• Things I liked about the BlackBerry that I’m missing now
  • Sleeper Magnet
  • Voice Command
  • Battery Life
  • Facebook Application
  • Different Alerts for Different Events
  • CacheBerry
• Things I like better about the Pre
  • Polished OS
  • Read status syncs
  • Usable touch screen
  • Synergy calendar
  • Chat like text messaging
  • Touchstone
• Summary

Things I liked about the BlackBerry that I’m missing now

Any time you switch to a new phone, especially if you change platforms, there’s things you miss about the old one.

Sleeper Magnet

I mentioned how nice this feature was in the post I made when I first got the BlackBerry and I never changed my mind about that. It was so nice to have the phone automatically switch to vibrate mode whenever it was in the holster. If it was in the holster, I wasn’t as likely to hear it ring but I was much more likely to feel it vibrate. It just kinda made sense. It was also nice walking into a movie theater or Chruch on Sunday and not having to worry about putting my phone on silent. If it was in the holster, I was good to go. Not a world changer by any stretch, but a nice convenience factor, for sure.

Voice Command

When I did my last review, I mentioned that the voice command on Windows Mobile was better than the BlackBerry. When I first got my Windows Mobile phone, it came with a pretty pathetic voice dialing application. It was the old school kind where you had to record voice tags for each contact. Even that was better than the voice command on the Pre… it doesn’t have one at all. We can hope that voice command is something they’ll add in a future OS update.

Battery Life

I kind of took a step backward on this one… but when I went to the BlackBerry I had taken two steps forward. So all told, I’m still a step ahead of my 6700. I can normally make it through a full day of normal use on the Pre’s battery. But on my BlackBerry, I could get almost two days of normal use. They sell two different extended life batteries. One that’s the same size as the stock battery, so it doesn’t add any extra thickness to the phone while giving a slight power boost, and one that doubles the battery life but adds about 4mm of thickness to the phone and requires a new back (comes with the battery). I’m currently still using the stock battery, but we’ll see what happens as the phone ages.

Facebook Application

I mentioned when I got the BlackBerry how nice it was to have a Facebook Application and how much better it was than m.facebook.com. Well, now I’m back to a phone that doesn’t have one and I miss it. Sure, there’s touch.facebook.com, which the phone comes with a bookmark for (actually, it comes with a bookmark for x.facebook.com, but that redirects automatically to touch.facebook.com now days… same page, different URL), but it’s not the same thing as having an actual Facebook app. The Facebook app loads faster (it can use cached information). I also miss the ability to tag a photo as I upload it. The Pre does have some nice Facebook integration… for example, my phone contacts are automatically linked to my Facebook friends (if it gets the auto part wrong, I can manually correct it). This means that their Facebook photo can show up on my caller ID. It also means that if they’ve put their phone number on their Facebook profile it’s automatically in my phone book. The downside is, it grabs all my Facebook friends… including those who I just became “friends” with in order to gain something in a Facebook app or people I knew in High School but don’t talk to anymore. It still nice to have some idea what those old acquaintances are up to these days, but I don’t know that I need them in my phonebook. Photo uploading is also possible right from the photos application, but you can’t tag friends from the Pre.

Different Alerts for Different Events

I really miss this one. I could tell by the sound my phone made before if I had a text message, a work email, a personal email, an AKO (Army Knowledge Online… don’t have this account anymore) email, a Facebook message, or something else. On the Pre, not only is it not possible to set sounds for each of these events individually, but you can’t even change the default sound. My wife also has a Pre so if we’re both together, it can be difficult to know which one of us just got alerted… nevermind what the alert means. I’ve briefly tried the homebrew solutions to that problem, but didn’t really like them… though I do appreciate that they were at least an option. I’d imagine this is something coming in future OS updates.

CacheBerry

When we started Geocaching a while back, one of the first things I did was look for a way to go paperless. What I came across was CacheBerry. It was a nice little program that let me load GPX files into it filled with cache information which I could then use in the field to look at recent logs, hints, etc. I was also able to use it to keep track of what caches we found to make logging easier when we got home. Over the year or so I used it, a lot of new features got added. Unfortunately, there really isn’t anything similar for the Pre. So while it may just be an application that was available for the BlackBerry, it qualifies as something I miss about my old phone.

Things I like better about the Pre

Obviously I knew most, if not all, of the above things when I picked the Pre over an updated BlackBerry, so I must have had a reason…

Polished OS

There are those who would say that eye candy doesn’t matter. In fact, I used to be phone of them. I thought of all that animation (menus, windows transitions, task switching, etc) as nothing more than wasted CPU cycles. But as I use operating systems that have those things built into them I realize that they can be useful… as long as the animation is fast enough and stays out of the way of usability (nothing worse that not being able to do what you need because you’re waiting for an animation to complete). As I was watching videos of both the Palm Pre and the Android based HTC Hero one thing I noticed was that the Pre had a lot more polish to it. And, of course, both of those had more polish than my BlackBerry Pearl… and the Tour didn’t seem to be terribly much better in that department. The Pre and the Hero seemed to have similar, though not identical, capabilities. But the Pre had a physical keyboard and that’s still pretty important to me. I’ve used the virtual keyboard on an iPod Touch and it was possible to type on it, but I still prefer to pushing actual buttons. While the webOS software is still lacking a few features, I think it has a ton of potential. I’m definitely looking forward to the next few OS updates… especially if they get the GPU in the Pre working to it’s full potential!

Read status syncs

This was something that always annoyed me on my BlackBerry. I’d read a message on the phone and when I got back to the computer it’d normally be marked as read. But if I read it on the computer, the phone would never realize it. Even if I deleted it on the computer. The Pre, being that it uses Exchange Active Sync and IMAP to interface directly with the mailbox (whereas the BlackBerry goes through either a BES or BIS connection), is pretty always in sync. Sometimes it has to run the “sync process” first, but once it does the read and deleted status of each message is the same in both places.

Usable touch screen

The BlackBerry doesn’t have a touch screen at all, so any touch screen is going to be more usable than it had. Where I’m comparing “usable” here is actually two phones ago when I had the PPC-6700. That phone had a touch screen, but it wasn’t nearly as usable as the capacitive touch screen driven by webOS. One reason was that the 6700 used a resistive touch screen (the mainly being how much “touch” was required). Another reason is that the Pre is multitouch. I can handle being touched two different places at the same time and even react to it appropriately (such as pinch zooming). And lastly, webOS is built for being used with a finger whereas Windows Mobile was built for being used with a stylus. Switching between the screen and the keyboard on Windows Mobile was always a huge pain… even ignoring the fact that they keyboard was only in landscape mode so pulling it out meant rotating the phone.

Synergy Calendar

I tried for so long to get my work calendar, my personal Google calendar, and my Facebook calendar all onto the BlackBerry with only limited success. In the end, I was able to get the Google Calendar to sync using Google Sync. The problem with that was that I have a lot of calendars on my Google Calendar account and Google Sync could only lump them all onto one device calendar. It wanted to put all those events onto the device default calendar, which was my work calendar. So things would become a mess pretty quick with my personal items ending up on my work calendar. I really wanted to keep those two separate and I managed to find a setting on the BlackBerry that would cause Google Sync to put all its items on a different calendar (changed the device default calendar). I could only choose one remote calendar that all created events would go to, which wasn’t ideal, but it worked. I have a personal calendar and my wife and I have a shared calendar. Whenever I wanted to put something on the shared calendar and we were out and about I’d create it on the phone, it’d get synced to my personal calendar, then I’d have to remember to go online and move it to the shared calendar.

One the Pre, things are so much nicer. I added my Google Calendar account to the Calendar application (actually, it added it automatically when I added my gmail account to the mail app). I was then given the option for which calendars I wanted to view on my device. When I create an event, I can choose any calendar I have write access to (work, personal, shared w/my wife) and the event gets synced up to that calendar. If I want to display another calendar on my device (like the Detroit Lion’s schedule), I simple add it to my Google calendar and it’ll be available on my phone’s calendar. This multi-calendar display was possible with the combined calendar thing that Google Sync did, but on the Pre they can all be different colors.

Chat like text messaging

As I mentioned back when I did my other review, back when i was on Windows Mobile I started using threaded (chat-like) text messaging. I accomplished this by finding a third party program that replaced the default Windows Mobile text messaging program. That program was written by Palm when they started putting Windows Mobile on their handsets instead of PalmOS. That chat feature was a great selling point for their phones and they didn’t want to abandon it when they went to Windows Mobile (we’ll leave my other thoughts about Palm going to WM out of this). So I’m not at all surprised that the Pre has chat-like text messaging.

What is pleasantly surprising is that they didn’t stop there. They also added chat-like instant messaging. Well, instant messaging is pretty much the definition of chat, but what they did is integrate text messaging (SMS) and instant messaging (Google IM and AOL in the initial release). You can add your contact’s Google IM or AIM screen name to their contact information (it might be able to pull that down from Facebook, I’m not really sure) and then switch seamlessly between SMS and IM. OK, so there is a seam, but that’s just a small divider line so you known when the communication method changed.

Touchstone

The touchstone is one really slick piece of hardware. It enables you to charge the phone without plugging any cables into it. Simply set the phone on it and it starts charging. When it’s done, pick it up. If the phone rings while it’s setting on the touchstone and you pick it up, the call will be answered. If you’re in the middle of a call and you set the phone down on the touchstone, it will transfer it to speaker phone. Those are really nice software features of the phone; but, to be honest, they aren’t as useful as the aforementioned sleeper magnet in the BlackBerry.

If you get the Touchstone kit, it comes with a new back for the phone and the touchstone itself. This new back is required for using the touchstone as it provides the phone part of the connection. That said, even without the touchstone requirement, the new back is nice because it’s a matte finish rather than a glossy one (which the standard cover has). The glossy finish is a real fingerprint magnet whereas the matte finish doesn’t really have that problem.

Summary

So here we are, more than 2,000 words later. I’d imagine I’ll be posting more about the Palm Pre and webOS in the future. Overall I like the phone. There are some shortcomings, but almost every one of them is software related. And the software is constantly improving. There’s actually a new update expected “soon.” When the Palm Pixie launch (this Sunday) it will have webOS 1.3.1 available for it. It’s expected that 1.3.1 will become available for the Pre soon after that.

Similar to when I got the Blackberry, I’ll do a pros and cons post soon. Also similar to when I got the BlackBerry, this post was made from my phone.

A couple months ago I moved Haylee’s picture site off the server in our spare bedroom and onto DreamHost. This helped out with the risk to Haylee’s pictures because most of them had also been uploaded to that site. But not all our pictures are uploaded to that site and it didn’t do anything for the other types of files on the S drive. To make matters worse, some of the stuff on that S drive isn’t really for public consumption. Probably the most personal thing on that drive is our Quicken backup. While it’s not the end of the world if somebody gets ahold of that, it’s still not something you generally want “out there.” So what I needed was a secure and automated way to back up all my files. I had toyed with the idea of using an old DLT drive I had laying around, but getting that to running was a lot of work and the DLT drive isn’t exactly quiet. Due to some other recent developments, we moved the computer out of its own room out into the living room. A loud tape drive really doesn’t work in that environment. So I needed something slightly different.

Enter GnuPG, DreamHost’s Personal Backup feature, and some perl scripting magic.

First things first, we need to get GnuPG set up. This allows us to encypt all the files before they’re shipped off to DreamHost. All we need to do there is run

# gpg --gen-key

And answer all the questions. The majority of the time if there was a default offered, you can take it (though you may want to generate the largest key possible). Also, you’ll want to leave the password blank because we’re going to use it as part of an automated process.  GnuPG will warn you that this is a bad idea, but there are times when it’s necessary. Then, just to test things out, let’s try to encrypt a file (I’m using Haylee.jpg as a sample):

# gpg -e -r "Jacob Steenhagen (Backup)" Haylee.jpg

Now when looking at the directory listing we see that Haylee.jpg.gpg has been created with pretty much the exact same file size:

# ll -h
total 3.9M
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.0M 2009-02-05 14:23 Haylee.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.0M 2009-02-05 14:24 Haylee.jpg.gpg

Now, we delete the original file (it’s just a test copy) and decrypt it with:

# gpg Haylee.jpg.gpg

Then open the file in an Image viewer… sure enough, we were able to cleanly encrypt and decrypt the file.

OK, now that we know we have GnuPG working, let’s configure DreamHost to accept our backups. Once logged into DreamHost’s panel, go to Users -> Backups User. There will be a randomly assigned username there as well as two boxes asking for a password. You can choose a password or have DreamHost generate one for you. We’re only using the password during this setup phase, so it’s nothing you have to remember. You may as well let DreamHost generate it for you as even though we’re not going to be using it, it’ll still exist. By letting DreamHost generate it, it’ll be sufficiently random that it should not be guessable.

Hit the “Activate Backup User!” button and make note of the username and password on the next screen.

Now on the left side, click the “Backup Users” link again. This will tell you the server you’ve been assigned to, make note of that two for use in a couple minutes.

While Dreamhost is getting the user set up on their end, let’s generate another Public/Private key pair… this time for when we want to scp files to DreamHost’s backup server but don’t want to be stopped for a password:

# ssh-keygen -t rsa

Go ahead and leave all three of the options blank (again, we’re using this automated, we don’t want passwords getting in the way). Now let’s prep our authorized_keys file for sending to DreamHost.

# cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub > authorized_keys

Hopefully by now the backup user is ready. Remember your backup server from above? It’s time to use it.

# ftp backup.dreamhost.com

Now, when it asks for the username and password, use the ones we just created above.

ftp> mkdir .ssh
ftp> cd .ssh
ftp> put authorized_keys
ftp> bye

We’ve now told SSH on DreamHost’s back server that it should accept a login using the RSA key we just generated. Let’s test it out (of course, you need to use the right username):

scp Haylee.jpg b123456@backup.dreamhost.com:

If it says that it uploaded 100% of the file, it’s a success; we can now forget that ugly password DreamHost gave us. If not, there’s some troubleshooting to be done that’s outside the scope of this document.

OK, we’re almost there!! We just need the Perl script now that’s going to encrypt our data and ship it to DreamHost!

#!/usr/bin/perl                         

use strict;

use POSIX qw(strftime);

# "config" options
my $bu_root = "/home/share/smb-shared";
my $recip_key = 'Jacob Steenhagen (Backup)';
my $bu_dest = 'jsteenhagen@steenhagen.us:backup/share';
my $bu_mtime = "/home/share/backup/mtime";
my $bu_gpg = "/home/share/backup/gpg";                 

# Supporting subs.... see below for live code.

sub recurse_dir {
    my ($dir) = @_;

    opendir(DIR, $dir);
    my @files = readdir(DIR);
    close(DIR);              

    foreach my $file(@files) {
        next if $file eq '.';
        next if $file eq '..';
        next if $file eq '.backup';
        next if $file eq '.gnupg'; 

        my $rel_file = "$dir/$file";
        $rel_file =~ s/^$bu_root\///;
        if (-d "$dir/$file") {
            if (!-d "$bu_mtime/$rel_file") {
                mkdir "$bu_mtime/$rel_file";
            }
            if (!-d "$bu_gpg/$rel_file") {
                mkdir "$bu_gpg/$rel_file";
            }
            recurse_dir("$dir/$file");
        } else {
           # Not a dir, must be a file
           my $old_mtime = "";
           if (-e "$bu_mtime/$rel_file.mtime") {
               open(OLD_MTIME, "$bu_mtime/$rel_file.mtime");
               ($old_mtime) = >old_mtime<;
               close(OLD_MTIME);
           }
           my @file_info = stat("$dir/$file");
           my $new_mtime = $file_info[9];
           if ($old_mtime ne $new_mtime) {
                # Times don't match, file has changed. Encrypt it.
                print "$dir/$file is new or has changed...\n";    

                my @gpg_opts = ('--batch',
                                '--encrypt',
#                                '-armor',
                                '-z 8',
                                '-o', "$bu_gpg/$rel_file.gpg",
                                '--recipient', $recip_key,
                                "$dir/$file");
                unlink "$bu_gpg/$rel_file.gpg";
                system('gpg', @gpg_opts);

                open (NEW_MTIME, ">$bu_mtime/$rel_file.mtime");
                print NEW_MTIME $new_mtime;
                close(NEW_MTIME);
           }
        }
    }
}

### Live code below

print "---- Starting Backup - ";
print strftime("%a %e-%b-%Y at %H:%M:%S", localtime)."\n";

recurse_dir("$bu_root");

my @rsync_opts = ('-av',
                  "$bu_gpg/",
                  $bu_dest);
system('rsync', @rsync_opts);

print "---- Ending Backup - ";
print strftime("%a %e-%b-%Y at %H:%M:%S", localtime)."\n";

The first time you run this script it will take quite a while. It could take days depending on your Internet connection speed and how much data you have. I’d recommend the first run be done manually either at the console or inside a screen session. That way a broken SSH connection doesn’t terminate the process. After that, you can schedule it to run via cron. This can be done either by putting the backup script in /etc/cron.daily or as part of root’s crontab. Note that if you put it in /etc/cron.daily you’ll need to edit the HOME variable in /etc/crontab or set $ENV{‘HOME’} in the perl script. Otherwise GnuPG won’t be able to find your keys.

WARNING: You need to backup your GnuPG private key, but cannot use DreamHost for this. In fact, you don’t want to back this key up anywhere that anybody other than you has access. Anybody that has this key will be able to decrypt your files. Conversely, if you loose this key, you won’t be able to decrypt your files. They’ll just be Gigs of useless data. That is, after all, the whole point of encrypting them in the first place. To make a backup of your key, you’ll need to run:

# gpg --list-secret-keys
/root/.gnupg/secring.gpg
------------------------
sec   1024D/61A2AF55 2009-01-20
uid                  Jacob Steenhagen (Backup) <jacob@steenhagen.us>
ssb   4096g/90B15060 2009-01-20

See where it says “61A2AF55″in my output? We’ll need that for the next command:

gpg -ao backup-private.key --export-secret-keys 61A2AF55

You should now save backup-private.key. I have three copies of mine. One is on my Linux server being used to encrypt/decrypt my files, the second is safely stored on removable media, and the third is printed out and safely filed away. If I ever get to the point of needing the third it’s going to be painful to enter, but it’s better than not having the option available.

It might be nice to also have a backup of your SSH private key, but it’s not the end of the world if that one gets destroyed. You can always just use DreamHost’s panel to reset your password and log in with that.

This script isn’t perfect. It doesn’t deal with moves or renames very well. It actually detects them as new files. The rsync portion of this script intentionally doesn’t remove locally deleted files, so if you move files around a lot you could end up with a lot of duplicated information. You can always log in manually an delete any old files you no longer need, but other than that this script does nothing to compensate for those.

For my purposes, this method certainly works well enough. In fact, I’ve already had to use it once to restore my entire S drive! More on that at a later date.

Since the 1st, we’ve found 7 caches. Unfortunately, we’ve also made 7 appempts that didn’t work out. If you’d like to follow along, I set up a blog at http://geocaching.steenhagen.us. You can either check out blog periodically or subscribe to the RSS feed if you’d like. Or you can completely ignore our Geocaching adventures .

Things I actually liked about Windows Mobile that I’m missing now

Chat Like Text Messaging

To be fair, when I first started using my PPC-6700, Windows Mobile didn’t have it either. Palm was the first to bring threaded SMS to the Windows Mobile world (porting it over from their PalmOS version). However, on my latest update to Windows Mobile 6.1, I didn’t even have to jump through the hoops of finding a CAB for the Palm application and installing it, it just worked on my phone. Compare the screen shots to see just how much more useful the threaded SMS is.

Windows Mobile 6 Text Messages

Text Messages on the BlackBerry

Larger Display

As can be seen on the side-by-side screenshots above, the Windows Mobile phone does have a slightly larger display. They are the same width, but the Windows Mobile phone was about 60 pixels higher. Of course, the BlackBerry phone uses the space for those 60 pixels to give me an always available keyboard complete with tactile feedback and it’s impossible to have everything.

Voice Command

Microsoft Voice Command was actually a pretty good program. It seemed to recognize was I was saying better. It also seemed to flow better than the voice dialing on my BlackBerry phone. I also liked that if I had my Bluetooth headset in, Voice Command would read the subject for any high priority email messages I received. Granted, I’m comparing the pay version of Voice Command to the version that comes free with the BlackBerry… and the free BlackBerry application is a lot better than the free one that came on my PPC. But I can’t say that I’ve come across a better voice command for the BlackBerry (though vlingo is promising).

Direct IMAP/POP3 Email Retrieval

When it comes to email, the BlackBerry wins in most categories, but this one kind of goes to Windows Mobile. Being in the Army Reserve, I have what’s called an AKO account. Among other things, this provides an email address. This email can be retrieved either using webmail or from an email client that supports IMAP or POP3. Research In Motion has a service that allows you to have their servers check up to 10 email accounts for you and send any messages you get to your BlackBerry. Unfortunately, this requires them storing your password. The government isn’t really a fan of this. Other than that one minor tidbit, push email on the BlackBerry is better. It’s also easier on the phone’s battery (IMAP/POP direct from the phone has to constantly check for new message, BlackBerry’s push doesn’t really do anything until there is a new message). Once I no longer have an AKO address to worry about (a touch over a year from now!), this won’t be a concern anymore.

Syncing the “Read” status

When I used Windows Mobile, if I read a message in Outlook on my desk, the next time the phone synced with the Exchange Server, the message would be marked as read on my phone. Not the case with my BlackBerry. It does work the other way around (when I read a message on the phone, it gets marked as read on the sever). I liked that on Windows Mobile, it worked both ways.

Syncing of contact pictures

This was one of those “hey, that’s cool” type things when I found out how to do it, but now that it doesn’t work on my BlackBerry phone, I miss it. Any contacts in my Outlook contacts folder that had a picture associated with them would have that same picture associated with them on my phone. So when that person called me, their picture showed up as part of the caller ID. Where this really started to shine is when I found a program that would go out to Facebook and grab pictures for anybody I had in my Outlook contacts. Shortly after the program ran, those pictures would be on my phone ready to be caller ID photos. My BlackBerry, of course, has the feature where you can associate a picture with a contact and when that person calls you get that photo of them as part of the caller ID. It does not, however, get that picture from the contact in Outlook.

No separate “Windows Mobile” data plan

In order to get BlackBerry service, I have to have a BlackBerry plan. Because I connect to an enterprise server, I have to have an even more expensive plan. I pay $39.99 per month for the data on my BlackBerry compared to the $7.50 per month I was paying for data on my Windows Mobile phone (it was on an older data pacakge that Sprint no longer offeres). If my employer wasn’t willing to pay for the better email experience, there’s no way I’d have this plan and thus this phone.

Things I like better about the BlackBerry

So now that we’ve got the negatives out of the way, let’s talk some about the positives of my new phone.

Size

This is a huge one (no pun intended… really). My old phone was a brick. I powered it up today to get a screen shot of the SMS client and… wow. Now sure, there’s a number of phones that run Windows Mobile and not all of them are bricks, but I think most of them are… and the one I had most certainly is. My BlackBerry is the Pearl. It really is a nice size phone. Sure, I had to sacrifice the full QWERTY keyboard and it has a smaller screen than most other BlackBerrys, but it’s so easy to carry. It’s light. When I hold it up to my ear to talk instead of using a headset it’s actually comfortable. With my old phone, I often felt like I was holding a brick up to my ear. If possible, I avoided using it if I didn’t have a headset available (it wasn’t bad to use with a headset and Voice Command, as I mentioned above). With my BlackBerry, I’ve used it many times without the headset and it’s really no different than using any other candybar style phone.

New since visit indicators

Not only does my BlackBerry tell me how many messages a particular program has, but it also tells me how many of them are new since the last time I had that program open. This is the case for email, SMS, JiveTalk (Instant Messenger), Facebook, etc. This really comes in handy as I have a tendency to not always read messages as they come in but to come back to them later…. sometimes never in the case of mass mailings.

GPS

Yes, this is also just a feature of the particular phone as I know there are Windows Mobile phones with a built in GPS and there are BlackBerry phones without GPS. But the simple fact is, my old phone didn’t have one and this one does. And for what it’s worth, I think I actually like the BlackBerry maps application that comes with the phone better than Google Maps.

Much more phone like

In addition to the size consideration I mentioned above, the BlackBerry just seems to run much more smoothly as a phone. With the Windows Mobile phone I pretty much always felt like I was “starting up the phone program” to make a call. Even though it was a cell phone, it felt more like using a softphone on the computer… it works, but it’s not what the computer was really designed to do. With the BlackBerry, I feel like it’s a phone/email device first, everything else second. It does other things quite well (with the exception of what I mentioned above), but it really shines as a communication device.

Email is a breeze

And, of course, the bread and butter of the BlackBerry. When it comes to email, the BlackBerry beats my old Windows Mobile phone hands down. Messages get delivered quicker (yes, Windows Mobile claims to have push email when syncing with an Exchange server, but the BlackBerry still seems to deliver faster. I often hear my BlackBerry ding or feel it vibrate before my computer on my desk (20 feet from the mail server on the same physical network as it) gets the message. There is one downside that I mentioned above with RIM’s approach to email, but if you don’t have to deal with government provided email, it’s a great package.

Battery life!!

Again, this is partly a function of the specific model phone I had, but it’s also effected by the Windows Mobile method of push email. My old phone could go about 10 hours on a full charge with normal usage. The advertised spec for it was 4.7 hours of talk time or 200 hours of standby, but I don’t see how that’s possible at all. Standby must be determined with all radios off (including the cellular radio) because even without push email running I don’t think I ever got much more than an awake day out of it. My new phone will almost get me two days of normal usage (its advertised spec is 3.7 hours of talk and 216 hours of standby). I still charge the BlackBerry every night, but at least I don’t have to charge it in the middle of the day.

Facebook Application

Sure, there’s a mobile version of facebook available at m.facebook.com, but the application provided by RIM that’s a native BlackBerry application running directly on the phone is a lot smoother and quicker to use. With it installed, it will intercept all messages from Facebook that are sent to your phone and process them within its interface. It allows you to define a special sound for Facebook notifications. But it doesn’t just receive. You can use it to write on a friend’s wall, accept friend requests (though you can’t add them to a friend list or add friend details), poke your friends, reply to and send Facebook messages and, my favorite, upload photos directly from the phone. Just take a picture and choose the option to upload it to Facebook. You can even tag friends in the photo from the phone (though I’ve yet to do this).

Different Alerts for Different Applications

Sure, every program on a computer or Windows Mobile phone can have a method for letting you choose how to be notified, but on the BlackBerry, there’s actually a way for applications to plug into the standard notification profiles. All the app then has to do is tell the phone to notify you. The phone keeps track of how you want to be notified (are you in silent mode?, is there a specific sound for that type of notification?, etc) and does it. It really comes in handy with the….

Holsters with a Sleeper Magnet

You can get a holster that contains a sleeper magnet. The phone has a sensor that detects when it’s in the proximity of this magnet and then knows whether it is in the holster or not. You can have your sound profile set up to perform different actions if the phone in the holster than it performs while it’s out of the holster. I have mine set up so when it’s in the holster all alerts vibrate but when it’s not, I get different sounds for different events. When I walk into a movie theater, I don’t need to worry if my phone is on silent or not, I just know that it’s in the holster, so it’s OK. But if I have the phone setting next to me on my desk, I can listen and tell what that notification is (so I know that Outlook is about to tell me I have a new email).

Summary

Wow, that ended up being a very long post. According to WordPress, I have 2009 words. Goodness, it’s like a mini essay.