• blackberry,  blackberry os,  dataviz,  notifylink,  rim,  sprint,  verizon

    BlackBerry Tour Hands On Review

    December 7, 2009 /

    As with the Motorola Droid that I recently reviewed, I had the opportunity to take Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Tour 9630 out for a few days for a test spin. The following is my hands on review of the Tour.

    The BlackBerry Tour 9630 is a CDMA/GSM “world phone” that works on popular wireless networks both in the United States (CDMA and EVDO Rev A) and aboard on 3G networks (GSM/GPRS/EDGE). The Tour is currently available on the Verizon Wireless and Sprint networks. My demo unit is from Verizon and has been loaded with a Verizon/Vodafone SIM card. As far as I can tell, the Verizon and Sprint handsets are the same, however, the service terms will likely vary. There is also a version of the Tour available for sale without a digital camera.

    The Hardware

    The BlackBerry Tour is a candy bar styled smartphone similar to the BlackBerry Curve. The Tour’s dimensions are: 4.4 x 2.4 x 0.6-inches and weighs in at 4.58 ounces. To put that in perspective, it is slightly thinner, taller, and wider than the popular BlackBerry Curve 8330. The Tour has a half VGA+ 480×360 pixel display; which I found very easy to read; and is powered by a removable 1400 mAh battery.

    All of the familiar BlackBerry hardware buttons can be found on the Tour. Just below the screen, is the button bar that is home to the call send/end buttons, the BlackBerry button, and the escape button. Nestled in the middle of the device is the trackball. After spending a few days using the trackball on the Tour, I thought it felt much sturdier than the one on my Curve. That said, I have heard reports from a local cellular retailer that their store has had a number of returns of the Tour early on in its distribution run due to faulty trackballs. The review unit that I used had no such trouble with the trackball. Below the button bar is the hardware Qwerty keyboard. Since this BlackBerry is slightly narrower than the one I’m used to using, I found the keys to be tight initially. The keys on the Tour, for all intents and purposes, have no space between them. After using it for about a day, I had gotten my keyboard bearings and was happily emailing away.

    Walking around the smartphone, you will find the camera convenience key and the volume up/down buttons, the 3.5mm headphone jack, and the microUSB charging port. On the top of the Tour, is the ringer silence and screen lock button. On the left of the Tour is the voice command activation button and the speaker. On the back of the phone you will find the 3.2MP, auto focusing digital camera lens and flash. The phone’s mic is located on the bottom left of the phone.

    Inside the Tour is 256MB of RAM, a microUSB card slot, a Bluetooth v2.0 radio supporting A2DP, and a GPS receiver supporting assisted, autonomous, and simultaneous modes. The GPS module also supports e911 and digital camera image geo-tagging.

    Interestingly, unlike the Apple iPhone and Motorola Droid, the BlackBerry Tour does not feature a capacitive touch screen or a Wi-Fi radio. This could be a deal breaker for some, however, in my opinion, you get much better battery performance without those two features.

    The Software

    The BlackBerry Tour 9630 runs RIM’s Java based BlackBerry OS 4.7.1.61 (Platform 4.1.0.81). If you have used a previous BlackBerry running OS 4.3 or 4.5 you will have little trouble using OS 4.7, however, for this edition of the OS, there is a wire frame style to all of the icons. They are easy enough to figure out and the icon’s name appears at the bottom of the screen when you use the trackball to highlight and icon. Personally, I liked the old style icons better. The good news is that there are literally tons of themes for BlackBerry available for download from the Internet.

    I was able to quickly and easily connect all of my Google Gmail accounts with the Tour. I was also able to use Notify Corp’s NotifyLink 4.5 client without trouble on this BlackBerry. If you want to sync the BlackBerry’s calendar with anything other than Microsoft Outlook, or a corporate messaging system like Microsoft Exchange using a BlackBerry Enterprise Server or Notify Corp’s NotifyLink Enterprise Server, you will need to get a third-party tool like GooSync for your Google calendar. Mac OS X users will need to download the BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac or purchase Mark/Space the Missing Sync for BlackBerry.

    Research In Motion has also opted to bundle DataViz Documents To Go Standard Edition on the Tour. Unlike the view only editions that come bundled with the Palm Pre or the Motorola Droid, the BlackBerry Standard Edition allows you to view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. You can also transfer files to and from the smartphone using the BlackBerry Desktop Software. I was able to read and update the same files that I used during my Motorola Droid test.

    If you plan on using Documents To Go on your BlackBerry, you will want to install the free maintenance release from version 1.006 to 2.0. Heavy users will want to consider purchasing the Documents To Go Premium upgrade to gain access to the stand alone Documents To Go desktop synchronization application, native Adobe Acrobat viewing, the ability to create new Microsoft Office documents directly on the Tour, the ability to spell check Word documents, and additional document formatting features. One thing that I did find annoying about the upgrade process to version 2.0 of Documents To Go was the requirement to uninstall the bundled version and reboot the phone prior to the upgrade. While it isn’t the end of the world, it bugged me to have to leave the browser, uninstall the phone, and then return to the upgrade web page. (You did remember to bookmark the upgrade page before uninstalling Documents To Go, right? See how annoying that is!) Documents To Go 2.0 Premium for BlackBerry retails for $69.99, and is on sale for $29.99 until December 20, 2009. For more information about DataViz Documents To Go for BlackBerry, visit the DataViz website.

    Just for the Fun of It

    All work and no play is boring. So I also played with some of the fun aspects of the BlackBerry Tour. Social media junkies will be happy to hear that the Tour comes included with a Facebook and My Space clients. (Facebook users will want to upgrade to the latest mobile client version right away.) The camera took nice pictures at a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. The music player application worked well and I was able to watch Iron Man which I converted from DVD to an Mpeg-4 file.

    I also installed some other free applications from the BlackBerry App World, including USA Today Mobile, The New York Times Global Edition, Google Maps, TweetCaster, UberTwitter, The Weather Channel, and Fictionwise eReader. (Fictionwise eReader can be downloaded from the eReader.com website.)

    Conclusion

    The BlackBerry Tour is a great upgrade for previous BlackBerry owners. If you are looking to upgrade from another smartphone platform to the BlackBerry, you will want to sync your old phone to Microsoft Outlook before making the jump to BlackBerry to ensure that all of your data makes it over. The BlackBerry Tour, like most other BlackBerry phones does not have a touch screen. That detail, and the lack of Wi-Fi may be a deal breaker for some, however, you will be repaid with longer battery life. If I don’t charge my Palm Pre, or the Motorola Droid I was testing every night, I would wake to find two phones with dead batteries in them while the Tour was still ready to work with about 45-50% battery life left in it.

    The BlackBerry Tour is a solid business smartphone, however, if you are using a Microsoft Exchange email server, you will need to install a BlackBerry Enterprise Server or other third-party middleware server such as Notify Corp’s NotifyLink Enterprise Server since the BlackBerry does not support the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol as do most of today’s other smartphones.

    Pricing and Availability

    The BlackBerry Tour 9630 is available now from both Verizon Wireless and Sprint for $149 with a qualifying 2-year service agreement. For more information about the BlackBerry Tour, visit the BlackBerry website.

    Read More
  • blackberry,  rim,  sprint,  tour,  verizon

    BlackBerry Tour On Deck

    December 3, 2009 /


    Following closely behind the Verizon Motorola Droid, I have gotten my hands on a BlackBerry Tour 9630!

    The BlackBerry Tour is currently available from both Verizon Wireless and Sprint. Unlike the other CDMA/EVDO smarphones in their line ups, the Tour is considered a “World phone” because it also has a GSM radio and SIM card slot. The demo unit that I have from Verizon was shipped out with a Vodafone SIM card in it.

    Just like the Moto Droid, I’ll be testing this phone out as a replacement phone for my company’s fleet of Palm Treo 700p and 755p smartphones. I’ll have a short review of the BlackBerry Tour 9630 ready at the end of my demo period.

    If you are interested in digging into all the details about the Tour 9630 now, you will want to check out the BlackBerry website.

    Read More
  • att,  blackberry,  rim

    BlackBerry Curve 8520 Coming to AT&T

    November 17, 2009 /

    Earlier today, AT&T jumped on the BlackBerry Curve 8500-series bandwagon by announcing that the Curve 8520 was heading to AT&T’s network “in the coming weeks” for $99.99 with a new or qualifying 2-year service agreement.

    AT&T announced today it will introduce the best value in its BlackBerry smartphone portfolio with the addition of the BlackBerry®Curve™ 8520 from Research In Motion.

    The BlackBerry Curve 8520 is a stylish, easy-to-use, compact smartphone offering the best value for consumer and business customers looking for BlackBerry service. The smartphone features a full QWERTY keyboard and touch-sensitive trackpad for easy typing and navigation, built-in Wi-Fi® and an advanced media player, plus dedicated media keys, smoothly integrated along the top of the handset, for a convenient way to control music and videos. The handset also provides global connectivity via phone, email, text, IM, picture messaging and social networking, with Facebook®and My Space applications preloaded.

    The sleek, new device houses a high-resolution 320×240 display a 512 MHz processor, 256 MB of Flash memory, and a 2 megapixel camera equipped with video recording.

    “AT&T was the first choice for BlackBerry in the U.S. and we continue to expand our offering of BlackBerry products to suit the different needs of business and personal users,” said Michael Woodward, vice president, Mobile Phone Portfolio, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “The BlackBerry Curve 8520 offers the best value by combining the essential features of a BlackBerry smartphone with access to AT&T’s network, which includes best coverage worldwide, as well as the nation’s largest Wi-Fi network.”

    AT&T users of the new BlackBerry Curve 8520 can enjoy access to the nation’s largest Wi-Fi network with more than 20,000 U.S. hotspots — including approximately 7,000 Starbucks locations. As with all other Wi-Fi enabled BlackBerry smartphones from AT&T, BlackBerry Curve 8520 users with a qualifying data plan, which includes all consumer BlackBerry unlimited data plans, get seamless and unlimited access to these domestic hotspots at no additional cost. When traveling outside the U.S., BlackBerry Curve 8520 users can enjoy the best coverage worldwide with wireless voice coverage in more than 215 countries and wireless data coverage in more than 185 countries.

    Mobile users will enjoy great battery life, simultaneous voice and data capabilities when using Wi-Fi, and the ability to access up to 10 corporate and personal email accounts whether they are corporate or personal accounts. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 also affords users the ability to edit Microsoft® Word, Excel® and PowerPoint® files with DataViz®Documents to Go®suite.

    “The new BlackBerry Curve 8520 is a great choice for first-time smartphone users and offers easy-to-use messaging, social networking and multimedia features with a full-QWERTY keyboard that makes typing fast and comfortable,” said Carlo Chiarello, vice president, product management, Research In Motion.

    The BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone will be available in the coming weeks for $99.99 after mail-in rebate. (Pay $199.99 and receive $100 AT&T Promotion Card. 2-year agreement on a min. $69.99 plan required.) AT&T smartphones require the purchase of a monthly data plan. Other monthly charges apply.

    For more information, visit the AT&T website.

    Read More
  • blackberry,  dataviz

    Documents To Go Premium for BlackBerry Released

    October 27, 2009 /

    DataViz has announced the availability of Documents To Go® Premium Edition version 2.0 for BlackBerry® smartphones. Included in this latest version is an easy to use desktop application with support for bi-directional file synchronization, a robust update to PDF To Go®, support for password-protected Microsoft® Office 2007 files, and a new file browser for accessing and managing documents.

    New Version 2.0 Features

    Desktop Application with Bi-Directional File Synchronization Version 2.0 now includes a desktop application that provides Windows customers with the ability to easily transfer files from their computer to their BlackBerry smartphone via USB cable. With this application, users can select individual files or entire folders to synchronize and all updates made on either the computer or the smartphone will be automatically transferred to the other location. This eliminates the need to manually manage files and ensures that documents are always up-to-date. Throughout this process, all original file formatting will be maintained thanks to DataViz’s acclaimed InTact Technology™.

    “The introduction of desktop file synchronization is the direct result of the very high number of customer requests we received for this feature,” said Kathleen McAneany, Business Manager, DataViz, Inc. “We believe that providing an easy way for users to transfer their important and frequently used files to and from their BlackBerry smartphones will increase the overall usage of Documents To Go and add greater value to our Premium Edition offer which already includes an extensive list of advanced features such as creating new files, spell check, advanced formatting and much more.”

    Enhanced PDF To Go

    Offered as a free bonus application for customers who purchase the Premium Edition, PDF To Go provides high-fidelity viewing of native Adobe® PDF files and attachments without any desktop or server conversion needed. With this new version customers will be able to take advantage of many new features including: find and copy text, save as, send file via email, bookmarks and more!

    New ‘Documents To Go Files’ Application

    A new application called ‘Documents To Go Files’ is also included with this Premium Edition upgrade. This file browser for BlackBerry smartphones provides customers with one centralized location where they can conveniently access and manage (delete, rename, copy and paste) all of their Microsoft Word, Excel®, PowerPoint®, Adobe PDF, and image files without having to navigate between programs.

    Pricing and Availability

    Documents To Go Premium Edition retails for $69.99 and is available to all BlackBerry smartphone users running Device Software 4.5 or higher, including those that received Documents To Go Standard Edition pre-installed on devices such as the BlackBerry Tour™ 9630, Curve™ 8900, Storm™ 9500/9530 , Bold™ 9000 as well as the upcoming Bold 9700 and Storm2™ 9550. Current Documents To Go Premium Edition customers can upgrade to version 2.0 for $29.99. This offer applies to all customers who own Premium Edition for BlackBerry, Palm OS®, Windows Mobile®, or Symbian OS™. Documents To Go Premium Edition is currently available in English. Support for French, German, Italian and Spanish will be available in the coming weeks. Additional language support will be available later this year. Volume licensing is available for 5 or more users with discounts starting at 10 users.

    For more information, visit the DataViz website.

    Read More
  • blackberry,  blackberry os,  rim,  verizon

    BlackBerry Storm 2 Coming to Verizon

    October 26, 2009 /

    Verizon Wireless today, along with Research In Motion, has started sending out emails to customers letting them know that the new BlackBerry Storm 2 will be going on sale at retail location, online, and through Verizon business sales channels on Wednesday, October 28, 2009. Starting today, BlackBerry Storm customers will be able to upgrade their handsets to BlackBerry OS 5.0 over the air, via the BlackBerry Desktop Manager, or as a download from the Verizon Wireless website.

    The BlackBerry Storm2 with BlackBerry® OS 5.0 evolves the BlackBerry® touchscreen platform with hundreds of hardware and software enhancements – including new SurePress™ “clickable” display technology and built-in Wi-Fi® – delivering the exceptional multimedia experience and communications capabilities customers have come to expect from their BlackBerry smartphones.

    Key Features:

    • Smooth design and premium finish with sloped edges, chrome accents, glass lens and stainless steel backplate
    • Large (3.25”), dazzling high-resolution 480 x 360 display
    • Capacitive touchscreen with integrated functions (Send, End, Menu, Escape) and new SurePress technology that makes clicking the display practically effortless
    • 3G and global connectivity support for making phone calls in more than 220 countries and accessing data in more than 185 countries (with more than 80 destinations in 3G)
    • Network Connectivity: EV-DO Revision A; UMTS/HSPA (2100 MHz); and quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM networks
    • Supports Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)
    • 256 MB of Flash memory
    • 2 GB of onboard media storage and a microSD™/SDHD memory card slot with a 16 GB card included

    Pricing and Availability

    The BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone is available beginning Oct. 28 for $179.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement on a voice plan with an Email and Web feature or an Email and Web for BlackBerry plan. Customers will receive the mail-in rebate in the form of a debit card. plans for the BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone begin at $29.99 when added to any Nationwide voice plan. Existing BlackBerry Storm customers will be able to update their handsets to the new BlackBerry OS 5.0 software via Web software load (www.blackberry.com/update), BlackBerry Desktop Manager, or from Verizon Wireless’ download site (www.verizonwireless.com/storm). The software update is available today.

    You can read the full press release on the Verizon Wireless website.

    Read More
  • android,  blackberry,  blackberry os,  google,  microsoft,  web os,  windows,  windows mobile

    Retail Editions of Windows 7 Go On Sale Today

    October 22, 2009 /

    While the final version of Windows 7 has been available to select Microsoft customers and TechNet subscribers for some time now, October 22, 2009 will be remembered as the day that Windows Vista was finally replaced.

    Starting today, Microsoft has started selling four of the six editions of Windows 7 online and at retail locations. (Windows 7 Starter edition and Windows 7 Enterprise edition are required to be purchased under special conditions that we wouldn’t normally have access to. Think netbooks and large corporate account holders.)

    So what does that mean for smartphone users? Probably not much. Microsoft has worked hard to ensure that any software package that works on Windows Vista will also work on Windows 7. I’ve been using Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise editions for the last few months now and I haven’t run into any serious show stoppers.

    Palm Pre, Pixi – Palm webOS devices

    Palm Pre customers (and Palm Pixi customers shortly) won’t have any sync problems out of the box because Palm webOS, unlike Palm OS, does not sync directly with a desktop computer. People using webOS phones and third-party sync solutions like Chapura PocketMirror for webOS and Chapura Echo will want to check for any updates that may be made available. At the time of this posting, I did not see any updates mentioned on Chapura’s website.

    Treo 755p, Centro, Palm OS Handhelds – Palm OS 5 Devices

    Customers using Palm’s older generation smartphones and PDA handhelds, including the Palm Treo 755p, Centro, and Palm TX handheld PDA, things can get a little bit sketchy. Most of the issues with Palm Desktop versions 4.x and 6.x will likely continue. You will still need to be a member of the Windows Administrators group to install the software and all manors of HotSync voodoo will likely be needed to perform successful HotSync operations. In my limited Palm Desktop 6.22 testing on my Windows 7 Ultimate machine, which was upgraded from Windows Vista Ultimate, I have been able to HotSync my Treo 755p. However, I will caution you that 3-5 HotSync operations is hardly conclusive.

    Windows 7 also won’t correct the USB driver issue. Neither Palm nor ACCESS (the company that owns the Palm OS 5 and Windows Palm Desktop source code) has released a 64-bit USB driver. In short, that means if you have a 64-bit edition of Windows XP/Vista/7, you can’t sync your Palm OS 5 device with USB cable. You will need to turn to a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth solution to sync. I don’t expect either company to release a 64-bit compatible Palm OS 5 driver at this late stage in the Palm OS life cycle since Palm OS 5 is no longer being used in new devices from Palm.

    RIM BlackBerry Smartphones

    I recently installed BlackBerry Device Manager 5.0 on my Windows 7 machine and was able to sync it with my BlackBerry Curve 8330. After installing Device Manager, I learned that there was an OS update for my Berry and I was able to apply the update without issue. The BlackBerry USB mass storage mode also worked without a hitch.

    Windows Mobile 5, 6, 6.5

    There really isn’t much to report here. Microsoft’s latest desktop software is expected to sync with their mobile operating systems. While I haven’t tried to sync my Treo 750 (Windows Mobile Professional 6.0) with my Windows 7 machine yet, it did sync (mostly) error free with Windows Vista.

    What about everything else?

    While I don’t have an Apple iPhone or Google Android phone, I am not anticipating any serious problems. The iPhones and the iPod touch sync with Apple’s iTunes software, which is still listed as being compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista should work fine under Windows 7. If an issue does come up, I’d expect Apple to have a fix out shortly since there are so many people walking around with both devices at this point.

    You can learn more about the various Windows 7 editions on the Microsoft website.

    Read More
  • blackberry,  blackberry os,  sprint

    Sprint BlackBerry OS 4.5.0.175 for Curve Released

    October 19, 2009 /

    Over the weekend, I activated a second smartphone on my Sprint account, a BlackBerry Curve 8330. (For those keeping score, I was using a Curve 8330 as my primary phone between December, 2008 – June 6, 2009; the day that the Palm Pre was released.) While configuring BlackBerry Device Manager 5.0 on my PC, I noticed that there was an OS upgrade for my new Sprint BlackBerry.

    Sprint customers who use the BlackBerry Curve 8330 can upgrade from BlackBerry OS 4.5.0.131 to BlackBerry 4.5.0.175. As far as I can tell, the .175 build of BlackBerry OS 4.5 is largely a maintenance release as all of the BlackBerry applications in the package build are still listed as version 4.5.

    Read More
  • blackberry

    Facebook for BlackBerry Updated

    October 18, 2009 /

    In case you missed it, the native Facebook client for BlackBerry smartphones was upgraded to version 1.7 over the weekend. Facebook v1.7 is now available for download as a download from BlackBerry App World or via the Check for Upgrade option found in the Facebook application (BlackBerry key > Options).

    Facebook v1.7 for BlackBerry introduces the following new features:

    • News Feed Support – The ability to set the News Feed as the landing page
    • News Feed Filters – The ability to toggle between ‘News Feed, Status Updates, Photos & Links’
    • Caching Improvements – The application uses the device memory more efficiently.
    • Feed Pre-fetching – The user will not be required to wait while their Facebook Feeds are updated
    • View Profile Menu Option – Clients may easily view their own profile by selecting ‘View my Profile’ from the menu. “

    [Via Crackberry.com…]

    Read More
  • blackberry,  google

    Toffa Discontinues Goosync Free Edition

    October 12, 2009 /

    Toffa International, the company behind the popular GooSync service, has announced that they are discontinuing their free service. Replacing the free service will be a $10USD per year service called GooSync Lite. The free GooSync service will be disabled on October 19, 2009.

    “It has always been our goal to provide a professional service to all Free and Premium users. Given the exponential demand for GooSync over the last 12 months, it has become increasingly more difficult to continue this high level of service to both Premium and Free users.

    It is therefore, with regret, that we are now discontinuing our Free service. For all of you that have come to love and rely on our free offering, we will be migrating the Free GooSync service into a new product “GooSync Lite”. This new lite version of GooSync will have all the same features as the existing free version.

    The Free version will become unavailable and synchronization will be suspended on Monday 19th October. To continue benefiting from all the great features of GooSync you will be able to purchase GooSync Lite for a yearly fee of just £5.99 (approx $10). We are confident that this is priced very competitively and will allow us to continue to offer the professional level of service and support you have come to expect.”

    If you are a GooSync junkie, and I was while I was carrying a BlackBerry Curve 8330, you can also upgrade the GooSync Premium service which includes more features than the free service or GooSync Lite. The GooSync Premium service has a tiered pricing structure of £19.95 per year, £29.95 for a two year subscription or a lifetime option for £39.95.

    GooSync is an over-the-air (OTA) service that allows many popular handheld devices, such as a BlackBerry, iPhone, or Windows Mobile smartphone, to sync with your Google account’s calendar, tasks, and contacts. You can learn more about the GooSync service, on the GooSync website.

    Read More