Socket Jockeying

At the risk of starting to sound like my friend Omar, and his continuous, albeit brief,  love for all gadget devices he acquires, I’m writing to update my initial sustained experiences with a new Blackberry 8800.  Yes, it’s true, I had purchased and returned one earlier.  However, after my Motorola Q ate itself inexplicably and my least favorite carrier, Verizon, told me it was a problem that I had to deal with myself, I needed something new ¹.

After my numerous frustrations with Windows Mobile (and my constant comparisons of it to a Blackberry), I decided to go back to a Blackberry, even knowing it wasn’t going to work as well as it could if it was connected to a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES).  And so, I went and got myself another new 8800 – as a bonus it had come down in price from the first time I bought one.  After eight weeks with it, I can say that, yes, there are plenty of limitations it has, but even with those, I doubt I’ll ever go back to a Windows Mobile device.

PHILOSOPHY

Many folks love Windows Mobile devices with touch screens.  Many folks are raving about the iPhone for it’s exemplary use of a touch screen interface.  While I appreciate why some like this type of device, for my needs, a full hardware keyboard is the only way to go.  This is why I originally wanted the Q (the first US device with a full keyboard and no stylus).  Blackberry has always concentrated on the keyboard device.  In contrast, Microsoft adapted their phone focused (think candy bar phone) interface to full keyboard phones.  Simply put, it shows.

Keyboard shortcuts for the rapid fire thumb typist are everywhere in the Blackberry operating system.  This includes starting programs, creating, replying, forwarding, reading emails and SMS messages, and navigating the screen and menus.  Add in auto-correction that isn’t based on T9, but instead on the understanding that you actually have a full keyboard (don’t auto-complete my words, but do capitalize “I”, insert the apostrophe in “can’t” and insert a period at the end of a sentence when I double hit the space bar) and you get a pretty amazing keyboard experience.

HARDWARE

The hardware of the Blackberries has always been something of a tradeoff for the potential buyer.  Awesome keyboard, amazing battery, clunky & bulky design.  With the introduction of the 8800 (and now the Curve et al) the consumer oriented styling and sizing of the Pearl are coming to the “full” BB devices.  Case in point, the 8800 has very elegant styling and is almost exactly the same size as my defunct Q.

The 8800 delivers on its BB heritage.  The key presses are a joy.  In no time at all I found myself typing at my old thumb key speeds.  Mistypes were a near thing of the past.  Battery life is, especially coming from anything else in the “smartphone” space, amazing.  With my usage of always on, always on vibrate (and vibrate alerting for every email, SMS, reminder I get), a handful of 5 min phone calls, and plenty of emailing and browsing, I get about 7 days between charges.  That’s right, 7 days.²

New additions to the BB I had of yore (way back when they weren’t even phones yet) are light sensing color screen – it dims and brightens depending upon the ambient light conditions, works surprisingly well – and the “pearl” trackball.  The later I approached with some concern.  I had always liked the scroll wheel of the older BB’s and wasn’t sure how I’d like this change.  However, after some use, I found it extremely valuable for copying/cutting/pasting text (yeah, it supports Copy/Paste – take that iPhone and WM Smartphone).

Those that read my comments on the Q know that I’m a big fan of the BB holster.  When at the workplace³, the features of being able to set differing alerts for events depending upon if the device is on you (in holster) or not, the immediate “power down” when you put it away, and the “show the message it just buzzed about” when you pull the device from its case are all huge wins.

The 8800 has all of these features still.  Unfortunately,  BB has abandoned the hard plastic holster designs I loved in favor of “stylish” leather  ones.  I can only imagine that this is to show how “consumer cool” these devices are, but I’m not a fan.⁴  These lack the ability to just “drop in” and single finger push and click to secure of the older design.  To make matters worse, there is a cover flap on them, making reseating the devices with a single hand even more difficult.

MESSAGING/GROUPWARE SUPPORT

Normally, messaging and groupware integration for the Blackberry places it at the king of the heap (even when compared with Windows Mobile, which is made by the same folks as Exchange – the groupware that most folks are using BB to extend).  Unfortunately, as an employee for a BB competitor, my IT shop doesn’t run a BES.  So, I have only two options to get my work email to my device.

The first, and recommended, is using BB’s Internet service.⁵  This service tunnels through your Exchange server’s Outlook Web Access (OWA) web pages to get at the email data.  The second is to run desktop software on your own PC that also runs Outlook.  The BB Desktop Redirector has all the problems of running your own software to keep things “humming” (namely, you need to keep everything happy on your own PC or else you could loose your mobile email).   When you using the Redirector, you loose the ability to read attachments (BB does transcoding of attachments in the Internet service to make them readable by the device) and gain lower latency for message delivery (the Internet service uses polling of the OWA interface to pickup new messages and is thus slower than the Redirector which gets new messages as Outlook receives them).

Both options fall far short of the complete BES solution.  Unlike BES, they only deal with email (notes, addresses, calendar appointments, tasks all must be sync’d over cable or Bluetooth).  Further, you cannot file (move to other server folders) email messages, delete state is only one way (delete on device is reflected on the server, but on the server is not reflected on the device) and messages read on the device are not reflected on your desktop.  Oh, and when folks see your replies in Outlook’s threaded view, they appear not in the thread’s sequence and all prior text in your response looses its formatting.  All these woes disappear if I was running a BES.

While the BES + BB groupware solution is still considered a “best of breed” by many, there are functional areas that WM5 is beating it in, and WM6 will gain more ground on.  A quick listing: no Global Address Book Lookup support,  HTML email support, todo sync doesn’t/can’t pickup email created tasks that are new to Outlook 2007 (this is a problem with Win Mobile too), and you cannot flag messages.

SOFTWARE FIT N FINISH

The Blackberry client software is nothing too amazing to look at.  I often joke that it’s the “VT100 of smartphone interfaces”.  However, as with the keyboard shortcuts and commands, the interface is highly optimized for the key use cases.  Menu options are where you expect them, and they allow you to do what you expect.  Example: highlight a sender name in a received email.  In WM5 you can only add that person to your contact list.  With BB you get a full choice of options (add them as a contact, view them if they’re already a contact, call them if you have their number(s), SMS them if you have a mobile number, or view their actual email address vs. their “name”).

Optimizations for use cases, especially around messaging is a huge win.  Minimizing clicks when you send dozens of mails or SMS’ (or hundreds) a day is a big win.  Want to create a new message?  Type “c” from the home page, then start typing the contact’s name and auto-complete of their name happens (just as it does in Outlook, if there are multiple matches they show up inline for selection).  These types of smooth use cases (there are tons of additional examples) are why I suspect BB users find moving to Palm and WM devices so frustrating.  What was once a couple key types, becomes a blend of types, softkey menus, and scrolling to achieve.

In addition to the optimizations that the system’s creators put in place, a good level of customization has been added in.  The option to dial/contact lookup from the home screen or to have the keyboard launch application shortcuts is there.  The ability to view all message types (SMS, email, MMS) in one message list or to have them separate is possible.   Font face and size can be customized, as can what data is listed for messages in the inbox views.

Unlike WM5 Smartphone Edition (the OS version that the Moto Q has), the task application is a first class citizen.  It supports viewing/creating/editing tasks on the device with a full complement of Outlook options (priority, due, started state, reminder, notes).  Also, an Outlook sync’ing notepad is included.  Full category support is provided for both applications.

Other niceties include: 

• Text never lags behind your typing – For those of us that are seriously fast thumb typists, this has been a problem on underpowered WM and Palm devices.  I’ve never had my BB fall behind a bit.  To that end, I’ve never seen an “hourglass” or similar pause in using it except when starting up from a hard reboot (removal of battery).   I could not say that of the Q, where I saw the spinning rainbow disc multiple times a day.
• Phone calls “work” – I have never experienced trying to accept a call (or hang one up) and not being able to.  It is a grim joke amongst many WM users I know that they have all had the “I’m hitting the answer key and nothing’s happening damnit!” experience.
• You can work during a phone call with ease – Moving to your inbox, address book, calendar, etc. while on a call, and returning to the call screen is intuitive and easy to learn.  Similarly, you can answer a call in the middle of a task and it returns to the task after you hang up, no thinking involved.  I never got the hang of either on WM.
• Application navigation is solidly consistent – For all applications, they only “exit” if you tell them to (menu > close).  Otherwise they’re basically “minimized” and still running.  This means that they nicely all keep state.  It takes a minute to figure out, as most folks assume going back to the home screen exits the program, but once you have it down, it’s very useful and all applications act this way (even non BB apps).

Of course, it’s not all love and kisses.  As with any system, there is room for improvement.  Some things that are on my hit list (aside from noted the messaging features that WM5/6 have or are getting that BB still lacks) are:

• There is a weird “memory” of how you last sent a contact a message.  Specifically, if I send my wife an SMS, then the next time I use compose (“c”) from the home screen, and choose her contact, it assumes I want to send her an SMS.  This is/can be annoying if you swap between SMS and email frequently for certain contacts.  I’d prefer to be able to set what the default is for all contacts (say email).  You can “swap” to SMS from an email compose or to email from an SMS compose once in the message compose screen.  However, as it is now, you’re never sure what to expect, which is bad for ease of use.
• Snooze functionality is weak.  The snooze for appointment alarms only gives you open, dismiss, and snooze for 5 min as options.  This is very weak compared to WM.  Further, if the reminder text is extra long, the buttons can “scroll” off the screen entirely but there is no visual UI cue to show that there is information below.  This was confusing as the first time it happened to me I didn’t know how to dismiss the reminder.
• Meeting appointments, same as WM5, are missing key details about the attendees.  Needless to say, the option to email the attendees and say you’re going to be late is totally unsupported.
• Weak attachment reading support.  This is especially true when compared to the really rich support provided by WM.  Attachments must be of the supported types (read: MS Office) that Blackberry is aware of.  These types are then converted, either on the BES or in the Internet Service (attachment reading not supported with the redirector) to a “device friendly” format, and sent along.  The BB then uses it’s own device side readers to present the BB interpreted document format.  Needless to say, the result is a far cry from the Pocket Office readers/applications that WM has.

CONCLUSION

At the end of the day, I love my BB 8800.  When I look back at all that it comes up short in, most notably due to my company’s lack of  BES, I cannot help but think I shouldn’t love it so.  So, why then do I find it a joy to use it daily?

One word: stability.  The sucker just works, and it works the way someone who travels a lot demands it works.  Phone calls never hang, the device responds with interacted with, the battery lasts “forever”.  Combine this with the hardware’s solid feel and joyus keyboard, and you have a device that I’ll be hard pressed to ever get rid of.

WM might be able to get my attention again.  However, I suspect it’ll take a serious acknowledgement that their current products just aren’t as “rock solid” as the BB and a rethinking of the whole OEM hardware model⁶.  Until then, I’ll just have to suffer being called a heretic on the company shuttle bus.

1 There is a story/rant in there, but it’s really not worth the effort to relate.  Net was the phone just stopped working, after only 10 months of use, and Verizon pretty much told me it wasn’t a problem they could help me with.

2 It’s been asked before.  No, I do not keep the Bluetooth always on, I rarely use/have on me my headset.

3 I don’t wear it on my belt when out of the office.  I mean, come on, I’m a nerd, but not that big a nerd.

4 Interestingly, when Blackberry introduced the old BB 957 (the first big screen model) it also had a slide in leather holster.  This was in contrast to the drop in plastic holster that the original pager-sized BB’s had.  After about half a year, however, BB released plastic drop in holsters for their new bigger products.  I can only hope history repeats itself.

5 The Internet service also supports, very very well, IMAP, POP, GMail and Yahoo Mail.  I know a couple folks who use BB’s for this purpose and they’ve been very happy.  You get delete from device (reflected on the server) and mark as read on the device (reflected on server) but you don’t get delete/read on desktop reflected on device.

6 I still contest that much of the stability and completeness of solution woes are a result of no one company building the total solution (MS builds the OS and some applications, the hardware vendor builds the drivers and the actual device).