blackberry

I walked into my local AT&T Wireless store on Saturday fully expecting and prepared to get a Blackberry 8820. My Blackberry 8800 died while I was in London last week, and both Visa and American Express tried to protect me from fraud by disallowing my attempts to order a new phone over the web. Hence, my face-to-face visit with AT&T.

Unfortunately for Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry, the in-store price for the 8820 was the same as the iPhone. I deliberated for all of three seconds and walked out with the iPhone.

My reason was simple: I needed something that would sync consistently with my Mac. My Blackberry-to-Mac sync has been hit or miss for the past year (though I've been testing a beta of the new PocketMac and it is quite good) and I'm fed up. I just want something that works.

The iPhone "just works," and then some.… Read more

Spring has arrived and the flowers are blooming, and apparently so are the BlackBerrys. Just last week, RIM released the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 for AT&T, and now T-Mobile is getting the RIM BlackBerry 8820. It isn't the freshest model on the market; in fact, AT&T has had this model for a few months. However, it does present T-Mobile customers with a better-equipped business smartphone than the current RIM BlackBerry 8830, since it brings the addition of Wi-Fi and support for the carrier's HotSpot@Home service. It also continues to offer Bluetooth, GPS, and of … Read more

This article was updated 6:00 pm on 3/16/08.

Let's get right to the point: Avvenu Access 'n Share is phone-to-PC remote access service with a strong base and a lot of good potential. With it, you can view and edit files stored on your PC from any smartphone. Provided your computer is running when you log in to your Avvenu account, you'll see your file system reproduced on the phone's screen. As long as your phone is outfitted with a third-party document viewer, you'll be able to remotely read and edit documents. Photos … Read more

If CNET News.com's readers are any indication, Microsoft's Windows Mobile has a better base of support than one might think, but all the winds are blowing toward Apple.

The results of our first annual (maybe) smartphone survey are in, and thanks to everyone who left comments here on One More Thing or over on Crave, and those who flooded my inbox with responses. Yes, I know we should have a survey tool, but we're working on other stuff right now that's more important. (You'll have to trust me on that one.)

Between the comments … Read more

You knew it was just a matter of time before one of the GSM carriers got a hold of the next-generation RIM BlackBerry Pearl after Verizon Wireless released the RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8130. That lucky carrier would be AT&T. Today, AT&T introduced the RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8120, a Wi-Fi-enabled version of the slim messaging smartphone that also offers other enhancements, including a better Web browser and a 2-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities. It's available starting today through business channels for $199.99 (with a two-year contract and after rebates and discounts) and in all, … Read more

If you think of your typical RSS reader or widget as a stream, Viigo is a river delta.

Unlike many services that feed headline news from a from a preselected widget or manually-entered URL, Viigo--available for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile--gathers news channels into a dedicated client that looks great on your phone. With some saving and functions similar to e-mail, and an extensive library of additional news sources, the free application is the most complete RSS-reading environment for smartphones I've seen so far. Tune in to the video below to get a taste of how Viigo can simplify … Read more

BlackBerry owners may be feeling like they have nothing to brag about now that the iPhone has added connectivity to Exchange e-mail systems--the BlackBerry's bread-and-butter feature.

Not to worry. By April, Blackberry owners will have something the iPhone still lacks--the ability to download songs over the air from any location with cellular access. Canadian company Puretracks, which has licensed more than two million songs from all four major labels and plenty of indies, announced plans to launch a mobile store for the BlackBerry family of devices in April.

The files will be in the AAC format used by … Read more

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I've been very busy with a lot of traveling that hasn't left many brain cells free to do blogging. Thanks to Tim for holding down the fort in my absence. Now, on to business...

Recently my BlackBerry got run over by a car. You can see the results here, it's not pretty. Actually, I think it held up pretty well considering it got hit on a busy street. It's rather a mystery how it got there, as I hadn't been anywhere near where it was found.

A kindly … Read more

While watching Apple's announcement today about the future of the iPhone and its SDK, I was shocked. As a person who frequently bemoans the issues and crappiness of tech, I was pleasantly surprised by how thorough and downright impressive Apple's presentation was.

From the very beginning where it spoke about the future of its enterprise integration to the end where Jobs allowed a venture capitalist to come on stage and offer a whopping $100 million to developers, the spectacle wasn't comprised of the illusions of grandeur that had marked the company's previous presentations, but showed a side of Apple that for once, conceded that it had made mistakes and was ready and willing to fix them.

And by admitting its failures and fixing them in a way that no one expected, Apple redeemed itself and has positioned its phone to become the best cell phone ever made. Of course, we can't crown it that until June.… Read more