Palm.

Suspect?

http://www.asymco.com/

Apple focused site but Horace has some excellent data and charts showing rim dying a slow death. QNX is not going to save them (IMO) and personally I am hoping it will be a massive fail and kill them quicker.

Our IT is finally starting to see the light and I see managers testing other phones but I suspect because of the inertia we have with rim we will be sticking with them for people at my level for some time.

 

[Mercutio]

Personally I am hoping it will be a massive fail and kill them quicker.

Well, yeah. That would be nice, but that won't happen. Someone with deeper pockets will undoubtedly acquire whatever dried out husk is left. Palm had HP, Nokia is in bed with Microsoft, Motorola's gone to Google. I don't know who is left with designs on that space, but I don't think it's going away until there's no value left in its customer list.

I suspect because of the inertia we have with rim we will be sticking with them for people at my level for some time.

BBs will be the Lotus Notes of phones.

 

[Sol]

I saw an article today about RIM expanding their server platform to support IOS and Android. I don't think anything can save all of RIM but if they can switch over to being the enterprise server guys in a heterogeneous mobile workplace then they could probably survive in some form, maybe even stay large enough to be a niche player in mobile devices (Although they'd have to find a niche that Google and Apple aren't kicking their arses in first).

 

[MaxBurn]

A huge thing keeping them in business outside of enterprise is BBM. A lot of people got into this proprietary messenger (for some ungodly reason) and stayed there. There are rumors they are going to open it up and make android or iOS apps but I don't see them opening up something that holds clients to their platform.

Last I checked IM+ and other messengers are available for rim devices. My last phone came with all the IM clients on it.

 

[Sol]

The reason teens in the UK get in to BBM is because they can get unlimited BBM IMs on pay as you go plans. They can convince their parents to buy them the phone for under 100 quid and then talk to their friends for 5-10 pound a month.

Now, cheap Android devices with low cost data plans are starting to take that market, both because of cross platform IM clients (So you can talk to your friends who convinced their parents to buy them iPhones) and because even an Android phone that costs less than 100 quid is a hell of a lot better than a Black-Berry.

If they do open up BBM I'd guess it would be as a subscription service. Essentially that's what RIMs ecosystem is, all messages pass through their servers so they can't really afford to have users who aren't giving them money somehow. That'd have to package up something a hell of a lot more compelling than just BBM by itself, but I could potentially see them coming up with a package that would be compelling to some people, and perhaps more importantly, some service providers.

 

[MaxBurn]

Damn, just noticed that I can flag emails for follow-up now. I've only been asking for that for five years. 2011 the year blackberry and apple bring flag for follup to email.

 

[MaxBurn]

Upgrading the OS on the BlackBerry broke a proprietary paging client called a3 antenna. fail.

Apparently the company is now using some new software called Amp smartclient. Installing this new software required a reboot of the BlackBerry. Why does installing an app require a reboot?

The reboot of the phone took six minutes and five seconds, fantastic.

 

[MaxBurn]

More rage on a simple task of previewing a ring tone.

Once you have navigated the gauntlet of menus to see the ringtone list this is the list of ringtones on the phone.

Scroll down to one you like the description of, but DO NOT click on it. Clicking on it will select it and will not play it at all.

Instead to play it select the menu button with the blackberry symbol to see the menu list. Note that the default action is to select. Scroll to play.

Playing starts up a media player window, because we are playing a file? Sure I need the media player interface to preview a ringtone.

You back out of the media player with the back / UTurn button. Lets say you liked that noise and wanted to select it, which one was it? You are back at the start of the ringtone list. You are not where you left off in the list. You just lost your place because you are concentrating on the gauntlet of menus and not the task at hand.

If you are just trying to go through and preview a bunch of sounds to find one you like, this is what blackberry puts you through.

Worse, I did not find the same noise I had before.

 

[Howell]

I had a blackberry for about a month. The usability issues you talk about are the exact reason why.
I just don't understand how they are in business.

 

[Mercutio]

Because they were the cool phone for businesspeople for like four years and now inertia keeps them around.

 

[LunarMist]

They were fine for me, but now all of the BB at work are being destroyed.

 

[Mercutio]

Two drunken RIM executives terrorize a plane full of people. I particularly like the bit about chewing through their restraints.

 

[LunarMist]

I tried to post that when the board was out of action for some hours. At least they were fried.

 

[Stereodude]

At least they were fried.

Original or extra crispy?

 

[LunarMist]

Not like their brain cells. But you know it was only a typo. That happens once in a while.

 

[MaxBurn]

They were fine for me, but now all of the BB at work are being destroyed.

That's my point here, they do work and I was a happy blackberry user for years but I wasn't exposed to other things until I got a ipod touch (apples gateway drug) to replace my asus a696 and realized how much better the user experience can be.

What do you mean by destroyed?

 

[LunarMist]

They will be collected and disposed by a third party in an environmentally friendly matter, whatever that means.

 

[MaxBurn]

Not even donating them to one of the many organizations that can use them?

Are they concerned about the info that might be on them and have no faith in the device info wiping ability?

 

[LunarMist]

I don't know. The blurb on the intranet site is not very clear and it could be interpreted that the ones that are disposed are handled responsibly, but not necessarily that every one is destroyed. The one I have is 4 years old and on its last legs anyway. Sometimes I have to whack that plastic ball bearing to get in moving right.

 

[Howell]

Two drunken RIM executives terrorize a plane full of people. I particularly like the bit about chewing through their restraints.

I thought for sure that would be a story from The Onion. Too sad.

 

[MaxBurn]

Saw on verge Twitter this morning that Verizon data was down. My Verizon BlackBerry was claiming 3G and BES connected, but after trying the browser loading Google locked up the whole phone. Not even alt caps del worked, had to pull the battery to reboot. After that everything worked so not sure if Verizon was fixed or it was a local outage.

 

[Mercutio]

The RIM tablet has gone on sale on RIM's web site for what are theoretically fire-sale prices, $300 for a 32GB model. Judging by discussion on Slashdot, the only thing anyone wants to do is wipe them and load Android.

I honestly don't think we're going to have to worry about RIM for very much longer.

 

[MaxBurn]

In the US RIM is sliding down nicely in market share but they have a LOT of international business. If you ignore the technical warning signs their financials aren't desperate or even really bad. That's why I think it's going to be quite some time. But boy if they can't get QNX out the door in 2012 that should speed things along and I am not hearing good noises regarding QNX or BB10 or whatever they want to call it.

 

[Sol]

I don't think RIM are in any great danger of going bust, but last I heard their assets were valued at more than their shares and if they don't turn that around soon someone may well buy them for their patent portfolio, customer base, and trade marks. There are lots of people out there who still like BlackBerrys (Bizarre, but apparently true) but I'm not sure a whole lot of them would be upset if BBs started running Android or Windows (Although getting MS to let them skin Windows to look/feel like a BB might be a bit hard).

 

[MaxBurn]

Unlock the phone this morning to see an application permissions request for an https site, it is our proprietary aging application. So I approve it and hit okay this this leads to a complete phone reboot. Four minutes and four seconds later after the reboots I see a changes accepted message.

Why does a configuration change require a reboot? Why does the reboot take so damn long?

 

[MaxBurn]

The nosedive

http://www.changewaveresearch.com/articles/2012/smart_phones_20120109.html

 

[Mercutio]

That only makes sense in the context of RIM's current offerings. It needs to be better at something more than just e-mail at this point.

 

[Mercutio]

I was sitting in Denny's this morning. I overheard a guy bitching about the Droid Incredible he got for his job and how crappy it is compared to his (personal?) Blackberry. Apparently he thinks Androids don't open PDFs and he doesn't like that it syncs phone contacts with google accounts.

That is such an inversion of the natural order that I am guessing that guy also thinks that the sky is pink and genital warts are angel hickeys.

 

[ddrueding]

Yesterday I was feeling like a bit of a smart ass. When faced with something similar to Merc's experience above, my response was "well, if you are too old to learn something new, that Blackberry will do just fine for you." He was within a decade of me, so I figure it was ok.

 

[Sol]

I was sitting in Denny's this morning. I overheard a guy bitching about the Droid Incredible he got for his job and how crappy it is compared to his (personal?) Blackberry. Apparently he thinks Androids don't open PDFs and he doesn't like that it syncs phone contacts with google accounts.

That is such an inversion of the natural order that I am guessing that guy also thinks that the sky is pink and genital warts are angel hickeys.

I'm guessing that that guy doesn't realize that the notification bar can be pulled down. I've found that to be a pretty common problem amongst people who are given Android phones for work. They download a file from a web site or email and the file comes down O.K, but they don't know that when it's finished it'll just sit there waiting for them to do something with it. They'll probably download one or two extra copies of the file before giving up and assuming that the phone is just incapable of opening the file. There will generally be a notification telling them that the download(s) are complete but they won't know what that means or how to clear it (Presumably, assuming they notice notifications at all, when they get a notification they recognize they take manual steps to clear it).

 

[sechs]

My sister, who has been a Blackberry user for the better part of a decade has decided that her next phone will not be a Blackberry. Her fiance got an Android phone of some type, and she loves it.

 

[MaxBurn]

Two things here. The tip mentioned does nothing on my phone, as some replied. Second some people can't find the mute button and all the blackberries I have had do have a hard mute button.

The mute button is on my list of crap we have to deal with recently. On some webinars we have an EXCESSIVE amount of noise coming in from callers we constantly ask people to mute their phones during presentations and frequently have to have the conf client intervene to mute peoples incoming lines for them.

I think I cracked the problem, no one knows where the mute button is on the phone. For our next webinar that I happen to be presenting I am creating a special slide at the beginning. We have a default slide to use that asks people to mute phones but I am augmenting it with pictures of the common blackberries we have and pointing out the mute button. I am intrigued with the potential results, this is the picture I am inserting to help find the hidden mute button. The newer phones on the bottom are damn subtle.

 

[MaxBurn]

CEO's (both) replaced with one and he is open to licensing BlackBerry 10.

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/26/2663080/turmoil-rim-blackberry

Someone saw the ground approaching.

http://www.marco.org/2012/01/22/rim-ceos-stepping-down

 

[Mercutio]

To be honest, the first thing I thought when I heard about that was how much those guys were paid not to fall on their swords over the outages last fall, which seemed to me to be the ideal time to make a hasty and well-timed exit anyway.

 

[MaxBurn]

My 9650 got an OTA update to 6.0.0.719. It completed well and actually seemed to improve the lag on the phone. Speed improved to the point where it felt under 5.x.

 

[Mercutio]

This thread was looking lonely at the bottom of the pile so the US Government is apparently ditching BB in favor of ithings and green robots.

 

[MaxBurn]

BATF says no more.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/29/2832338/us-atf-federal-agency-abandons-blackberry-iphone