September 18, 2009 at 15:48Barack Obama's Phone
Recently, a miracle device from the American company BlackBerry fell into my hands for testing, they allocated me the most sophisticated, officially available in Russia, BlackBerry® 9000 Bold . As it turned out, the current president of the United States, Barack Obama, has the same :). I'll start, perhaps, with the appearance (below in the photo)
You can immediately see that the device is designed for the corporate segment, strict forms, a metal edging of the case, the back cover is trimmed with leather, which is very pleasant to the touch, plus a strict black color and glossy display all this leaves the impression of a solid and high-quality phone. It is worth mentioning that in the full set, and this is exactly what I got, there are good headphones (3.5 mm jack), a charger that pleasantly surprised with its interchangeable plugs for different types of sockets, a software disk and a cable for connecting to a PC, as well as a leather case that carries a blackberry logo. The presence of the latter pleased, as the device is not small (114 x 66 x 15, 136 gr.) And you simply cannot carry it in your pocket. We proceed to describe the sensations when working with the device.
I must make a reservation right away that for the last three years, I only used communicators on Windows Mobile equipped with touch screens and therefore at first I felt a certain discomfort from the inability to simply poke a stylus on the screen. But the adaptation was surprisingly quick and painless, I was very pleased with the trackball, the devices into which it would be made qualitatively can be counted on the fingers and BlackBerry also succeeded. Trackball is the main element of navigation both on the menu and on the web browser. Also, a small-looking keyboard turned out to be convenient and, after some adaptation, convenient for high-speed typing of SMS and working with e-mail. The latter incidentally was the purpose of testing.
So, what did I get while working with mail on Exchange from a BlackBerry device?
As it turned out from the results of this test drive a lot. Firstly, it saves traffic, it turns out the connection to the Exchange server is not direct, but through special BES servers, and thanks to proprietary protocols, although the phone is in constant connection with the server, minimal traffic is wasted due to compression technologies, and messages arrive almost instantly. Secondly, it’s the convenience of viewing attachments, again the server magically displays on the screen only the piece of attachment that is currently needed, whether it be a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet or a photo.
For example, a weighty 1MB table came to me, from which I needed only one sheet, the smart server didn’t give it to me in its entirety, it just sent me the piece of attachment that I decided to see, given the recent brutal price hikes of GPRS traffic, the savings were significant . Thirdly, the functions of remote work, address book synchronization, the use of contact search in the corporate directory of the company and calendar synchronization all this greatly simplifies living outside the office, business trips and helps to keep abreast of events, even while in traffic on the way to work.
From the delicacies of the communicator that are not related to working with mail, I would like to mention a very well-developed web browser that can completely replace Opera Mini, and given the presence of a trackball and, accordingly, the cursor for navigation convenience, it surpasses it. Also in the "blackberry" did not forget about the support of ICQ, Gtalk and popular in the West Facebook. The built-in player produces quite a decent sound, and the standard headphone jack allows you to connect decent sound, especially since the power is enough to swing quite serious models.
I was pleased with the voice input recognition feature of the telephone number, which, unfortunately, was not Russified, unlike all the other functions of the device, but even my pronunciation was enough to dial numbers by voice when walking along a noisy street. A good built-in mapping service and GPS allowed us not to get lost in the noisy Moscow.
In general, the impression was very pleasant both from the communicator itself and from its work as an Exchange-mail service client. In terms of communications, the device was very pleased, it took into account everything that an office worker may need nowadays, all the functions for working with Exchange mail, support for instant messengers, GPS navigation, weather forecasts, stock-exchange widgets, viewing and editing documents DOC \ XLS \ PPT, working with a convenient calendar, web browser supporting modern AJAX \ JavaScript \ CSS technologies. There is a player as audio and video, and even a set of several games. By the way, for those who do not have enough built-in applications directly from the phone, a service is available for downloading ringtones, desktop pictures and applications similar to Apple's AppStore.
UPD: the comments indicated that no cons were indicated. So I used it as a corporate phone with a link to corporate mail and with the exception of the price (around 22-25 tr), he did not reveal any special flaws.
Except for security, the peculiarity of using only the allowed or closed wifi password (which was prescribed in the security settings), the device completely suited me.
And the working time in the area of 2-3 days without recharging was generally very pleasing, considering that I was very active on twitter, ICQ and listening to music.
UPD2: photos of the animal
You can immediately see that the device is designed for the corporate segment, strict forms, a metal edging of the case, the back cover is trimmed with leather, which is very pleasant to the touch, plus a strict black color and glossy display all this leaves the impression of a solid and high-quality phone. It is worth mentioning that in the full set, and this is exactly what I got, there are good headphones (3.5 mm jack), a charger that pleasantly surprised with its interchangeable plugs for different types of sockets, a software disk and a cable for connecting to a PC, as well as a leather case that carries a blackberry logo. The presence of the latter pleased, as the device is not small (114 x 66 x 15, 136 gr.) And you simply cannot carry it in your pocket. We proceed to describe the sensations when working with the device.
I must make a reservation right away that for the last three years, I only used communicators on Windows Mobile equipped with touch screens and therefore at first I felt a certain discomfort from the inability to simply poke a stylus on the screen. But the adaptation was surprisingly quick and painless, I was very pleased with the trackball, the devices into which it would be made qualitatively can be counted on the fingers and BlackBerry also succeeded. Trackball is the main element of navigation both on the menu and on the web browser. Also, a small-looking keyboard turned out to be convenient and, after some adaptation, convenient for high-speed typing of SMS and working with e-mail. The latter incidentally was the purpose of testing.
So, what did I get while working with mail on Exchange from a BlackBerry device?
As it turned out from the results of this test drive a lot. Firstly, it saves traffic, it turns out the connection to the Exchange server is not direct, but through special BES servers, and thanks to proprietary protocols, although the phone is in constant connection with the server, minimal traffic is wasted due to compression technologies, and messages arrive almost instantly. Secondly, it’s the convenience of viewing attachments, again the server magically displays on the screen only the piece of attachment that is currently needed, whether it be a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet or a photo.
For example, a weighty 1MB table came to me, from which I needed only one sheet, the smart server didn’t give it to me in its entirety, it just sent me the piece of attachment that I decided to see, given the recent brutal price hikes of GPRS traffic, the savings were significant . Thirdly, the functions of remote work, address book synchronization, the use of contact search in the corporate directory of the company and calendar synchronization all this greatly simplifies living outside the office, business trips and helps to keep abreast of events, even while in traffic on the way to work.
From the delicacies of the communicator that are not related to working with mail, I would like to mention a very well-developed web browser that can completely replace Opera Mini, and given the presence of a trackball and, accordingly, the cursor for navigation convenience, it surpasses it. Also in the "blackberry" did not forget about the support of ICQ, Gtalk and popular in the West Facebook. The built-in player produces quite a decent sound, and the standard headphone jack allows you to connect decent sound, especially since the power is enough to swing quite serious models.
I was pleased with the voice input recognition feature of the telephone number, which, unfortunately, was not Russified, unlike all the other functions of the device, but even my pronunciation was enough to dial numbers by voice when walking along a noisy street. A good built-in mapping service and GPS allowed us not to get lost in the noisy Moscow.
In general, the impression was very pleasant both from the communicator itself and from its work as an Exchange-mail service client. In terms of communications, the device was very pleased, it took into account everything that an office worker may need nowadays, all the functions for working with Exchange mail, support for instant messengers, GPS navigation, weather forecasts, stock-exchange widgets, viewing and editing documents DOC \ XLS \ PPT, working with a convenient calendar, web browser supporting modern AJAX \ JavaScript \ CSS technologies. There is a player as audio and video, and even a set of several games. By the way, for those who do not have enough built-in applications directly from the phone, a service is available for downloading ringtones, desktop pictures and applications similar to Apple's AppStore.
UPD: the comments indicated that no cons were indicated. So I used it as a corporate phone with a link to corporate mail and with the exception of the price (around 22-25 tr), he did not reveal any special flaws.
Except for security, the peculiarity of using only the allowed or closed wifi password (which was prescribed in the security settings), the device completely suited me.
And the working time in the area of 2-3 days without recharging was generally very pleasing, considering that I was very active on twitter, ICQ and listening to music.
UPD2: photos of the animal