BB Tour First Impressions

READER NOTE: My reviews of BlackBerries are geared for people like me who have never used one before or WinMo users thinking of jumping ship. If you are an experienced BB user, this will bore you.

Well a day has passed using my new BlackBerry Tour and so far I haven’t missed using Windows Mobile.
What I have been doing is wearing a holster! I havent done that for quite a while. BB supplies a nice leather one with the phone and it does magical things! When you place the phone in the holster it shuts down the device automatically and when you remove it from the case, it turns the BB on. I know this is old news for BB users but for guys like me who have had to lock the keyboard or hit a button before and after pocketing/holstering, this is awesome.

Even better is that you can set notifications for calls and texts based on whether its in the holster or not. Also when you get an email or text and the phone is in the holster, when you remove it, the BB automatically goes to the message. No button pressing or navigation to get to the new text or email.

I remember when I got the first Motorola Q that came out. Someone back then described it as a “Graham Cracker with a keyboard”. The Tour size wise is wider than most phones I have used but is very good looking and very nice to handle.

The browser on the Tour is the best I have ever used on a phone. Quick, easy to navigate.

GPS is native and not locked down. Sat locks in less than 10 secs using either Google Maps or BB Maps.

I wont comment on battery life yet. Today was a light usage day for me and I have found that true battery life takes a week or so to determine on a new battery. I am currently at 50% at 8:45pm. Unplugged this morning at 7:30am.

Well I think if I have time and if you want, I will make a video for you showing navigation through the phone. If no one asks I wont bother.

Picked up a Crackberry!!

Well after waterlogging two winmo devices last week I was relegated to a BB Pearl I bought used last year. Since I had the chance to upgrade to a new phone, I started doing some looking on the vzw website. The only thing on there that showed any interest to me was the HTC Ozone. The only reason I passed that up was the Smartphone OS and the D-Pad. Personally I prefer an optical mouse or trackball if I am using a device without a touchscreen. SO I started looking at the Blackberry line.

The Tour has been a device BB fans have been waiting for for quite a while and I just learned about it last week. My hosted exchange server 4smartphone.net has improved their Blackberry Enterprise services since I used them last year, which gave me another good reason to look at switching.

So over the next week I will be posting my impressions of this device. So far I have been impressed.

Something is coming...

New gadget arriving Tuesday!! If you follow my tweets you can probably guess.