Why I killed my BlackBerry

I had great fun with my BlackBerry when I bought it 2 years ago ...

• Reading and sending email anytime everywhere, even while sitting on the can


• Docking it beside my bed so that I could monitor the overnight batch jobs. I programmed the batch job to send me hourly updates, summarised into a short email title so that I could see the status from my inbox screen.


• Programming it with J2ME, exploiting it for location-based services


But it wasn't long before I stopped using it...


• You have to keep clearing your mailbox or it would stop working. Often a single email with a large attachment would bomb out my BlackBerry.


• You can't purge your mailbox from your BlackBerry, you have to use a PC-based web browser because of the silly way that the BlackBerry Web Client uses frames.


• You can't properly edit Word and Excel attachments and send them back. The screen wasn't big enough for reviewing screenshots either.


• Very slow in supporting 3G. BlackBerry didn't have 3G handsets until recently.


If you're happy with the BlackBerry as your mobile companion, well good for you. For now I'm roving around town with my not-so-mobile Sony Vaio and Merlin 3G Data Card. Until something better comes along.





Disclaimer:
Views and opinions expressed in this blog are the author's, and do not necessarily represent those of ZDNet Asia.


 

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Talkback 6 comments

One word: Apple iPhone. OK maybe that's two words.....
Posted by Lloth on Monday, December 11 2006 04:16 PM

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wm5.0 ... now that's 1 word? :)
Posted by lee siong on Monday, December 11 2006 05:40 PM

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Sorry guys, but there's no way I can run my monster apps on Windows Mobile or even iPhone: Microsoft Visual Studio, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash (the development tool). Perhaps when the mobile data network gets fast enough, we will be able to access these apps remotely through some remote desktop technology?
Posted by lupyuen on Tuesday, December 12 2006 01:17 PM

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What handset are you using then? If you're using those programming and image manipulation tools, there's no way any handset in the world can cope with that at the moment.
Posted by Lloth on Tuesday, December 12 2006 04:25 PM

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That's why I'm forced to use my laptop for now. Maybe someday the Microsoft UMPCs will work for me, with higher mobile data bandwidth for remote desktop.
Posted by lupyuen on Thursday, December 28 2006 02:56 PM

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well, I agree with you, I will kill Blackberry. For small purposes I prefer Berggi (www.xberggi.com), I can read my email in any phone (I like small phones...).
Posted by Alfonso on Friday, June 01 2007 12:38 AM

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Lee Lup Yuen

Lee Lup Yuen is passionate about mobile phones and PDAs, as he is constantly buying new gadgets and programming them in J2ME, .NET, Symbian and AppForge. He has developed commercial applications with mobile technologies like SMS, MMS, WAP, 3G video streaming and location-based services.