BlackBerry Sucks Ass & Rogers taught it how...

Well, it's official. BlackBerry Sucks Ass. I'm not going to sugar coat it. You can put lipstick all over this pig but it still sucks ass. Let me explain.....

I was a content (not ecstatic) iPhone 3GS owner before being bumped into the BlackBerry world. Not by choice but by bad hardware and by Rogers.com who are the dark overlord of Canadian Tel-Coms. My touch-screen developed a region where it would accept NO input. None, Nada, zilch.

So this meant that for all intents & purposes, I now had a semi-functioning iPhone. I could answer calls, play music and take photos/video but actually entering text would be next to impossible with a few rows of the keyboard being dead. Well this was unacceptable since the mobile is my only phone and I did need to actually make a few calls, respond to a few emails and enter some text from time to time.

When this occurred my warranty had expired 2 weeks previously and even though I've been a longtime customer, they basically offered me a replacement at full price which is unacceptable (see an earlier rant of mine about Rogers.com the Dark Overlord). Well, that left me with an option to go on a waiting list for an iPhone 3GS at full price ($300+) or get a BlackBerry now. Guess what I did, since I needed a phone NOW cause it's my only phone ? Yep, I got a brand spanking new BOLD 9780.

Now I'd had a BB once before when I was living in NYC and it was a great handset if only a bit bulky. It certainly worked fine and at the time, was without peer for connectivity. It gave me email, let me txt, let me surf the web (albeit poorly) and have phone conversations. I was expecting a similar experience with this new handset which was supposed to be one of their top of the line models. HA !!

This new BB lets me check my Gmail account alright, but only via POP and not IMAP. So all that folder goodness that Gmail provides me, well that's toast. I've gotta rely on a third party app for that.

The provided RIM applications look like something that was designed by some myopic, dyslexic and perversely inept first year Waterloo Comp-Sci student after a bender of vodka and RedBull.

• The Calendar has decent functionality but I keep getting duplicates and am convinced that my meetings are being rescheduled every time I sync with the BlackBerry Desktop Manager.
• The built-in clock app allows for only one alarm. Now I know that I only need one to wake up in the morning but for anything more than that one recurring alarm, I've gotta go into my calendar and effectively create a new recurring event. Couldn't they just have added that functionality to the clock itself and not make me enter alarms two different ways ?
• The browser is...well...compared to the iPhone, this is a joke. First off, unless you have the eyesight of a freakin' eagle, you can't see shit. Second, it's slower than molasses. Third, I can add bookmarks but I can't get them organized into folders, or alphabetically ? BAH !!
• The Documents To Go that comes bundled with the Blackberry might as well have FUCK YOU written all over it for all the good it does ya. I mean you wanna open a new doc ? Buy the full version cause the once that comes with the handset it read only (unless you wanna play around with sending yourself blank docs as templates). Do me a favor RIM, if you're gonna include something, make it something that actually works.
• Desktop Manager. This is the crowning turd on top of the whole simmering stew crap that is RIM software. I am on a MacBook Pro. The Desktop Manager specifically for the Mac is next to useless. In fact I am convinced that it is there to try my patience and hog my HD space...Period. This thing took (no exaggeration) 45 minutes to install a 245KB file and reboot the handset. All the while telling me not to unplug the handset. What the hell was it doing ? I mean I'm an intelligent man and have been using computers since the days that Pentium 75MHz was king and this is crazy stoopid. WTF were they thinking ?

Ahhhhh....I could go on about this piece of shit but I've spewed enough bile for now.

Notice I said nothing about the hardware. Now that is the only place where this device shines. The screen's too small but considering the perfect size of the handset overall, it's livable. Other than that, I love the actual handset. It feels good in my hand, is compact but usable, has a real keyboard (though my sausage fingers do occasionally hit the wrong letters).

I wonder if we could get Apple to write the software for RIM's hardware. Now that would be a step in the right direction.