Blackberry Support Please

Another reason for concern is AT&T itself. An article in last week's PCWorld indicates that the single iphone carrier may be considering caps or metering...

[quote]“AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega bemoaned the disproportionate wireless bandwidth usage of a small number of its smartphone customers [read iPhone users] in a speech to wireless industry professionals here today, and hinted at an unpleasant way of dealing with the problem.
--AT&T Wireless CEO Hints at ‘Managing’ iPhone Data Usage - PC World

If AT&T starts capping iphone usage all of those other providers like Sprint will be ready to take over with their capable networks. 

NOTE: I'm a Blackberry/AT&T user so the metering would affect me as well, but at least without lockin, I can carry my 'berry to a new provider.

Todd Phillips said:

Never really considered the Blackberry...any reason I should?

I can't really give you a reason you should Todd, but I'll tell you why I did.

I've been a Palm user since they came out.  I switched to Handspring with the original Palm developers jumped ship and made their own company.  (I still have my handspring, well my daughter does).  One day my Handspring Visor slipped out of my shirt pocket onto a marble floor and shattered the screen.  I was back in the market, but I was also tired of carrying two devices, one for my calendar and one for phone.  By that time the Handspring Treo line had been bought by Palm and I started looking at their phones.  I Finally purchased a Treo 650 when they were shiny new off the assembly line.   I immediately acclimated to the form factor and used it so much that I was wearing the paint off the keys.

When My Treo died I was able to get hold of another one as a temporary stopgap.  I started searching every phone out there for a replacement.  I needed it to be powerful, I needed it to have a full qwerty keyboard and I needed it to have WIFI, Email and a few other related requirements.  Short order: it had to fit the way I wanted to work, rather than forcing me into compromise.  If I was going to plunk down good money, it was going to be the phone I wanted.

I investigated the iphone before it even came out, I read every spec, watched Job's keynote, I appreciated it's asthetics and rejected it outright.  Truth be told, I was biased against the iphone because of Jobs.  I can't stand the guy for some reason.  But my bias isn't and wasn't my only reason for rejecting the iphone. 

On top of the hype was the interface.  It did not, does not and cannot work the way I work.  It does not major in the things I wanted to major in.  The iphone struck me and still does as a music player with a phone attached.  I do not build my life around music at all.  I'm not interested at all in massive mp3 libraries.  I read reviews of the iphone email app and the onscreen keyboard and I rejected the iphone as an overhyped eye-candy toy.  People may not like my summation but that's it.

Turning away from Iphone I began seriously investigating RIM because I'd heard that RIM had actually sued PALM for "stealing" it's curved keyboard design.  I'm not even sure how that lawsuit turned out, but the one thing I kept rejecting phone after phone over was the keyboard.  Yeah, I know it's a strange requirement but for me it was important. 

So I looked at, I think, every blackberry in production and settled ultimately on the curve 8900 just two months before it was released.

I continued reading every review (iphone included) I could get my hand on for the next two months, but when the curve went live I placed my order and have not regretted it.

• I prefer Blackberry because it feels more solid in my hand than the iphone did. 
• I prefer Blackberry because the keyboard works.
• I prefer Blackberry because it works the way I want to.
• I prefer Blackberry because it was designed from the beginning as a business tool which is capable even of playing around, rather than a plaything which might also do business if you tweak it just right.
• I prefer Blackberry because the BIS and BES servers are consistently secure.
• I prefer Blackberry because the operating system, while quite different from my familiar Palm OS is still amazingly functional. 
• I prefer Blackberry because it's available on multiple carriers.
• I prefer Blackberry because, while there is plenty of hype out there for it - the hype is not the defining characteristic.
• I prefer Blackberry because they continue to test, innovate and sometimes fail.  But their failures create better products.  Compare the Storm 2 with it's predecessor for example.
• I prefer Blackberry because out of the box it did WIFI, GPS, Syncing of contacts with Google, Email, Calendar Sync, and so much more that I was hoping for.

Those are just a few reasons why I considered blackberry. 

 

PhilipGurgel said:

I think your original post is a bit deceptive.  Yes, there are more blackberries out there than there are iphones, but when you factor in the fact that the iphone app would also work for anyone who owns an ipod touch, that changes the statistics a lot.

Ah, well the deception was not intentional.  [:)]  I neglected to consider the ipod touch at all because it's not a phone.  However you point to an interesting dilema.  While I'm able to discern market shares for similar products (Blackberries and iphones) there's no true way that I'm aware of to gauge unrelated products (Blackberry and ipod touch).  One is a smart phone the other is a glorified MP3 player.  It's a comparison of (ahem) apples and blackberries and at least they are both fruit.  The closest you can say about the Blackberry and the touch is that they both have screens and electronics inside.  So do wristwatches.

PhilipGurgel said:

While I hope that blackberry gets it's own app for your sake, I don't want an app that is poorly designed because it has to cater to a number of different operating systems. 

Indeed, a poorly designed app is not in anybody's best interest, neither the users nor the company.  Once someone get's a bad taste in their mouth it's tough to get it out.

I frankly am not holding out a lot of hope for a Blackberry app, but I'm asking for one.  I'm not even asking for it to replace the iphone app.  It appears, from Bob's earlier comments, that there are a good number of  iphone/Logos users.  I'm hoping that the iphone app is so good that it fosters further smartphone development, in other platforms as well.

The point of this thread isn't to advocate dumping, watering down or otherwise harming the iphone app.  It is merely to provide a place to advocate for Blackberry support.

On the contrary... kind of.  It may not be in this thread - since I haven't re read it but there are other threads which essentially state the following:

1.  http://library.logos.com and http://biblia.com both exist as alternatives for ALL phones/smartphones including Blackberry.

2.  Market trends indicate that Android is growing faster than Blackberry and therefore it has/is/was developed first. (http://www.logos.com/mobile/android ) 

3.  Blackberry is not ruled out as a potential development platform; but it takes time and money to build these things and if I understand the stated position so far, Logos will move to blackberry after Android is complete IF it still makes sense to do so.

4.  Logos has at least created a launcher for Biblia.com for Blackberry.  http://blog.logos.com/archives/2010/11/logos_bible_software_blackberry_launcher_for_bibliacom.html  Sure it's not a full application but it works on my BB8900 just fine.

JENNIFER ROBINSON said:

The biblia app for Blackberry functions poorly.

Just to clarify... the biblia launcher for blackberry launches biblia.com in the browser.

If you're referring to poor biblia.com performance in the blackberry browser; what do you mean by functions poorly.  If there is a specific issue, they can fix it.