Blackberry 7290
10 03 2006
I got my Blackberry 7290 in the mail today, and I’ve only been using it for a few hours, so what I say is a bit of first impression shock only. It does virtually everything I need in a cell phone and more. The push email, amazing. I sent myself a message to my Gmail account, and it was on my BB before it was in Gmail. It is FAST!
Gtalk for the BB is one of the best apps. OZ IM which T-Mobile provides for AIM/Yahoo/MSN/ICQ is okay, but AIM only allows for 30 buddies on your “mobile” buddy list. This is one of my greatest pet peevs. It’s one of the reasons I stuck with the Sidekick for so long. The Sidekick can have all 200 buddy’s on your list, show their away message, etc. This can’t. I think I can get over it for now.
I went and read a bunch of cool hacks for it in the O’Reilly book Blackberry Hacks
So is it the best phone I’ve ever used? Well it’s quite close. I think for my IM needs that the Sidekick has an advantage when it comes to AIM, but I’ve been using Gtalk quite a bit more recently, and that isn’t even an option for the Sidekick. The push email is amazing, and I am getting pretty used to the interface.
Another small thing I am irked at is there is no period button. You have to press alt+m to get a period. Oh well.
I will certainly be using this phone as my main line from now on. It’s a great phone and the service is really nice. If you are looking for the grown up version of the Sidekick, this is it.
Posts
If you press the space key twice at the end of a sentence you’ll get a period. BB will also automatically correct things like dont (to don’t) etc.
And when you’re typing an email address, press space and BB will enter @ and then . in the address. Happy BBing.
Does it allow you to view TV shows as well? Streaming or downloads, either or both? … just askin .. chase
No it isn’t a multimedia type device at all. It has midi ringtones, lol.
That is what the MDA is for. Awesome ability to play videos, stream music, or even stream shows from my Media Center.
[...] March: After being alone on Valentines Day, I unsuccessfully tried out eHarmony. My Oscar-Gate post got linked to by many including Roger Ebert. Google thought the right thing to do was buy Writely, which is now Google Docs. I made the switch to the best phone line I’ve ever used, after being a die hard Sidekick 2 user; the Blackberry 7290 is my first of many. While I was debating Dell vs Apple, Dell was off buying Alienware, and Sprint gave me an a920 for 6 months. Finally, FlickrLicio.us was permanently blocked from Flickr. [...]