July 20, 2009
An “I bought a phone” post.
So I just spent all kinds of money on a brand new phone and a data plan. Exciting times! I am now the proud owner of a Blackberry Bold, one of the newest Blackberries, with all the bells, whistles, and 3Gs.
The first question one has to ask when they realize I made this purchase is “Why didn’t you get an iPhone?” This is especially true since we switched to AT&T and the iPhone 3G is ridiculously cheap. Well, it comes down to keyboard. I already have access to all the cool iPhone apps and, more importantly, games, through my iPod Touch, so apps are mostly a non-issue. What I really want a phone with data for is for twittering and for getting on my AIM and whatnot in weird places and chatting with people. For this, you need a keyboard, and gods, I hate the keyboard on the iPhone. Granted, I think Shawn on Talking Time made a good point once: The iPhone keyboard is a ton better than typing with a standard phone keypad. But when there’s Blackberries out there, why settle just for that?
And oh my god, this keyboard is so sweet. You can tell that RIM has been making the best cell phone keyboards for years. It feels PERFECT, having the exact right amount of give and click to the buttons. I can’t type at the same speed at which I’m typing on this compy keyboard right now, of course, but I have been impressed at how fast I can already type, and I know it’s going to improve a little more once I’ve had it for a month or two. I can AIM on this thing at good speeds! I might even be able to hold down TWO conversations! It’s pretty damn neat to me.
The other reason I wanted data on a phone was for anytime access to internet browsing. This, I will admit, is an area where an iPhone is superior. Mobile Safari is just the best mobile broswer out there. It works so damn good. The Bold doesn’t have a touch screen, and that’s going to make broswing not as good. It makes up for it with this little trackball thing. I thought I might hate this, but after you get used to it, it really works quite well for selecting things and whatnot. It doesn’t, however, scroll webpages well, which is the main issue with the built-in broswer. However, I was told to immediately get Opera Mini, and I did, and it is much better, having easy zoom in/out controls and shortcut keys to scroll for 1 page of text, making it easy to read blog posts, such as this one. The broswer is plenty good for checking something on Wikipedia or wasting time, and that’s all I ask.
But yeah, it’s quite the nice phone. And I am so glad to have mobile data now. I am going to abuse the shit out of it. Still, besides Twitterberry and BeejiveIM, I don’t really know what other apps there are that I might actually use. (I also put Qik and Google Maps on there, but those are going to be rare uses, I’m sure, though if I ever start road-tripping again, Google Maps could be a lifesaver.) If anyone out there has any good suggestions, I would love to hear them.