Blackberry Phones

As iPhones and Android phones get more powerful and gain more enterprise support, many folks are leaving the rounded realm of BlackBerry for the two big touchscreens. Most BlackBerry owners have built up an extensive list of contacts from their many, many texts and emails, and might wonder how they’ll survive the trip. But take heart: you don’t need to pull out your SIM card and pray, or load cumbersome transfer software. In fact, you’re one text message away from transferring your contacts to nearly any smartphone.

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BlackBerry offers desktop syncing software, imaginatively titled BlackBerry Desktop Manager, that can import your calendar and contacts into Microsoft Outlook, Windows Calendar, LotusNotes, and a few other organizer apps. If you’re planning to sync your new iPhone or Android with Outlook or another one of those apps, you might do well to go ahead and bring them onto your PC or Mac, load them into Outlook or the like, then rely on that app to pass them on to your next phone.

But then again, the company with the most server space in the world wants to help you instantly synchronize your contacts from one phone to another, so why not let them? Google’s Sync app and service works with BlackBerry phones, along with iPhones, Nokia phones, older Windows Mobile (6.0 and 6.5) models, and any phone that supports SyncML. Android phones have built-in Google account syncing, including contacts, and most any modern smartphone worth its salt (including WebOS and Windows Phone 7) offers some kind of Google/Gmail contact syncing. Worse comes to worse, Google lets you export your contacts in the generally friendly CSV and vCard formats.

So let’s get started. Open your BlackBerry browser and head to m.google.com/sync. You’ll be prompted to download the app Google made just for BlackBerry phones. Alternately, use your desktop browser to open google.com/mobile/sync, then click the “Download app” link under the BlackBerry heading, where you can enter your mobile number to have a direct link sent by SMS to your phone.

On most BlackBerry phones, the Google Sync app should install itself automatically, after you approve the download. Once it’s installed, you can find the Google Sync icon on your home screen (or in your app list). Click it, and you’ll first need to enter your Gmail address, or your full email address at a Google Apps account, into the “Login” field — which brings you to a decision point, if you’re not already experienced with Gmail and Google Contacts.

If you already use Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, or any other Google product that requires a password, you already have an account you can push your Google Contacts into. That makes Google’s Sync product pretty convenient, but it might also mean a merging of your personal (Google/Gmail) contacts with your business (BlackBerry) contacts. What’s more, Google Sync also sends your calendar items from your BlackBerry to the Google Calendar connected to that Google account, and syncs your existing Gmail/Google contacts back onto your BlackBerry.

Note: If you have a Google Apps account through a job, organization, or your own web domain, you can always use that account for syncing as well by typing out your full “someone@somedomain.com” address.

If you don’t use Gmail, nor have many contacts stashed away in your Google Contacts, neither is much of an issue. If you do, you can either grin and bear the bulk merging, or create a new Gmail/Google account for syncing your BlackBerry contacts. Google Contacts is not, at the moment, the most agile and customizable contact management system around, but it is free and easy to connect to on any almost phone.

In either case, arm yourself with the login and password from your new or existing Google account, and log into the Google Sync app on your BlackBerry. You’ll arrive eventually at a Welcome screen, which sports a “Sync” button at the bottom. Hit that button, and wait while your contacts make their way from the palm of your hand into “the cloud.” If you’ve got a lot of contacts on your BlackBerry or in your Google Account, this could take a while; ditto with calendar items on both sides. Give it some time, then head to google.com/contacts and log in with the Google account you just synced up. Look through the contacts there; search out a few key people, ensure their data looks correct, then grab that device with the lingering new-gadget smell.

Looking at a shiny new iPhone? You’re going to basically set up a Microsoft Exchange sync to Google’s servers, just like you would with work. Google has outlined the setup steps at their Google Sync page. The short version is: Head to Settings on your iPhone, choose “Mail, Contacts, Calendars,” select “Add Account,” then pick Microsoft Exchange from the offerings. Enter your full Gmail/Google email address in the Email and Username fields, and your password in Password (leaving Domain blank), then hit Next in the upper-right corner. In the new Server field that appears, enter m.google.com. Ensure you’ve selected contacts to be synced when given the option, and note you can sync calendars and Gmail/Google Apps messages, too, if you’d like. If you have existing contacts on your iPhone, you’ll be asked whether to merge them with your Google/BlackBerry contacts, or replace them–it’s your call.

If you’re rocking an Android phone, you likely already signed in or set up a Google account when you booted your phone for the first time. If you synced to a different account, or don’t see your BlackBerry contacts after a good wait, head into your Settings by hitting the Menu button on your home screen. Next, scroll and select Accounts & sync. If your BlackBerry-synced account shows up, select it and ensure Contacts is checked as a synced item. If you need to add an account, tap the “Add account” button at bottom — move through the usual steps.

When Apple first launched its iPhone in 2007, the odds were against it. Pundits, bloggers and even competitors found countless faults in the iPhone’s design and in Apple’s strategy. A new report from Reuters notes that one such competitor was BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. The report quotes an anonymous RIM employee as saying RIM thought the iPhone was “so badly flawed from day one,” and “users wanted great battery life, great security, great mail handling, minimal network use, and a great keyboard experience.”

As it turns out, many users appear to have had different priorities. RIM wasn’t entirely wrong, of course, and the original iPhone was lacking in several key areas. While hindsight is 20-20 and the first-generation iPhone could have been better in countless ways, it was enough to propel Apple to its current position as the leader in smartphone profit share by a staggering margin.

Over the past year or so it’s become clear that there is a cure for the CrackBerry addict. For many it’s called the iPhone, for others it’s Android, while still others are getting their kicks from other platforms. IT departments worldwide are relaxing their rules and getting a little smartphone agnostic and now it sounds like RIM is thinking about finding a way to reel those newly straight-edged users back into their former habits. RIM Vice President Pete Devenyi had this to say on the subject:

BlackBerry is and will continue to be dominant in most corporations, [but] it’s not going to be the only device given the fact that consumers have the choice to bring in their own devices and IT departments are often letting them in. So there’s a question there. Do those corporations have to manage those devices differently or is there the possibility that RIM might extend capabilities to make it easier for those corporations to manage those devices as well? … If the right thing to do is to extend a subset of those [BlackBerry] capabilities to be able to manage other devices, it’s worthy of a conversation

Right now he’s just talking about device management, but if this goes forward it could be a sign of a willingness for RIM to move some of its proprietary services to other devices. BBM on Android and iPhone? We know a few people getting positively giddy at that (highly speculative) prospect.

It looks like Riz, the artist behind Ping Me Baby, is back at it with these funny iPhone vs. BlackBerry parodies. The two videos seen here poke some fun at iPhone on both the application and hardware fronts. Stuff like this always makes me chuckle a bit. Word is there are more on the way too so be on the lookout. Got to love Riz for sticking to his guns and being all about BlackBerry. For now all I want to know is where I can get that sweet jacket

These days, the talk surrounding mobile devices is really heating up. With the explosion of Android devices and the ongoing substantial growth of the iPhone  showing no signs of slowing down, many folks are constantly looking at their options. Be it, switching from Android to iPhone, iPhone from BlackBerry to webOS or however else you really want to look at it, people are making choices and changes on what they want from their mobile devices.

This area is certainly going to expand as well. Windows Phone 7 devices are soon to arrive and many are waiting to see what is in store for them as consumers there. One thing that has really been a focus of some media outlets is the supposed influx of people deciding to leave BlackBerry in an effort to seek out more. While it is true that many users appear to be heading away from BlackBerry devices, one often forgets to look at the information about how many of those users once gone, actually come back to BlackBerry devices after spending time on other platforms.

Each day, the CrackBerry forums fills up with users proclaiming they are either leaving BlackBerry for another platform or, they have just arrived back from another platform and are proclaiming what they missed about their BlackBerry devices. Now, being a multi platform user myself, I can easily say the grass is not exactly always greener on the side of the fence. For some though it is and that’s quite alright as people SHOULD be buying devices based on their needs rather then what they think is cool. But often times this isn’t the case. Often times, people will buy what they think they need or want rather then face then reality being that they really do not need all the bells and whistles that some other devices offer.

So how about you all, anyone tried another platform yet returned back to BlackBerry for whatever reason? If so, tell us why in the comments it’s always cool to see the variation of users. In the meantime, check out the forum thread posted below and see some reasons others have chosen to return back to their BlackBerry devices having spent time on other platforms

Salomondrin has some new videos up. If you want to get a quick look at the BlackBerry WebKit browser going head to head against the browsers of Android and iPhone then you’ll want to check out the video after the break. Salomondrin also posted some details regarding the Acid3 tests and how the devices compare there. One thing to note about the Acid3 test however, is that they often seem to vary so take from it what you will. Hit the video after the break, leave some comments on the post and let us know your thoughts.

Today, June 21st Apple releases iOS4, the latest OS for the iPhone & iPod Touch line of products (visit our sibling site TiPb.com for everything iOS4). Many have called it revolutionary rather than evolutionary. I’ve been using this in beta since it launched in April and for me, I’d say Apple has reached into the 1990′s playbook and are trying to lay claim to features that have existed in the smartphone world for over a decade.

In case you’ve been climbing Mount Everest or living under a rock since the beginning of April I’ll review the “7 Tent Poles of iOS 4″ and contrast them against what is available in the BlackBerry world.

Tent Pole 1 – Multitasking

This is nothing new here BlackBerry has had multitasking in their devices since the beginning of time. On the BlackBerry simply pressing either “Alt+Escape” or hold down the “MENU” to will reveal the task switch ribbon.

Tent Pole 2 – Folders

Apple now allows you to organize your apps in folders. Again something available on the BlackBerry for years now. The Apple approach is standard Apple format, when you put two apps together, iOS will name the folder for you based on the naming convention they decided in the AppStore. You can change the folder named handed down from on high, but why would you?

Tent Pole 3 – Enhanced E-Mail

Finally Apple brings multiple exchange account support to the iPhone, for some time I’ve wanted to use my office Exchange account and my Google Apps account on the same device. For the BlackBerry I’ve been running my Exchange account via BES and Google Apps with the Enhanced GMail plug-in.

Tent Pole 4 – iBooks

Apple wins here, sort of. The Books app on the iPhone and iPad is beautiful and is very simple to use. In terms of raw book reading experience iBooks is very nice and buying new books through iTunes is easy.

Personally, I’m a Kindle user and still think this is the platform to go with. I can ready on my Kindle, BlackBerry or my PC and with WhisperSync I can stay at the same point of the book on all devices.

Tent Pole 5 – Enterprise

Apple has made some nice improvements here to make the iPhone more secure for the enterprise world, but the BlackBerry Enterprise Sever (BES) solution is so powerful that it makes anything else look like a high school science club experiment.

If anyone attempted to sell the iPhone security solution against a BES solution they need to look into upgrading their medication prescription.

Tent Pole 6 – Game Center

Admittedly, I’m not a gamer, I’ve even uninstalled Brick Breaker off my BlackBerry so this does not really scratch where I’m itching. However, with the explosion of Farmville and Mafia Wars on FaceBook – clearly social gaming is big and only getting bigger. So it stands to reason that the iOS4 gets into that world as the iPod is clearly moving to a gaming platform and not just a touch screen iPod.

Tent Pole 7 – iAd

As a user of apps not a developer of apps, this is probably the most useless of the “tent poles”, a platform that is meant for more ads to be pushed to me and chewing up my data bucket is something that doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Of course one could argue that by creating an ad platform will encourage more app development and therefore me, the consumer will benefit.

Really? The Apple AppStore has over 225,000 apps, Android Marketplace over 60,000 and BlackBerry AppWorld is steadily growing and now has over One Million downloads per day. Sounds like the development community is thriving to me.

Summary

Don’t get me wrong, the new iOS 4 is impressive on the iPhone and iPod platform and will certainly be a success. I feel it is important however to point out that most of these features are already on the BlackBerry platform and have been for years. If one watched the “Steve Note” back in April, the fanboys were falling all over themselves with excitement that Steve Jobs had the foresight to invent a smartphone folder structure for the world. Makes me wonder, if Apple hadn’t created these features in April 2010 – would my BlackBerry still have had them back in 2005?