Dumb & Dumber III: Blackberry Madness

Christopher Rath

2009-07-23 (updated 2009-08-13)

After years of delay, I finally succumbed and acquired a Blackberry. I had previously resisted the Blackberry's charms for two reasons: (1) Lack of a data plan that would allow me to cost effectively travel to other countries; and, (2) The fact that the Blackberry would convert every email into plain text—discarding any text mark-up applied by the original sender.

Verizon now offers a flat-rate, unlimited, data plan that works is 200+ countries; which overcame my first objection. RIM upgraded the BES and Blackberry device software such that when replying or forwarding emails the sender's text mark-up is preserved; overcoming my second objection.

Given that the Blackberry platform is about 10 years old, my expectation was that it would be a mature, well thought out platform; instead, I've encountered a hodgepodge of poorly implemented features reminiscent of the crap written by Microsoft's new-grads and coop students. This poorly implemented feature set is supported by a cast of faithful Blackberry zealots who are convinced that everything crapped out by RIM is gold.

For the record, my new BB device is a Blackberry Tour 9630.

Top of mind dumb stuff:

• Voice Dialing—if no headset is connected (direct-wired or Bluetooth) then when Voice Dialing is activated the interaction with the device is done in speakerphone mode. This is exceedingly poor and it astounds me that the Tour made it out of Beta testing with this bug intact; yet, here it is.

• Speakerphone toggle—it is only possible to switch between speakerphone and normal mode while a call is active. It is not possible to switch in and out of speakerphone mode before making a call. Another ridiculous limitation that ignores how users interact with their phone.
• Mediocre audio quality—my 4 year old Motorola Razor the Tour replaced had better audio quality (on phone calls) than this brand spanking new Tour. Given RIM's ongoing profitability, there is no excuse that they have not licensed a proper mobile phone handset platform.
• Time zone switching—the Tour, and all Blackberries, do not have the ability to set their time zone to wherever you are currently located. I travel weekly on business, and to make my BB function properly in other time zones I must manually open the BB's advanced option panel and set the time zone to wherever I'm located. The BB zealots claim this is because if the BB makes the change automatically that all my appointments will get screwed up; which is a bald-faced lie on their part. When I manually change my time zone, none of my appointments gets messed up. The only conclusion I can draw is that the guys at RIM are idiots and morons and the RIM-zealots are slime.
• Poor email synchronisation—the synchronisation of email between my MS Exchange account and my BB is poor, at best. The only feature that works is simple deletion of email (in addition to initial delivery): If I delete an email from my BB, then it eventually gets deleted from my Exchange account (and vice-versa). If I move an email from my Exchange inbox into another folder, then the email continues to appear in my BB; requiring me to manually delete the email from my BB. Again, the RIM guys appear to have been hired from the cast of "Dumb and Dumber". [Update 2009-08-13]The BB zealots tell me that when an email is moved into a .PST file that the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) is unable to determine what to do with my email because that email is leaving the Exchange server environment.  As with the other BB defects, the rationalisation of the defect is foolishness: a move consists of two logical tasks, a "copy" followed by a "delete"; it is inconceivable that the BES is unable to detect the "delete" as such.[/Update]

I'm signed up for a two-year contract; so, I'll continue to use the device. That said, I'll definitely be looking at non-BB devices when my contract comes to an end. Hopefully Verizon's competitors will begin to offer decent data plans so that I can make the switch.

Rather than finish this piece on a negative note, I will admit that it is handy to be able to do a bit of web-surfing from my handset, and the Google Maps GPS integration is very nice. It is also a plus to be able to carry all of my 2,000+ contacts in my handset and to be able to send a short email to them without breaking out my laptop.