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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.

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.

Okay, it has been announced for a few months. I am eligible for an upgrade (with Sprint) and my inner Crackberry addict is really struggling against my inner “I want every new tech toy that comes out”. I feel committed to Blackberry. I started with the 8830 and now I have the 8330. I have not had it nearly as long as some other addicts, but I do love it just as much.

That “it” I am referring to is the Palm Pre. The coolest phone Sprint has hyped up in a long while. There has not been a really cool consumer type phone that has looked like it was going to live up to the hype since the Fusic. I know it was a few years ago, but it was pretty cool. So the Palm Pre is a touchscreen, slideout QWERTY, angel of a phone.

The Boy Genius has recently put his little paws on the phone and says it is a pretty solid choice. He did not write too much, but says the touchscreen is good. The only gripe he had was with the top row of keys on the QWERTY. I am a BB fan, a Windows 6.5 fan, the new WebOS fan, and an Android fan, It is hard to like all of these things, but relying heavily on e-mail keeps me glued to my BB. So a coin flip may determine whether I get the Pre or not. The other determining factor may be an announcement of another cool device (Blackberry Tour/Niagara) in the coming months. If you have any questions contact us or you can @message me on Twitter (@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.

Hi guys, long time no see I hope you enjoyed the vacation because you will be getting a lot more of me. I wanted to touch on an issue we have been having. SMS messages have been delayed and at times they do not go through at all with Boost Mobile.

This is a good thing and a bad thing. It is good because the product and pricing is so great, the good people over at Boost have had a hard time keeping up with the demand. It is bad because some messages may not be going through in a timely manner. Boost Mobile is aware of the issue and they are working on resolving it as soon as possible.

They have given a window of May 7th. So for those of you who have Boost hang tight, help is on the way. Also, Boost’s really awesome QWERTY Phone is coming very soon. If you have any questions you can direct message @gizmoalex on Twitter or you can contact us.

Sorry for the late night post, but this is something I thought I posted before, but apparently I have not. There are some BBs and other Smartphones that have their MMS disabled. This means you can’t send a regular picture mail, you have to send it to an e-mail address.

I do not know about you, but there are some people I know that do not have e-mail addresses, but that would still like pictures of my beautiful Guitar Hero playing daughter. There is a way to send an “e-mail” straight to a person’s phone. Here are the codes:

Sprint : MDN@pm.sprint.com
Verizon : MDN@vzwpix.com
Cingular : MDN@mms.mycingular.com
US Cellular : MDN@mms.uscc.net
T-Mobile : MDN@tmomail.net
Nextel : MDN@messaging.nextel.com
Alltel : MDN@message.alltel.com
AT&T : MDN@mms.att.net
Boost Mobile : MDN@myboostmobile.com
Virgin Mobile : MDN@vmobl.com

I will update this as soon as possible with Cricket/Leap Wireless and I will make sure it still works for the new Boost Unlimited. Other than that if you have any questions please feel free to contact us, or if you use Twitter direct message @gizmoalex or @phonestore.

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.

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.