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We usually post some industry news or new applications (mostly for Blackberry). Today I want our post to be another way to find help for your phone, instead of searching “The Googles” for forums. There is a huge community of people that belong to Twitter. The great thing is some of these people are tech oriented, and many of them seem to be very nice.

Now on Twitter it seems like there are some people out there to solely promote their business. There are also great people like @johnmccrea from Plaxo that reach out to their customer base and address questions or issues they have regarding their product.

One fairly common link is many people that are on Twitter usually Tweet from their phones, and many are tech oriented. Just the other day, I found a cool case for my wife’s Blackberry Storm just by asking, “Does anybody know any good cases for the Storm?” This simple question gave me many opinions. The same rule applies. There are people out there asking, which phone should I get, or how do I (fill in the phone question here). Sure enough, the Twitter community usually comes to the rescue and responds.

For my phone, the Curve, I use an application called Twitterberry to update. You can download at http://www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry. There are other options as well for Blackberry. Gizmodo has provided a great battlemodo of Twitter apps for the iphone here. So if you have any questions you can contact us, or send me a message @gizmoalex, and I will respond as soon as I can.

It seems like Boost Mobile is trying to become super competitive in the Pay in Advance market. Boost Unlimited has been available in some markets and it has tethered off Sprint’s CDMA network, while Boost Pay Go tethered off Sprint’s iDen (Nextel) network. Boost Unlimited was fairly successful in the markets it came out in, but could not really compete with Cricket and Pocket’s much lower rates.

The plan is supposed to launch January 22nd, and I think it can make a big splash in the wireless world. Many people had Boost Pay Go for the unlimited walkie talkie, but now that you factor in unlimited voice and text, you have a double whammy. I can even see some small business that do not want a contract benefiting from this. Think about it 5 lines Instant communication with Direct Connect and no worries of overage for $250. Not too bad if you ask me.

Boost has a variety of phones and if you would like to set one up contact us. If you want the best possible devices for your business, TAKE THE CHALLENGE!!!

Okay, so I am not sure if the MiFi will be a standalone product, but my Spidey senses are saying that it will probably be available for Sprint. I could be completely wrong and it could be an ATT or Verizon exclusive, but instincts tell me something else. Anyways enough guessing on where it is going, what is Mifi? I am not misspelling Wi-Fi. It looks like it will pretty much be a pocket Wi-Fi.

Novatel has been making great PCMCIA, Express, and USB internet cards for some time.It looks like they are ready to make the next leap and offer the MiFi. According to the awesome folks over at Engadget the MiFi should be able to support up to 5 users transmitting a wireless signal within a 30 foot radius. This is really cool, I think, and should be the perfect tool for college students crammed in a dorm room, a meeting at a hotel without Wi-Fi, and a million other situations.

Believe it or not here in the USA there are some places that do not have fiber optic internet, cable internet, or even DSL. Many of these customers have to rely on an aircard and in a multi computer home the decision has to be made who could use it when. Or you could buy an awesome router from the good folks at Cradlepoint. The MiFi should eliminate that decision and let everybody (up to 5) run harmoniously from something the size of a Blackberry. I am really excited about this and if you have any questions contact us and ask for Alex.

That is a bold title, I know. When most people think of a phone right now they think iPhone. I have people walking into our stores asking for iPhones. They do not know what they do, they do not know how they would use them, but the know they want an iPhone. I can say the same thing for the Blackberry, just on a much smaller level, people ask for the Blueberry, or something along those lines, and do not really know what it does. They just know they want a Blackberry.

Well, there are die hard iPhone fans, and die hard Blackberry addicts. Both factions think their device is the best, although both also just dismiss all the good things the opposing device does. I think the iPhone is one of the coolest looking devices out there. It is very sleek looking and has a good “Apple” feel. It looks very modern and feel great in the hand. Blackberrys mostly are all a little different. You have the Storm, Curve, Bold, Pearl, World Series, and so on. I think the Curve is the most popular Blackberry and it looks nice, but not quite up to par with the iPhone.

The iPhone community is great, there are many innovative applications/games on there that I really like, some are JellyCar, Trace, Twitteriffic, and Spanish LE. There are hundreds more, and many of them are really cool. This is an area where the iPhone has pulled away from most makers. The applications developers have made for this really has made it a great device for most people. Both hardcore and casual users can appreciate many of the free and pay for applications. Blackberry has a ton of applications, but many of them are business driven. They are made to help improve operation costs for businesses, and Blackberrys (along with Palm and Windows phones) really help businesses run.

I use my phone a lot for e-mailing, texting, and talking. My good old 8830 aka “The Beast” was great, and my Blackberry Curve is just as good for that. A few things really make the Blackberry pull away from the iPhone in this category. For me the main thing is battery life. My 8830, 8330 Curve, and 9530 Storm have all had better battery life than the iPhone. The 3g iPhone is a little worse off, especially when you are using the WiFi. The other real major winner for me with Blackberry is the keyboard. The keyboards are great. I love my Curve and 8830, I have used the Pearl’s Suretype and it works well. Even though the Storm is touch screen I prefer it over the iPhone. It is much easier to not mess up on the Storm, and the keys are spaced a little further apart.

So do I hate the iPhone? The answer is no. I respect it, it is very cool, but I really need to have the best at e-mails and the best phone available, that is why I have a Blackberry. I have an iPod Touch because I do appreicate the applications, but until Apple steps up and improves a few things RIM is king of the hill. If you have any questions feel free to contact us.

Okay, it has been murmured for a long time, but Palm has finally announced their new UI(User Interface) along with a brand new phone to host it. The Palm Pre will be a touch screen phone with a QWERTY slider. It is coming with Sprint EVDO rev. A (which is awesome) and it will also include WiFi which most Sprint Phones do not.

Early reports say the phone’s is very smooth and you can do many things without it getting choppy or having too many delays. It has been a long time since I have been excited for a Palm, but with the success of the Centro and the more business-centric Palm Pro, it is a great change for the company. I look forward to the phone, and the thing I am most excited for is THE WIRELESS CHARGING. As always if you have any questions contact us.

Good news for those of you who like to use your Blackberry as a media device, Slacker Radio is available as of now on your Blackberry Smartphone. All you have to do is point your phone’s browser over to Slacker.Com and it will download. It is a really cool application to have, and I am not jealous of Pandora on the iPhone anymore.

I did not have an account with Slacker so I just entered my e-mail address, a password, and agreed to the terms and conditions and I was going. I entered my first artist’s name (Radiohead) and I am now listening to House of Cards by Radiohead, and my next song will be a similar genre. You will need a memory card and it asks for 500MB to cache. So I am enjoying it already, and if you have a Blackberry this is a must have!!! If you have any questions contact us.

It has been some time coming, but my wife has finally caught the Blackberry fever. She previously had the Helio Ocean (Which is a very cool phone in its own right). Over the last several months, I have had two different Blackberrys and she could not stand that my phones were cooler than hers. Enter Blackberry Storm. USA’s first touch screen Blackberry. We bought it, played with it, and here is what we thought.

The first thing you will notice on this phone is the styling. It is a very nice looking phone and looks very high end. It has a great looking 360×480 LCD screen. There are a few hard keys for Talk/Answer, Menu, Back, and End/Exit.

The Storm has 4.7 OS. I upgraded my phone to 4.7.0.75 OTA through the Wireless Upgrade in my phone’s options. The touch is pretty responsive, and the click is a good way to not push things accidentally too many times. Other than that, the only issue I have is the right of the screen highlighting when I push the left corner.

The phone has several applications you can download out of the box like Rhapsody and Twitter. And cooler things like Flickr, Facebook, and Myspace. Coupled with a great phone browser these options cater to a business person as well as a regular user who wants a really cool phone.

I hate to say this, but one of my favorite parts of this phone is the game WordMole. You find words hidden throughout the puzzle and touch a string of letters to make a word. Fun, addicting, and never requires a huge amount of time. I also use the phone as a media player. On my personal Curve, I put music, pictures, and movies on there. The Storm comes with an 8GB memory card so for some people that is plenty. I have put music on my wife’s phone and using Desktop Manager 4.6 (4.7 kept shutting down on me) it converted my AVI. files to Mp4.

So overall I really like the phone. My biggest complaint is the phone not having a trackball. The keyboard is pretty easy to type on (even if you have man hands). My wife loves the phone, she is getting used to it being all touchscreen. She has transitioned nicely from a full QWERTY keyboard to the touch keyboard. It has a new OS developers are not very familiar with, but I am sure in time we will be seeing really neat new things we can do with this phone.Overall for the price it is a great phone, and if you have Verizon one I would highly recommend. If you have any questions, or want to buy this phone let us know.

Hey folks, I am back. The holidays treated The Phone Store well this year and we hope you have had a good one as well. I wanted to start 2009 with exciting news for a Blackberry user. It has been reported by Boy Genius that the Blackberry Niagara should be coming to Sprint first quarter.

What is the Blackberry Niagara? The Niagara is a cousin of the Blackberry Bold ATT offers. Some reports are saying it will be EVDO rev A. I hope it is. As some of you may know I loved my 8830, I cherish my Curve, and I really think I will like this upcoming Blackberry.

It is supposed to be on OS 4.7 and have BES 5 support for you Exchange users. I for one can’t wait, I have an upgrade coming soon, and this should be out right in time for that. If you have any questions contact us, or if you are not sold on a Blackberry, TAKE THE CHALLENGE!!!