Saving Companies Thousands. Be One!

I know there are a lot of awesome ways many people customize their telephone. If you have a phone like all of your friends have it is a definite must. It is funny, I see a lot of friends come in our stores with phones like the Razor and they have the same color and the same phone.

There are several options like the standard leather case, skin, and hard plastic shell. On my phone I opt for the Otterbox, but some people send their phone to Colorware. Colorware is an awesome company that custom paints some smartphone devices. Naturally since I am writing about it, it is offered for Blackberry. The level of quality that Colorware provides is unmatched. They have great colors and offer a high gloss scratch resistant paint. Some celebrities like Mariah Carey and Jay-Z have their Blackberries customized by Colorware.

Colorware offers their services for some Sidekicks, iPhone, and Blackjack. So if you are not partial to Blackberry, send in your iPhone or Sidekick. They also paint computers, game consoles. music players, and HD Tvs. As always if you have any questions let us know.

I love my Blackberry and everything I can do on it. I can write and receive all of my e-mails in a very organized way, I can use a great phone, I can play games, and it seems with all the applications out there I can do a countless number of things. There are so many applications out there and one I am sure many business people have been waiting for is a Quickbooks application.

Now, I am not in charge of finances for our company, but I know that Quickbooks is a very important tool to make sure we are keeping track of all of our expenses and profits. Thanks to our good friends over at Blackberry Cool, they have let us know this is available for Blackberry and iPhone users.

So for those of you that manage your company’s expenses or those of you small or medium business owners that do it yourself, download this application now. On top of the hour a day Blackberry helps you save, this should make your life just a little easier. If you do not have a Blackberry TAKE THE CHALLENGE!

For most of us using our cell phones are as much a part of our everyday lives as brushing our teeth or going to school/work. So many of us need to use the phone whether it be for business or to chat with friends. One of the biggest things many lawmakers are trying to do is, get us to use a handsfree device (Like a Bluetooth) while driving.

I know some people feel like they may be talking to themselves or they may not like the device in their ear. I feel a bluetooth gives you the safety of being able to drive with both hands and not holding a phone, which at times also blocks your field of vision.

For the people that can’t seem to find any comfortable bluetooths to fit on their ear, there is a great company called Blueant which makes an awesome handsfree speakerphone. I do a lot of driving and the Supertooth Light is awesome. The calls are much louder than what they would be with the phone pressed against my ear. Not only that but driving at 70 is usually pretty noisy, and I the people I speak with say I sound great.

So I do support bluetooths. I support them for the convenience. I support them because they allow me and other people the ability to be much safer when we drive. If you do not already have a handsfree device please get one; Also, check with local authorities to make sure you are complying with their local laws. In some states they are the law, and there are cities and counties out there that require them as well.

Something that bothers me is when a customer does not purchase insurance on their phone. It is not a pet peeve, I  just usually want what is in my customer’s best interest and declining insurance is usually a mistake. Now for some, insurance seems pointless because the mentality is this phone was just $10 or this phone was free. So the thought is if it breaks I can go to the store and receive a new one for free again.

To be honest the free phone usually retails in the $200 dollar range. So if your phone took a swim and you bought it two months ago and do not have insurance, unfortunately you have no choice but to pay retail, that is unless you buy insurance of course. All major carriers offer a form of insurance for their phones, some do not cover all phones.

Please buy insurance it is worth it. We even make it easy for you, you can walk into one of our stores pay an upfront amount and have insurance for a year. If your phone breaks or has issues, you just walk right back in and get a new phone….that was new not refurbished. Not only that but we save you about $25 in a years duration. If you do not buy it please buy the carriers or a third party’s insurance. Make that small monthly or one-time investment and you will have the peace of mind that you did. As always any questions let us know.

We usually write about the newest applications we have heard about or tried, accessories, or the news in the wireless industry. We like to give tips and tricks on how to make your phone work for you, but seldomly do we recommend wireless carriers. The best carrier for you usually is based on your needs versus what they offer.

I have noticed that some Contract Carriers have had their credit requirements become stricter and have been asking for a higher deposit. At The Phone Store we understand everybody does not have a great credit score and we do not feel that you have to have perfect credit to get a cell phone. Boost Unlimited and Cricket are great pay in advance wireless carriers.

Most contract carriers offer unlimited plans for the $100 range. Don’t get me wrong it is a great value considering the huge variety of features that some of the carriers offer. But, Boost and Cricket both offer Unlimited Minutes for $50 or less. They both have very reasonable text or web options and a decent variety of phones.

Now beware, the rate is almost unbeatable with these carriers, but keep in mind they are ideal for people that do not travel out of their calling area. Boost Unlimited charges a 15¢ a minute for calls outside of your home calling area. In Texas they allow you an extra $5 attachable that gives you most of Texas and Oklahoma. If you wanted to go to New York you have to put extra money on your account so the minutes pull from your balance.

Cricket has some great options for roaming, and they include a certain amount of roaming minutes on their higher tier plans. Overall Cricket is the less expensive of the two Pay in Advance services, but has a slightly smaller calling area. They trump that with the level of flexibility and number of plans they have. So as always do your homework to find what is best for you, and if you have any questions contact us.

Okay, even though I work in the wireless industry I at times have to call customer service myself. Now what is the worst thing about having to call customer service? For most people it is wading through all the prompts of Push 1 for English, or say what you are calling for. Of course this is time consuming and does not always know what you are trying to do. Then if you push the wrong prompt, you usually have to hang up and start again. How frustrating.

Thankfully Fonolo is trying to make this ordeal a much easier experience. They have a flow chart for every company in their database. According to the Boy Genius you select the point where you would like to be (Customer Service for example) and Fonolo will call the company, go through the menus, and ring your phone when it has reached your desired destination.

I normally would pay a premium for this, and as much as we need to work with customer service for our clients I would be happy to pay this. The awesome thing is it is FREE!!! After I read about this service on my Viigo I immediatley went to the webpage and it is in a Private beta. I signed up for it and I am so excited I will be able to try this out. I recommend visiting the site and signing up for the beta to take advantage of their services.

In Japan there is a cell phone culture called Ketai Culture. They have several things on their cell phones that we would not normally consider as a normal option. Some phones have pedometers, crime prevention buzzers, and many other things. The culture is so intense over there  that half of their top selling books are written on cell phones and many are read on phones as well.

I wanted to mention QR Codes. What is a QR Code? It is very similar to a bar-code, but when you take a picture of it, the QR Code will direct you to a URL. In Japan many movie posters have them (which direct you to the movies website or viral site), grocery items have them, and even business cards will direct you to the company or employees website.

If our tech/cell phone culture continues to boom here, I think this is something that Americans will start taking more advantage of. Imagine, being able to research almost everything you see, just by taking a picture of the QR Code. That would be awesome! They are currently testing it out in San Francisco where the QR Code will direct you to a Citysearch website for restaurants and shops. It seems like San Francisco is the spot for all the awesome stuff to be tested.

Many customers that walk through our doors day in and day out ask for a phone that is tough or rugged. People need the toughness for different reasons; they are in a line of work where the phone could get damaged, they are very hard on their phone, their phone is prone to more clumsiness than others, or they have a small child. I personally think the most dangerous is children.

We are seeing more phone manufacturers listen to this need and make military spec phones. And there are other great companies like Otterbox which has made my Blackberry 8830 “Baby Proof”. Now both options are great for durability and toughness, but I really feel that a 3rd party case like the Otterbox will protect your phone more.

There are great military spec phones that are on the market, or still available to order. One of the phones I recommend the most is the Sanyo 7050. Sanyos are normally known for their durability and great reception, but adding some rubberized casing and covers in choice places, really elevates it beyond most phones. Verizon has the Casio G’Zone phones which are great, and I have known a lot of customers that have had great results with them. Sprint IDEN (Walkie-Talkie) phones are usually know for durability, and the new Sprint “NDC” phones look to follow in their footsteps.

The point is do not be afraid to ask for what you want. Durability and strength does not have to be ugly in phones and Motorola, Samsung, and LG are all starting to make more durable and better looking phones. And if you are like me and NEED a Blackberry the folks at Otterbox have you covered, or visit and of our locations and pick one up.

As many of you know we are CRAZY for Blackberry devices. They are really well made products and have a really intuitive interface that is extremely efficient. We feel most business customers could save an hour a day with a Blackberry and we wanted to let you know about some shortcuts that should make it a little easier.

Something I didn’t know how to do was calling a number like 1-800-GOOG-411. Sure, I can look at a regular phone and find GOOG is 4664, but I do not always have one right in front of me. With the Blackberry I can hold the ALT button down and type GOOG. When I dial it will automatically place the numbers in for me. Another cool thing I have learned is when you are in your pictures you can type N to go the next picture, P for previous, I to zoom in, O to zoom out, and R to rotate.

There are so many shortcuts it is crazy. A couple other things that are really awesome; You can press the spacebar twice to insert a period and automatically capitalize the next letter. I find when I am on my desktop I space twice at the end of a sentence wishing it would do this for me.  The last cool tip I will leave you with is when you are typing an e-mail address press the spacebar to add the @ sign and press again to add the period for the .net or .com.  Any questions contact us.

I was reading an article on one of my favorite tech blogs Gizmodo and they were taking a poll on whether you love, hate, or do not care about push e-mail. For those of you who do not know what push e-mail is, it is basically your phone retrieving e-mails from the server for you. The results are what I thought; 40% love (whether they use it a lot or not), about 20% feel they need to stay on top of things, 20% do not need, and about 20% hate.

When it comes to push e-mail Blackberry is still the king. They did a side by side comparison with the iphone and it takes the iphone approximately 5 times longer to receive their e-mails. Now I am currently on an Exchange Server hosted by Rackspace, and I only get my work e-mails on my Blackberry. It can be very annoying if you have G-Mail or Yahoo Mail, because the push e-mail may deliver 30 spam messages at 4 in the morning ( I know because it happened to me and my wife was not happy).

Many small and medium businesses out there thrive because they can stay on top of their customers needs. Push e-mail really helps that. If you have another device it can be very draining on the battery life since it is constantly trying to retrieve the info. The Blackberry servers deliver the info to your phone. If you have not tried a Blackberry try one out. If you are a business owner take The Smartphone Challenge and see what an extra hour of productivity a day can do for you!