Can you survive going back to Blackberry after iPhone?

I liked my iPhone, but for reasons that belong in a different blog, I switched back to Blackberry after almost a year. First, it was difficult but having been used to Applications, I started discovery of app store on Blackberry and was pleasantly surprised and somewhat disappointed. This blog is about my journey back to Blackberry for now.

Gmail Integration

First positive change was recognition of Gmail by Blackberry in the form of a Gmail connector that made it easier to use. On the other hand, native Gmail app from Google still doesn’t work well on Blackberry as delete keys don’t work, it is slow, doesn’t do push and consumes more battery. Similarly, contact and calendar sync work fairly well.

User Interface

Lots of nice icons have been created on Blackberry Curve but their usability is poor especially after working with beautifully designed icons of iPhone. Most of the time you have to read the description of the icons to understand what they mean – case in point Application, Games, Downloads, Setup just look so similar. Finding App Store on your Blackberry is a challenge – It has Applications and then Downloads menus. App Store is hidden under Downloads and that is where Apps come before you decide to move it elsewhere.  I just wish Blackberry pays attention to these details as much as it has paid attention to Email and the curves on its keyboard.

How many Apps does one need?

Coming from Apple iPhone experience, one needs lots and lots of apps and I had over 30 when I switched. However, Blackberry made me realize that I only really used less than 10 apps and so I came looking for applications that I really needed.

Communication/Social Applications

Besides Email, IM, and Facebook, Twitter was the missing piece and Blackberry just released a native app for Twitter that takes advantage of its push technology. It crashes sometimes but does work very well.

Navigation Applications

Google Maps is available and works well except that it drains battery if left on for a long time. Needless to say it is not as intuitive as Google Maps on iPhone. There is a good new app called Poynt that gives you neighborhood restaurants, movie theatres, gas stations and white/yellow pages.

Games Applications

Needless to say, there is no match here between iPhone and Blackberry and a lot of it has to do with the touch interface, developers’ focus and the target users. Blackberry now has many more native games besides Brick Breaker and a whole lot of third party apps are also available in their store.

Entertainment Applications

Pandora and Stitcher radio applications are both available on Blackberry and work well. The missing piece is an ability to have Apple’ iPod like functionality that can play the music from my iTunes library.

Conclusion

I am comfortable using Blackberry with my repertoire of  applications but just wish that browser experience was better on Blackberry; a feature I sorely missed in switching from iPhone.

Read Full Post »

Did your application get rejected by an App Store? Is it a monopoly case worthy of DOJ and EU?

App Stores – Rejecting many apps
The rise of app Stores like Apple’s AppStore, Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace, Nokia’s Ovi and others from different mobile platform companies has been a boon to software developers as it offered a cheaper way of distributing applications. With 25,000 apps approved by Apple, I hear a very large number of apps are also stuck in the Apple approval queue.  How big is this issue – worth 3M pages on Google. I came across one great postindicating all the unofficial reasons for rejection of iPhone apps. In this business, application delayed is application rejected because the more you are delayed the more the chances of a competitive app being in the store and hence negating your app.

App Store rejections – Is there a reason?
Is there a criterion for rejecting an application? One common cause for rejection seems to be that it competes with what is already bundled with the platform like a dialer or browser. None of the vendors are explicit about the criteria they use for rejecting apps until Microsoft took the lead and actually published its criteria. Bravo, Microsoftand hope others will follow you so that some of the arbitrary rejections can be controlled. Google, with its Android is an exception as it seems to accept most apps but that might change over time as Android becomes more popular. Has your app been rejected by an app store and do you know the reason for it? Please comment here for others to understand and see.

Criteria for Rejection
In studying through Microsoft’s criteria here are a few key themes that emerged
If you compete with what we have bundled, no matter how bad, we can reject your application – last time I checked Microsoft went to great lengths to defend a law suit like this for Internet Explorer’s bundling on the PC.
If you compete with the channel we aim to please, we can reject your application. Is that legal?

Is it time for DOJ and EU to step in?
I am not a believer of wasteful regulation or litigation but it does smack of anti-competitive behavior against smaller companies/developers and above all for consumer who are deprived of many choices. Do you agree? I just hope that platform companies publish their criteria, act fairly and swiftly now when it is too early in the cycle so that we don’t see waste of our tax dollars in DOJ, EU and other authorities bringing law suits against these companies like it has happened to IBM, Microsoft and Intel.

Let me know what you think?

R. Paul Singh

Read Full Post »

Blackberry Email, Yahoo Mail or Google Gmail? – Experience of a Blackberry (BB) User

RIM’s Blackberry was only an Enterprise cell phone and so most people used it with Blackberry Enterprise Server which provided over the air sync of Emails, Contacts and Calendar events with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Domino. In the era of iPhone hype, many people like me still use Blackberry to stay in sync and so I went exploring many choices for users without an Enterprise Server and/or Microsoft Outlook and here is what I found. I had to spend days researching these choices and hope this blog will help save time for many others and also wake up Google, RIM and Yahoo to act to make their products better.

Criteria

My criteria was simple – an ability to automatically sync our Email, Calendar and Contacts over the air preferably without paying any more than $30 we were already paying AT&T.

Blackberry Client

I could get a hosted BB Enterprise Server solution but most of them cost in excess of $10/month – this alternative was very familiar but I wanted something free and so didn’t go with this choice. Despite marketing towards consumer markets, RIM has sadly not provided any over-the-air solution to the sync problem outside of Microsoft Outlook.

Yahoo!Mail Client for Blackberry

I was using Yahoo! Mail as my personal email so that was my first choice. I downloaded Yahoo’s mobile client for Blackberry. The installation was simple and did sync my emails well except that its sync was delayed many times by much as three to four hours. However, trying to sync Contacts and Calendar proved to be too difficult and after repeated attempts and reading lots of documentation I decided to give that up. One good thing or bad thing is that this email client looks just like the Blackberry native email client and seems to be very CPU efficient and didn’t change battery life.

Gmail Client for Blackberry

My next choice was Gmail even though I still don’t like Gmail’s presentation of email in conversation threads. Downloading Google’s mobile client for Blackberry was easy enough though not as easy as Yahoo. Once I downloaded the Gmail client, I realized that it had a different user interface – similar to one on the PC. It was much better than BB Email client for reading newsletters as it cleared all kinds of web links and made emails lot more readable on the phone. Is someone from RIM listening?

Sync client from Google choked couple of times as I had too many contacts and it took a very long time but once it synced, it got better for any other changes.  While I was on Google site, I also downloaded Google Maps. Pretty soon, my Blackberry Curve started becoming slow and battery life reduced. So, I uninstalled Google Maps even though I really liked the app. Now, my Blackberry is still not as fast as it was with native Blackberry Email client but I can live with occasional slow downs and reduced battery life. The one thing that Google ignored is the delete key on the keyboard and for anyone used to that key it will be sorely missed. Also if you have many contacts, Gmail takes a long time in bringing up your contacts and seems like it goes to the network to fetch contacts unless you only keep most used contacts which are cached locally.

Conclusion

In short, I use Gmail on mobile and desktop and it automatically syncs everything well for me between my desktop and Blackberry. I have still kept my Yahoo client on the Blackberry for those times when Gmail slows down my Blackberry. Hopefully Google will fix this problem one day or Yahoo will wake up and do a good job in syncing Contacts and Calendar or better still RIM will wakeup and provide this service for all the non-enterprise customers before their value is completely diminished by Google.

Did you have different experiences. Share here in comments sections for others to benefit from!

R. Paul Singh

Read Full Post »