The Blackberry Diary: Initial impressions

February 14th, 2010 by Ben Smith

I did it. I bought a Blackberry. My first one…

A 9700 Bold from Three. I’ll get to a full review and explanation why the Nokia’s most recent effort - the E72 - didn’t attract me back in due course, but after 2 weeks of use there’s a couple of features that have really impressed.

And they’re not ones I see mentioned frequently…

It knows when its in its case! It comes with a case… a nice leather one, but so what? So do plenty of handsets. But this is an intelligent case. Well, not actually intelligent, but it has a magnet in. And when the Bold goes into the case it senses this, locks the keyboard and can switch ringer modes. Genius… I have mine set only to ring in the case, switching to silent (read ‘non-colleague irritating’) when it’s just on my desk.

Cradles are awesome! The iPhone has a cradle and that’s handy, but it’s little more than a desk-stand. The Bold’s is neater - electrical contacts are shaped into the corners of the device so there’s no connector to seat the phone on - it’s easier to drop the handset in. However, the combination of the cradle and ‘bedside mode‘ is the really excellent… The Bold can switch into ‘bedside mode’ when plugged into a charger - dimming screen, cancelling LED alerts and showing a clock-face - but in tandem with a cradle it’s finally a worthy bedside alarm clock replacement.

In-line spell check. Everywhere! This feels so natural it’s hard to understand why other manufacturers haven’t adopted it… In any text field spelling is checked against an internal dictionary and errors are underlined in red - just as they are in most desktop word-processors. Clicking offers the expected suggestions and option to add new words to the dictionary which is doubly convenient as it operates handset-wide. No more stupid typos in text messages for me!

There are - of course - a few niggles and switching from a ‘normal’ smartphone requires you to learn the ‘Blackberry way’ (of which more later), but whilst it’s not perfect these refinements really do make daily use a pleasure… and there’s not many phones I’ve said that about recently.

Image credit: pocket-lint.com

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  • gdigenis
    i have a 9700 that i have been using for over a month and it is a really nice device. i still dont love blackberries, but this device is solid and just plain works well. the amazing battery life and signal strength impressed me the most. there are common shortcuts all over the os. you should google search for a list or check out one of the many blackberry sites for tips. here are a few from memory (using a milestone at the moment...)

    c creates a new email, sms, calendar entry, etc
    highlite a message and press r to reply, f to forward, etc

    in any menu just press the first letter or any option and you will be taken to that item, so press menu, c, and it takes you to close, or compose, etc
    when in the messaging app, press alt key plus o for outgoing calls and messages, alt + p for call list, alt + i for incomming messages

    hold the alt key and use the trackpad to highlight text, then press menu and copy and paste almost anywhere

    here is a good tip, if you use blackberry messenger, once you have invited a contact and they have accepted, do not link them to contacts in your phone book as any sms that they send you will show up in bbm and if you try to end that chat it will delete all sms from that conact. this caused me much grief!! you can easily store thousands of messages in a blackberry so dont feel the need to delete messages often.
  • pieter13
    The BB just looks awesome. Kids see that as well. And to them the expensive phone is a status symbol just like the Iphone. Enormous BB marketing here in Holland btw.
  • It's bizarre how BB's have become a status symbol among the sarf lundaan masssif.
    I suspect its because alot of US RnB / Rap stars 'pack a blackberry'

    power of marketing.
  • jamesbody
    It is not just the Sarf of de River mob for whom the BB Bold attracts a following.

    My dear darling 14 year old daughter narrowly avoided being assaulted with an INQ Chat after she dismissed it as being 'inferior to a Blackberry' - after I had gone to a certain amount of trouble to procure said INQ Chat for her use....

    It is not as if she has any idea what a Blackberry does - only that she wants to be the first member of her group at school to have one!

    The one thing that really puts me off the platform is that it is notoriously difficult to get VoIP and other associated services running on it.
  • Crikey! You really are new to BlackBerry! My first one (6630) back in the dark days of 2003 had a magnet in its case. Easy to see how it's a killer feature but bizarre that no one else has picked it up.

    My favourite "hidden" feature is keyboard navigation. Hitting "M" for mail, "D" for memopad, etc. Much easier than scrolling everywhere.
  • Yup very new! Loving it so far... regretting dismissing the platform for so long.

    Keyboard nav not working for me on the 9700 though (if I understand you correctly) - it just starts the dialler with that character.
  • Ah, yes, that's why it's hidden :-)

    Click "Green" to get to your dial screen.
    Press the BlackBerry button to call up the menu.
    Go to options.
    There's loads to play about with in Options - but the one you want to click on is...
    General Options
    Scroll down to "Dial From Home Screen" and set it to "No".

    The shortcuts are (from memory)
    E - Enterprise Messenger (if installed)
    T - Tasks
    U - Calculator
    O - Options
    P - Phone
    A - Address Book
    S - Search
    D - Memopad
    G - Google Talk (if installed)
    K - Lock Screen
    L - Calendar
    C - Compose
    V - Saved Messages
    B - Browser
    M - Messages
  • Brilliant...! Is there any way to give 3rd party apps their own letter?
  • From the OS, no. So you can't assign X to launch Texas Hold 'em.
    From the SDK - maybe. I'm not familiar enough with the SDK to give a definitive answer. I know that some third-party apps can have assigned keys (Google Talk and Bloomberg spring to mind)
  • The Prodigal Fool
    Mrs Fool totes a Blackberry but - geek though I unquestionably am - I've never been tempted to play with it much. They've certainly made great strides in improving their hardware over the last few years but I suspect you're going to find the software clunky for anything other than messaging.

    I'm eager to read the next instalment of your diary and to be proved wrong though...
  • Mobile Jorge
    Excellent post, I myself have ventured back into the BB world and recently I find the BB 9700 extremely user friendly and day to day use is top notch.
  • Those three things you've listed actually sound quite good. As much as I despise uglyberrys, I'm interested in what you'll make of it..
  • Abul
    The 9700 Bold has peaked my interest, I had a brief play with one recently, obviously not long enough to make an impression of it, but it did impress with it's build quality. The word on the street is, Blackberrys are cool, all the cool kids have them.
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