Viigo has done it again. While their original Viigo app is still ‘da bomb’, their new Viigo News app is great for people who want “just the news”. Especially for those folks who have precious little memory left on their Blackberry devices. Keep in mind, you cannot download Viigo AND Viigo News, only one or the other.
Cell phones have been around for a relatively long time. Many people I know claim they used to have bag phones, I personally do not remember anybody having a bag phone. Then a while later we had those Nokia bar phones with the horrible screens and we all thought we were cool. So how much have phones changed since a few years ago?
We have always been able to make calls, some people debate the coverage and call quality. My favorite lines go something like “With my bag phone I could make calls underwater and they sounded perfect”. Then we started taking advantage of text messaging, web, e-mail, media. That is where we are now, we have devices available that do so much more.
I have a Blackberry, Blackberry and Palm have been in the smartphone market for some time. Blackberry has been constantly evolving, albeit a little slower than some other companies. Palm has basically reinvented themselves to use their new WebOS. With my Blackberry I send/receive text messages, I can update and read my Facebook, I update my Twitter, I read news and other RSS feeds with Viigo (which is super awesome). I do so many more things it is hard to list them.
As much as I love my Blackberry, Apple’s iPhone is, in my opinion, what changed the game. Apple made a device that has much more memory that RIM devices or Palm devices had. They released a fairly simple development kit to developers. The iPhone became more about the apps than the phone. People thought “Wow I never knew I would be able to do this with a phone”. Apple is very smart and they did a great job marketing and showing us some of the cool apps, they also give the feeling that there is an application for everything you could imagine.
Windows has been making their Windows Mobile platform evolve. I am really excited for Windows Mobile 6.5 to come out. I used to have a Motorola Q, which was my first smartphone, I liked it but did not love it. I liked Windows Mobile, I love Blackberry OS. I am keeping an eye on this one to see how it goes.
The next big contributor to the smartphone realm was Google. For me Google is just an awesome company, some people know them for their search engine only, but now they have thing Chrome browser and Google Voice which are cool products. Google initially had a good relationship with HTC, but now Motorola and LG are going to start making Android devices. It is open, so I think many manufacturers will start using the Android OS and tweaking it to fit lower end and higher end devices.
Our phones have always done what they have done, they have slowly added features and we have been familiar with the layout. The main things that change are what carrier you have. A Sprint phone’s menu may look different from an ATT phone. The first time you pick up a Blackberry you are lost, although once you get the hang of it YOU LOVE IT, at least I do.
Carriers know applications (apps) are what people are falling in love with, they are trying to cater to these apps a little more now (think LG enV3). A dumbphone will not let you cater to apps, at least not in the capacity that will make them successful. I see business users using Blackberry for years to come. Some business users I think will also use iPhone. Google Android and Palm WebOS are the operating systems to watch. With their abilities they can be tweaked to fit into a consumer or business customer device.
If you have any questions you can contact us. You can also reach me on Twitter @gizmoalex or Charlie @phonestore. We like to think we are smartphone experts, but we also love using our gadgets and devices and we want people to enjoy them too. If you have any questions or any suggestions let us know.
Isn’t technology amazing! I’m writing today’s blog from my Blackberry Tour. After doing some research, I found the WordPress app (click from your phone browser) for the Blackberry, did a quick download and viola…instant blog! This really does give you the power to write about anything from anywhere! Check back soon for more blogs from The Phone Store via our Blackberry devices.
A few days ago Blackberry Messenger 5.0 leaked. It is available through download and install via desktop manager. Thanks to @0mie BBM 5.0 is available for download on most Blackberries as an Over the Air (OTA) install straight from the Blackberry Browser. Make sure you read carefully and you backup all of your information (especially your Blackberry Messenger Contacts) before you start this process.
I was so excited for the news, I installed immediately on my phone (Sprint 8330/Curve) and it worked like a champ. I installed on my wife’s phone (Verizon 9530/Storm) and it worked like a champ. Once I did this I told everybody I knew that had a Blackberry to install the new BBM 5.0 and gave them a link to @0mie’s site. Of course one of my BB peeps @daytripper67 and a co-worker, Jeannette, lost all of their contacts on their BBM and lost BBM all together. I know this was hard for you ladies and I apologize it happened. Now for my initial thoughts on BBM 5.0
My first thoughts on the BBM were “very cool”/ It looked a lot better right from the start. Things seemed larger and fairly easier to scroll through. I remembered reading you could customize your avatar and I immediately did that. The cool thing is it lets crop the pic and as of now if you set an avatar your other BBM contacts will see it. If you want to add me my pin is 31A65D47 and my shirt says “I’m a Little Beach”.
You now have a tab that comes up for recent updates. Anybody that has updated their status, or their saying, or picture will all be listed here. I really like that you can pretty easily set group chats and you can also set a subject to the chat. You can still send a picture, voicenote, and file as before. You know can also send your location to a contact and you can even set up a proximity sensor. I leave mine off because the element of surprise is important to me.
I think contacts are easier to add now. I can add by e-mail, PIN, or can scan a QR Code. I love the QR Code and it is quite easy to do the first time you do it. You just have to choose “Scan invitation barcode from another Blackberry”, it will trigger your camera, and the rest is history. You now have the ability to back up and restore contacts on your memory card or device memory.You can now Broadcast a Message to all or a select group of your contacts, which I love because sometimes I feel I copy and paste the same message to several contacts.
Overall I love the new BBM 5.0. It was a little wonky the first day or two, but that is because I think it was on different servers. My BBM 5.0 experience has been very pleasant since yesterday. Two things I recommend doing before making the BBM 5.0 dive; back up your whole device, and make sure you have the newest OS on your phone. I think this may have had something to do with the contacts being deleted on the other phones. As always if you have any questions contact us, e-mail alex@thephonestoreinc.com directly, or you can message @gizmoalex or @phonestore.
I love my Blackberry and there are not a lot of moments it is out of my hand. So I think sometimes, what can I put on my Blackberry to make it more productive?
One of my favorite apps is Viigo, as I have said before. It makes me more productive because it brings my favorite news to me. It is delivered in a nice clean little package. Now Viigo has movie times, sports scores, and podcasts (coming soon).
I have Sprint, and another super handy thing my Blackberry allows me to do is use my Phone as Modem. There are times when your internet connection may crash, and Blackberry to the RESCUE…… I just fire up my Sprint Smartview connection manager software, plug in my Blackberry, and start surfing the web again. This has literally saved me on numerous occasions when the old internet goes down. It lets me continue to help my customers (at work).
The last thing I really like and recommend everybody does on any phone they have with a memory card is put some portable applications on it. I love the website PortableApps.com. I use Firefox portable which lets me keep my bookmarks with me at all times, and it also lets me keep all my Firefox extensions which really lets me take my browser with me. I also highly recommend CC Cleaner portable, VLC Media Player, and ClamWin AntiVirus.
These few tips and tricks will hopefully help you love your Blackberry a little more than you already do. Hey who knows, maybe your Blackberry can come to somebodie’s rescue. If you have any questions direct message me on Twitter @gizmoalex or contact us.
Ok, a few weeks/months ago I wrote about Slacker Radio coming to the Blackberry. I have been using Slacker and setting all my Blackberry customers up with it. Now comes Pandora, Pandora is a similar music streaming station.
When you log into Pandora the first time it asks you if you have an account (which I do) or if you are a new customer. You can set up your settings from here. I entered my e-mail address and password and pretty much hit the ground running. It had a list of my previously created stations (Bubblegum Oldies, where did that come from?). It has a pretty slick interface and seems to be very responsive.
I am on Sprint’s 3G network and after selecting my song it loaded very very fast. The main screen shows you the Album Art, Song’s Title and Album. There is a spot where you can “Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down” the song. This will play it more often, or stop playing it. You can also skip, I skipped twice before I didn’t want to try anymore (Creep Acoustic Version). The actual website only lets you skip 3 times an hour.
So if you like music and you have a Blackberry get this application. There are great alternatives like IHeartRadio which is really awesome because it lets you listen to some local radio stations. Slacker is awesome because it lets you cache your stations and listen when you are off network. Also, Slacker is only available for the Bold, Curve, and Pearl series phones. If you have any questions please contact us, or Direct Message @gizmoalex or @phonestore on Twitter.
Thanks to Twitter, I heard about a service called Contxts. It is a really simple idea, that seems to work pretty well the last few days I have been using it. It is a service that allows you to cut down on your paper business cards, and allows you to have somebody receive your contact info on their phone via text.
For example, I set my Username as gizmoalex, when you text gizmoalex to 50500 it will send you my contact info. You can set it up as you wish, but I have my name, mobile, work number, title, etc. Now would be a great time to do it, I just set my wife up, and because we are early adopters her username “Laura” has not been taken yet.
There is a spot where you can enter your Twitter or Linkedin accounts, among other social networking websites. It is a cool service, it is a free service, and it is a great way to make sure everybody gets your contact info. I do not know how many business cards I have lost, but I guarantee my phone is not something I tend to lose (often). If you have any questions contact us, or you can Direct Message @gizmoalex or @phonestore on Twitter.
I always was amazed to have internet on my phone. I think it was really cool, but not quite the work of “wizards”. I have come a long way from my older phone. I went after that to a few different phones, a Moto Q, Blackberry 8830, and the new (well not so new) love of my life my Blackberry Curve 8330.
Okay, so I have internet on my phone, so what? Before, my internet connection on my phone was used to only search for movie times and the default news on the home page. As time has gone on, I now use the internet on my phone to receive e-mails, settle late night bets via Google, and even check the status of my friends currently playing XBOX. The point is besides all those TinyTwitter and a billion other things I use the web for on my phone, it is still not where it will be in the future.
Verizon is one of the major carriers that have been testing for LTE and Sprint has being doing the Wimax/Xohm thing for some time. These technologies are going to make us even more connected. They are increasing the speed a whole lot. From what I understand right now you are lucky to peak at 1 Mbps and soon you should be able to multiply that by 15-20.
Think about it, our devices will have to obviously change to take advantage of this. Over the years they have already started getting bigger screens, keyboards, bigger built in memory. I would love to add a movie download to my Netflix Streaming Queue and watch it while I am waiting at the Dr.’s Office. I do not mean watch choppy video, I mean watch an HD stream. Will we all be carrying netbooks that have a built in ability to talk in a few years?
The exciting news is it is not just the biggest boy on the block doing this, Metro PCS apparently has plans to go the way of LTE, and if I had to place a few bucks on it I think Leap Wireless/Cricket may follow suit with the same technology. So I am excited to see this happen, I am excited to see where this might go, and how this will help us connect better as people. If you have any questions contact us, or you can always Tweet @gizmoalex or @phonestore.
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.
I have Pac-Man, Brick Breaker, and Sudoku on my phone. I love Guitar Hero on my XBOX 360, but the mobile version left some to be desired for me. I have found my new favorite mobile game. It is Nintaii. The premise is simple you move a block around and try to drop it into a slot. Sounds easy right, sometimes it is not.
I noticed this game while I was browsing BPlay’s games section. It has high ratings and a co-worker recommended I at least try it out. I did try it and I love it. If you have a Blackberry and have a chance to play games this is one of the coolest ones I have ever tried. It keeps your brain sharp on your downtime, but still gives you a little break from the hustle and bustle of your work. The easiest way to download is to point your browser to BPlay and go through their website to download directly. Also, for some other free games try the BerryStore. If you have any questions contact us, ask for Alex.