vB Easy Archive - Two Weeks with the 9300/850 and blackberry connect

Pages: 1

Two Weeks with the 9300/850 and blackberry connect
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: Amphicar770

It is now about two weeks since I started using my 9300. Overall, I have been pleased with it. It could be better in some ways but is pretty good in many others.

The screen is great. The keyboard is OK, a bit too small to type with more than two fingers. The track-point device is not quite there, 9300 really needs a touch screen.

I had read many complaints of it being slow. I find there is a little lag in opening apps but not bad at all. The only time I find it to be really slow is when running some large apps like Advanced English Dictionary. Expand the definition for "tree" and you can go refill your coffee cup.

I did swap out the provided 128MB MMC card with a Kingston 1GB card. these are said to be high-speed cards although I do not know if 9300 takes advantage of this or not.

In some was, if you ever used a Psion device, some of the apps will take you right back to the early 1990's. I would have expected significant advances with the email program such as auomatic mail check at specified itervals and a spell check. None of these are there, it is essentially the same 10+ year old application. I loaded a copy of Profimail which is far superior.

From a phone perspective the 9300 works very well. As others have said, Nokia should make better use of the small external display.

My Logitech Pro bluetooth headset did partner with the 9300 but I never got it to work. I have since purchased a Plantronics Discovery 640 which is the best bluetooth headset I have ever seen. The Pantronics also stores in a little tube and, when in the tube, goes into vibrate mode. Thus, by keeping the plantronics in your shirt pocket you can work around the 9300's unexplainable lack of vibrate mode.

So, lets talk about the Blackberry piece.

Having used the BB service on the 9300 for about a week I find that it works in the most basic sense but still lacks many of the features you would find on a native blackberry device. Some of the shortcomings are rather significant.

All of your received blackberry messages are stored in a messaging folder which is created under the name "Blackberry". They do not go to the default Nokia in-box. Where this becomes problematic is when you try synching to your desktop. Whereas a regular blackberry will synchronize deletions between your outlook mail and blackberry, this does not happen with the 9300. I suspect it is because the Nokia synch software on the PC is unaware of a Blackberry folder on the 9300. In any event, this leaves you having to delete emails in two places. This is a bit surprising to me as even Profimail has a more elegant mail such than this. Another small nusiance to using a seperate blackberry folder is that other apps such as PowerDesk will also not see this mail folder.

Another odd thing with the Blackberry connect was with retrieving mail from my Yahoo account. With any blackberry on T-mobile, you simply go to the T-mobile site and specify userid and password for your Yahoo account and that mail will automatically be pushed (assuming you have the Pop3 option on your email). With the 9300 it only pushes the first few lines of the e-mail and there does not seem to be a way to change this. Likewise, you can not select "Get More" or "Get All" from such an account. You will thus need to use profimail or the built in mail client to retrieve your Pop3 messages (at least from yahoo).

Someone did mention that they are not seeing their sent messages being stored. In my case, those messages do get saved but they go to the regular "sent mail" folder as there is no seperate "Blackberry Sent Mail Folder", another odd inconsistency. The sent message will also go wirelessly to my outlook sent mail.

The lack of predictive typing is a down side. Even more significant is the lack of any sort of spell check. This is a big miss on Nokia's part. I do not know how "open" the email interface is but I assume not very as someone surely would have linked to one of the dictionary programs by now.

I still like the 9300 based on the screen, keyboard, and greater application availability than the RIM devices. At the same time, the hardcore crackberry user may still be happier with the new Blackberry device being released this month.

Right now I would rate the 9300 as an 8 overall. From the blackberry component I would say a 5, mostly do to the poor desktop synchronization. If that is addressed, and unfortunately we all know how slowly Nokia moves with updates, I might give it an 8 as well.

Posted by: omegajb

Thanks for the update, I bought one from Newegg and sent it back because it's only 900/1900 even though the website has is with 850. I loved the phone except for the lack of a vibrate mode and I thought that the outside screen could have been a little larger, it's funny to have such a large phone and a small screen on the outside, I understand that it's designed to work with the flip open but I didn't want to open it for everything.
I will buy it again when I can find it in 850 for an ok price.