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About Wireless Reviews the Blackberry 8350I
About Wireless, Inc. staff review by Ron
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Blackberry 8350i for Nextel |
The Blackberry 8350i on the Nextel Network This review is basically positive, but please be sure that you do the software upgrades as mentioned at the end. A Blackberry for Those Who Did Not Like Blackberries I have never been a CEO, but I have been around several, and they do love their blackberries. I do remember being in a Canadian airport once after missing our flights and my CEO boss mentioned that he could still get work done on his Blackberry. I suggested a beer with the thought he would put it down, but he let me buy him a beer and STILL used the Blackberry. Blackberry models came and went and I tried one once with the two letters on each key. It just convinced me what I thought I knew - I don't like these things. But then I tried the 8350i, a Blackberry for Nextel based on the Blackberry Curve. This time it took. I loved it. Hard to even say why. Yes, it does all as advertised, email, navigation, camera, browser. Nice stuff. But my old phone, a Motorola Q9C did that. The difference is I think, yes, style. Hard for an engineer like me to admit there is even such a word as style, but there it was. The way Blackberry presents things on its screens, just seems more professional. It leaves you with the idea that other phones fool around and have cute toy things on their screens, but the Blackberry is for real and is serious. Yes, style. It seemed the "grown up" phone I guess. Well, now I am sold. The only question in my mind is - does one take advantage of the Blackberry Curve on the Nextel network, or on the faster Sprint or Verizon networks? Well, the answer is if you want the push to talk function OR you want the phone to also work in Mexico, then Nextel is the way to go. Otherwise, you might want the Blackberry Curve on the faster networks of Sprint and Verizon. But in any case, the Blackberry sold me on its qualities. And as some will tell you, I really am not a gimmick guy and was not that easy to sell. This phone just seems, well, real, and professional. And I do admit that I admire that.
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Caution - DO YOUR DOWNLOADS
If someone does have a Blackberry, we here at About Wireless cannot stress enough - get used to connecting the Blackberry to your home computer in order to sync with Microsoft Outlook contacts, calendar and tasks. And yes, you should load the Blackberry CD software first of course. This will add oh so many good features, such as a contact list that just never disappears .... forever.... and also a schedule that can ring you before important appointments that you might forget.
BUT EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT -
The CD Blackberry program also checks your Blackberry and tells you of important updates. That is extremely important. While Blackberries are fine products and their maker RIM (Research in Motion) is a fine company, there can be updates to fix problems that you absolutely want and need. In the case of the i8350, it did not do bluetooth well out of the box. Not only was there no voice recognition, it said the phone could not be locked and do voice recognition (huh? it often is when on my belt) and even if activated normally, I have seen bluetooth switch off when it should not have. This was a serious issue. But of course, RIM is a good company and along came a download to fix it. And in our first trials, bluetooth worked well and voice recognition worked very very well after the updates were installed. Now, in my case, not being an experienced Blackberry user, I did not save settings before the update. I am told that you can do that also when tied to a computer. So the update fixed my issue but got rid of my contacts, my speed dials, my email settings (until I reloaded the email "book" that help told me to reload), and an application. Well, the contacts were easy to reload since they were still in my Microsoft Outlook. The others did not take long to fix, but were an inconvenience. But the bottom line is that the software update seemed to fix any issues we had with the product. Yay !!! But the word we have to send along is this - please if you are a Blackberry user, get used to periodically checking for software updates. Then you might find as I did, that your Blackberry might be a valuable and productive tool for you and you might also really enjoy it and have some fun with it as well.
- Ron
© About Wireless, Inc.