I could not wait any longer. As a longtime customer (more than ten years) of Blackberry devices I feel I gave them ample time to give me a reason to buy a new device from them as my now ancient BB Storm 2 was dying a slow death day after day. After waiting for over a year for Blackberry to come up with something I might want to buy, I finally gave up and purchased a Motorola RAZR Droid.
Here’s what I will miss from Blackberry. Very little. Email security? Maybe a bit, but that’s more based on Blackberry’s reputation than anything that’s ever happened to me. Syncing with MS Outlook? Yes I will miss the ‘ease’ of hooking up a firewire and syncing all of my desktop MS Outlook data (contacts, calendar etc.) with my mobile device. It won’t be as easy but I have a feeling the adjustment will not be all that troublesome. Will I miss BBM? Not really. Since I have unlimited texting it’s not a big issue and I only had a few ‘BBM’ friends. Most of my other BBM friends have migrated off the Blackberry platform as well. The Motorola RAZR Droid is an impressive piece of technology on the Android platform.
Here’s what I will not miss: the limited amount of apps available on the Blackberry platform. I also won’t miss the seemingly incessant need for my Blackberry phone to be rebooted. Frequently it rebooted itself for no reason at all. Rebooting would take more than five minutes. In support of the Blackberry Storm 2 at least I could replace the battery, but I won’t miss it really since the charge barely lasted 8 hours and I needed to carry multiple batteries at all times. I also won’t miss the slow video transmission or the painfully slow internet browser.
Having a new mobile device is always fun during the honeymoon period. Whether the new phone rapture will last is something to be evaluated over the long haul. I think there are many other Blackberry owners that are right on the edge of giving up on the platform as well. After all, why would you want to ‘commit’ to a two-year contract for a phone on a platform that might not last one year?
Sorry RIM – you took too long to give me a reason to continue being a loyal customer. And that’s too bad – it was good while it lasted. Bye-bye Blackberry.
The Way I See It - Mark Kolier 
Welcome to the modern world 🙂 I have been using android (a droid 2) for almost 2 years and I still think it is a great phone. My wife got the Droid Razr in December and loves it. As my renewal is coming up I think the Razr Maxx will be my next phone.
An accessory you might like, particularly for using the phone’s (awesome) GPS is the Roadster Smartphone Sticky Pad Dash Mount. We both have them and really like them.
You can get them on amazon or buy.com. Check both as amazon often plays games with the shipping costs.
http://www.buy.com/prod/roadster-smartphone-sticky-pad-dash-mount/219617787.html (free shipping on this site today)
Enjoy the phone, it’s a big step up from BB.
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Interesting that we both ended up in the same place. Thanks for the tip on the Roadmaster Sticky Pad Dash Mount
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If you really drink the Koolaid and move to cloud based contacts & calendar, syncing becomes something that just magically happens. When I add a contact on my computer, I rarely even double check to make sure that it made it to my phone, its just there. Likewise when I add a contact to my phone, its magically available on my computer. No plugging anything in, no loading software, it just works.
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And that’s exactly the direction in which I’m headed – first out of necessity and then it will become second nature. I like magic too! Thanks for reading Dwight and the comment.
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When you buy your next android, when you log in, in short order everything will be just like your old one, all the contacts, calendar, and apps. Frequently apps choose to have configuration re-entered, but, that’s the decision of the app developer, not the OS. The OS gives the developer every access to sync everything, and have it just work on first use.
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When you buy your next android, when you log in, in short order everything will be just like your old one, all the contacts, calendar, and apps. Frequently apps choose to have configuration re-entered, but, that’s the decision of the app developer, not the OS. The OS gives the developer every access to sync everything, and have it just work on first use.
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