[frontier1958]

I got my first BB phone about a year ago (the 9900) in the height of apple- and droid-mania, and I've never looked back. I'm excited about the BB10 OS, the Z10 and the Q10. At the moment, however, I want to get a Playbook and am having a hard time getting to the bottom of a few things. Any help is appreciated. First, is a cellular PB available in the US? All I see on Amazon are models that appear to be WiFi-only. Second, should I be waiting for a BB10 version of PB, or is that not coming? Last, is there anything I should know that might be around the corner before taking the plunge?

[Thunderbuck]

So far as I'm aware, the LTE PlayBook was only offered in Canada, with an HSPA+ version available in the UK.

Current PlayBooks will all be upgradable to BB10, but the timeline on that seems vague at this point. There have been hints of a new PB, but no word from BlackBerry themselves.

[frontier1958]

Okay, thanks. What about a wireless card through a provider like AT&T, or will the PB internals not support that?

[kylecowan]

If you have a Blackberry, just use Bridge and you have a 4G connection without a card.

[dphjeff]

Like kylecowan said you can bridge your PlayBook with your BlackBerry 9900 and use you phone plan to connect to the Web. With the Bridge you don't have to pay extra for a mobile hot spot or service for your PlayBook. I use the BlackBerry Bridge every day and it is great.

[taz323]

Best combo, BB and PB

[UKCatFan3]

For the price, buy the wifi version now. You wont regret it. If new version comes out, pass on pb1 to kids/friend/spouse and buy new. Bridge is the greatest, i wont buy z10 until it has it.

[reschp]

Okay, thanks. What about a wireless card through a provider like AT&T, or will the PB internals not support that?

If you are using AT&T then get your bridge app from rroyy.com. Don't forget to leave a little something there, he will save you a lot.

[CBCListener]

While the advice to just get a WiFi PB is a sound one, your profile doesn't specify which carrier your 9900 is attached to. If it's T-Mobile, be aware that they have made the bridge tethering option an opportunity to upsell you into buying a $12/month "WiFi Hotspot" service. Please note that Bridge tethering is not using, nor sharing, a WiFi access point.

I've argued with them that this is unfair to PlayBook, since the network stack is actually in the phone. It's actually enough of an issue for me, since I don't usually use tethering Bridge, *except* when I'm on-call and have a production support issue, that when it's time to upgrade to Z10 it may well be with AT&T. However, "regular" Bridge works (for messages, calendar, etc.) without interference from the carrier.

[Bubblefat]

PB is a great device, especially when paired with a BB phone. Well worth the investment.

[frontier1958]

I appreciate all the input. The BB site says the cellular version is "coming soon," but that's subjective. My 9900 is with a small GSM provider, but will roam on AT&T. I'm going to pull the plug and get a WiFi PB tonight, then upgrade if and when the cell version comes out. Thanks again for all the help.

[BigAl_BB9900]

I appreciate all the input. The BB site says the cellular version is "coming soon," but that's subjective. My 9900 is with a small GSM provider, but will roam on AT&T. I'm going to pull the plug and get a WiFi PB tonight, then upgrade if and when the cell version comes out. Thanks again for all the help.

Good Luck! If you have any teething problems, a polite question and request for help on here, will normally get you lots of positive responses

[Bubblefat]

Congratulations on your new PB!

[frontier1958]

Well, I got the WiFi version and I'm impressed. i naturally have several questions, but I've made it a personal challenge to try to figure out most of them myself. There is one, however, that I'm running into a wall on. I have only one email account. I set it up in the configuration process and it appears to be in there okay. However, not all the emails I am getting are showing up in there, whereas if I go into the messages icon within BB Bridge, they're all in there. Stated another way, what's the difference between messages within BB Bridge and regular email messages? Thanks.

[gtiffany]

Messages in BB Bridge are messages appearing on your BB phone. Why they don't all appear in your PlayBook email account, I don't know, since I haven't bothered to set that up. (Both my work and personal emails come to my BB, so no need to set it up on PlayBook since I keep it bridged all the time. My guess would be that they only show up in your PlayBook email account when it can connect to the server wirelessly.

[dphjeff]

Your e-mails will not show up if you aren't on WiFi or Bridge (not saying that to be stupid). It takes a little bit to refresh or you can pull down on the e-mails to refresh them. Most of the time the e-mails show up on the PlayBook before it does on the phone. My PlayBook will only show the last 5 days of e-mail.

[frontier1958]

Okay, I've spent the last several days experimenting and reading the online manual for the PB, and I'm still coming up short on understanding several things re email. First of all, I see where the Bridge simply mirrors what's on my phone. I get that and it works fine (although there are two questions, below). The main question is, I have configfured the icon for messages on the PB (the stand-alone one outside of Bridge) to receive my emails. I woke up this morning and saw one email in there. On my desktop, same exact account, were about 100. Granted, most were spam, but they didn;t show up anywhere on my PB email. (Once again, they are in Bridge - that's not the issue.) Does anyone know why they're not getting to my regular PB email, which has the same configuration as my desktop?

Okay, on the Bridge, two questions, if I'm not overstaying my welcome here.... Bridge gets everything from my phone and I really love it. However, on email messages in Bridge, I have to delete them one at a time. Does anyone know a way to highlight a bunch of them for deletion? I have been solving this by deleting them from my phone, which does allow large-scale deletions, but I was wondering if the PB will allow me to delete en masse as well.

Second question is kind of the opposite. Re text messages on Bridge on the PB, if you hit the red X to delete a text, ALL the texts are highlighted for deletion. So, as with the emails, I manage my text deletions from my phone. Is there a way to highlight one or more texts for deletion within Bridge on the PB, without having to delete all of them? Many thanks in advance....