BlackBerry, Android and where iOS fits for me

As a BlackBerry user I fully understand where Taylor is coming from. Unlike Taylor I gave up on Blackberry around 4 years ago to move to the Symbian platform as my primary device. At the time BlackBerry didn’t have cameras on their phones and the software selection was limited and not overly impressive. I needed great email support however I was willing to sacrifice that for one that would suffice until something better came along. To make a long story short years passed and I finally purchased a new BlackBerry and I don’t plan it leaving my side anytime soon. I will be the first to admit that BlackBerry isn’t for everyone. In the mobile…

Does RIM have a future with you?

RIM has had a strong hold of the business market for some time now. In the recent years a surge has been made to push BlackBerry into the consumers way of life. Most would agree that email on the BlackBerry platform remains to be the standard by which all other platforms live up to. The fact is consumers, as well as business users, want more when using smartphones than just push email. Does “is there an app for that” ring a bell? The new comers to the smartphone world including iOS (iPhone), Android, and even WebOS changed the perception of what a smartphone should look like in most users eyes. Suddenly having a small 480×360…

Nokia makes the 5250 a reality

Love it or hate it a Symbian^1 phone at this price point will easily become an instant hit. At $150 unlocked you are not going to find a much better phone. What do you think, will this be a success for Nokia? Amplify’d from www.boygeniusreport.com Today, Nokia made the music-centric, full touch-screen 5250 handset official. The device will include a 2.8-inch TFT touchscreen with 640 x 360 resolution (16:9 aspect ratio), 512 MB of RAM, quad-band GSM, 2 megapixel camera, micro-SD card slot (expandable up to 16 GB), FM radio, and will be powered by Symbian^1. As an added bonus, your 5250 will come pre-loaded with Guitar Hero 5 Mobile. The device will be available in Q4…

At what point will dumb-phones no longer be considered dumb

Every day more and more consumers are upgrading to “smartphones”. Some knowingly, others because their friend’s friend has one just like it and they feel compelled to fit in. Will the time come when dumb-phones no longer exist? Even today if we evaluated the usage of the so called feature phones you would easily see that the majority of them can handle social feeds, email and more. So one has to question where is the line drawn when it comes to defining the categorization of mobile phones. In the past these notions were always based on what operating system the phone was running. Now that this line has been blurred is there really a difference?…

Updating your firmware on Vodafone can potentially void your warranty

If you want to upset several of your account holders the best way to do it is to hold them back from something that people on other services can freely have. There are of course two sides of every story, this instance is no different. Android in many carriers eyes is a cash cow. Users are standing in line to purchase the new handsets because of the new flashy operating system. The problem is that with the growth of the mobile market carriers are having a hard time keeping up with the massive growth in required resources. To help manage this carriers typically have their own “approved” versions of firmware for each device on their…

AT&T Announces new data plans

In effort to lower data pricing AT&T has announced new lower data plan rates. Along with the lower pricing model comes choice, which for many will be a relief. In the past if you wanted a smartphone data plan you had one option. With the newly tiered structure you have a choice of 2 tiers with a option to use as much as you want, for a fee of course. Plan Price Overage Options DataPlus $15 $15 per 200MB Unlimited WiFi DataPro $25 $10 per 1GB Unlimited WiFi Tethering {Plan} + $20 Not disclosed Unlimited WiFi Now that we have the numbers in front us let us do a little math to see if we…

Blackberry Roots Grow Deep

For many of us the first smartphone we owned was either a S60 or Blackberry. For the business users that demanded real time email there was no other option than the Blackberry. For those that demanded a more fully rounded operating system that excelled in media production and full web browsing on a mobile you were a S60 user. Times have changed and so have preferences towards how we setup and use our phones. I was a an avid Blackberry fan for close to 5 years before I dropped my crackberry habit and moved to S60/Symbian and now that has been combined with iPhone as well as Android. You could call me well rounded, others…

Blackberry OS gets a slight facelift with v.6

Blackberry hears its users and moves towards an “all new” user interface. It has a hint of old school Blackberry look and feel to it with a dabble of salt and pepper but I wouldn’t call it an all new look and feel. To me this is more of an enhancement but either way it’s a very welcome addition to the Blackberry platform. What do you think? Is this what you have been waiting for or are you disappointed? The gates are open.

What is your definition of a smartphone?

The term smartphone is used very loosely these days. Just a couple of years a go a smartphone was defined by a phone that has an operating system that allowed you to develop and run third party applications through a standard interface. Today carriers label a phone as a smartphone if it contains a qwerty keyboard of any sort including an on screen touch keyboard. From a carrier’s standpoint this is the perfect way to provide a tool to convince the consumer that a full data plan is required to use the phone. In all reality what a carrier defines as a smartphone should have no bearing on what a real smartphone is. I’m sure…

Intuitive User Interfaces introduces a learning UI for Android

Android has its fair share of custom user interface front ends, each customized by different manufacturers to tailor to its targeted audience. Today Intuitive User Interfaces released a new interface they claim is “based on understanding and predicting which actions users want to perform in various situation, and enabling those actions with one touch”. The entire interface is based on predicting what the user wants to see and displaying it in a new 3D design. The new innovative interface was written to provide three major aspects: Personal – The phone understands which features and actions are important to different users, as each individual user utilizes the phone differently. Relevant – Users perform different actions in…