Recently the folks who manage my office (I am not a management type) discovered that we could consolidate our mobile phone plans and save enough money to get “free” blackberrys (is that the correct plural in this context?) all around (or at least around all the partners).
So, today, I became the semi-proud possessor of a Blackberry Storm, and I’ve spent a good part of my free time today trying to figure it out, rather than doing something useful like in depth analysis of stuff I know nothing about. I must say, I’m not impressed with the Blackberry. My point of comparison is my wife’s Iphone, which seems superior in every way. The Iphone is far more user friendly and intuitive, which one would expect from Apple. But the Iphone is far and away a better performer when it comes to add on applications.
The Blackberry I got comes with one GB of on board memory, and it came with an 8 GB micro SD card, meaning that, at least in theory, it has more memory that my wife’s Iphone. I downloaded two “apps” to add to those that came pre-installed, and they ran fine. I then tried to download another, and got a dialog box informing me that I had only 4 mb of “application memory” left, and did I really want to waste some of it with this new application. After some searching around on the blackberry I found that I had almost an entire GB of free on-board memory, and all 8 GB of SD memory unused. After a little google searching I discovered that this memory could be used to store pictures, videos, or music, but not applications. Contrast that with the Iphone, which you can stuff to bursting with apps, if that is your wont. I gathered from the forums in which this is discussed (I get the impression that the Blackberry company maintains a discreet silence on the issue) that there is a 128 mb limit on the “application memory” almost all of which is filled out of the box. You can’t run an app off of most of the on board memory or off of an expansion card. I was doing the latter on a Palm Pilot knock off over 6 years ago, so it’s eminently doable.
I can free up space to accommodate other apps, but at this point I don’t know which of the prepackaged ones I need, and I haven’t found a way to store them somewhere in case I want to restore them.
It goes without saying that the software that came with the Blackberry assumes an all Microsoft world.
I shouldn’t complain, of course. I didn’t pay for it, and it does allow me to stay chained to my office email everywhere I go. What more can you ask?
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