[242stickman]

hey all

this is my first time posting so please go easy lol

i have been watching the 9800 since it was first heard of and i have a few concerns with the power of this phone.

1: its tiny processor, this thing is going to be running flash it is extreamly cpu intensive... looking at the htc desire with its 1Ghz and it only just runs flash smoothly enough to watch.. at least put a A8 or something in there RIM!!

2. New graphics intensive OS, i have the original storm fully updated to the last leak and it still never runs 100% smooth. how will this thing run smooth with all these new features ??

3. also a small one, the screen size needs to go up or the resolution does it just cant compete now with android....

i love the idea of a vertical sliding blackberry and the design of this one, but im having a hard time saying yes to this blackberry when its so so far behind everyone ... all i want is a A8 processor at least at 550-800mhz...

rim there is still time to fix this phone!!!!!!

[NinjaB]

might not be A8, but it will be AT LEAST 624MHz..

but as many others have pointed out, that one number is not everything...

[242stickman]

the processor used is still very very under powered by todays standards.. running graphics or flash will be choppy ... wont be much of a step up from the old 528mhz junk

[Salomondrin]

might not be A8, but it will be AT LEAST 624MHz..

but as many others have pointed out, that one number is not everything...

It has indeed a 624MHZ processor.

[WillieLee]

So you're complaining about the lack of power in an unreleased device because you love spec numbers?

[242stickman]

No, i dont love spec numbers... im being realistic of the performance on this cpu

its like the new intel i7 it can afford to have alower clock speed due to it getting more done each clock cycle ... this has neither going for it so really its just a slow under powered cpu for flash and graphic's

and before people say blackberry are bizz phones not multimeda phones. blackberry are trying to get into the general consumer market.. the way they are going they have no chance..

[Masahiro]

and before people say blackberry are bizz phones not multimeda phones. blackberry are trying to get into the general consumer market.. the way they are going they have no chance..

RIM already entered the consumer market back when they released the 8100 Pearl. They've done very well, and continue to do well quarter after quarter.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[jpr196]

I'm not so worried about the screen res, though it would be nice if RIM at least tried to keep pace with the Androids and iphone in this respect.

However, I am concerned about the processor and this phones ability to run smoothly as well. The applications and media we run on our phones seems to get more intensive with each passing month.

Being on ATT, this phone will be the deciding factor of whether I stay with Blackberry or not. My 9000 is falling apart and I'd like to upgrade before the year is out. If the browser and OS aren't running smooth in the initial reviews/reports, then I'll be passing for one of the androids coming out later this year.

[Salomondrin]

I'm not so worried about the screen res, though it would be nice if RIM at least tried to keep pace with the Androids and iphone in this respect.

However, I am concerned about the processor and this phones ability to run smoothly as well. The applications and media we run on our phones seems to get more intensive with each passing month.

Being on ATT, this phone will be the deciding factor of whether I stay with Blackberry or not. My 9000 is falling apart and I'd like to upgrade before the year is out. If the browser and OS aren't running smooth in the initial reviews/reports, then I'll be passing for one of the androids coming out later this year.

Understand your concerns, but it doesn't really matter if the phone has a 624MHZ processor, the phone moves. Its pretty fast.

[jpr196]

Understand your concerns, but it doesn't really matter if the phone has a 624MHZ processor, the phone moves. Its pretty fast.

Well, that's all I want to see. I don't care what kind of processor it has if everything is running smoothly.

[Plazmic Flame]

Also, the conclusion that any frustrated Berry user has to come to eventually is that RIM is not in the market to compete with any of these guys like Apple or Android. It will make things easier on you, trust me, been there.

[kneeman]

I'm not so worried about the screen res, though it would be nice if RIM at least tried to keep pace with the Androids and iphone in this respect.

However, I am concerned about the processor and this phones ability to run smoothly as well. The applications and media we run on our phones seems to get more intensive with each passing month.

Being on ATT, this phone will be the deciding factor of whether I stay with Blackberry or not. My 9000 is falling apart and I'd like to upgrade before the year is out. If the browser and OS aren't running smooth in the initial reviews/reports, then I'll be passing for one of the androids coming out later this year.

Agreed with all of that. Those 4.3" screens and 2ghz processors coming in the end of the year are really making me think. Just looked at my phone to see what apps I use that are BB only and I really don't see anything major. Of course, it is Google too, what do they do that isn't good?

[Skeevecr]

Agreed with all of that. Those 4.3" screens and 2ghz processors coming in the end of the year are really making me think. Just looked at my phone to see what apps I use that are BB only and I really don't see anything major. Of course, it is Google too, what do they do that isn't good?

Those screens and 2ghz processors make me think too, they make me think that battery life is clearly not overly important for some people.

Gizmodo had a post up earlier about apps, four of the top five on bb, iphone and android were google maps, facebook, weather and pandora so it does seem that people don't suddenly find major new things to use up the extra power of some smartphones.

[Pete6]

RIM has, in my evaluation, always produced highly reliable phones that have been very well designed but are always slightly conservative.

I have no problem with this since I prefer leading edge over bleeding edge in my day to day technology that I actually rely upon.

The processor speed is not the whole story. There is a trade-off between performance and battery life, for instance.

Talk of a 2Ghz processor is fine but what powers this beast? Does it have a huge battery making a bulky phone? Does it have very poor battery life in an effort to keep size and weight down? Does the CPU throttle when it is not beinbg used?

More pixels on the screen all need managing and even with a GPU (which needs power) more CPU ticks are needed to run a higher resolution screen. We all know how desktop gaming machines require bigger power supplies and ventilation when high performance GPUs are installed. Well, physics does not give up and go home when all this worms its way into a cell phone.

High load graphics applications like Flash will also load the system and munch the battery.

The 9800 is a compromise and it is not the right-out-there, state of the art beast. It is in fact a very good addition to the BlackBerry line. My guess is that it will work well and the hardware will be solid and reliable.

It will not blow away the iPhone 4, nor will it out perform various Android platforms.

What it will do is to be a platform for OS 6 and all that this brings.

I am looking forward to OS 6 and to the new WebKit browser.

[lorax1284]

I'm a bold 9000 user, and don't have need for Flash. At all. But I do want to be able to use the device over WiFi with the Webkit browser and get performance as good or better than an iPod touch.

I do lament that the screen isn't in the 800 x 480 ballpark.

I believe the Webkit based OS will be fast and efficient: that's one of the benefits of Webkit. As it is, browsing the 'net on my 9000 is absolutely pointless, as I have an iPod touch and it performs so much better that there is no point in comparing the BB9000 experience to the iPod Touch... but I would prefer if my main multitasking phone / PDA worked well enough (and had a pretty enough screen and played games well enough) that I could just leave my iPod touch next to my comfy chair in my living room as a "air mouse" for my HTPC... but the specs for the 9800 don't bear that out.

I will reserve judgment, but at this moment, instead of excited anticipation, I'm dreading that the 9800 will underwhelm me to the point that an iPhone 4 becomes the next device in my arsenal (and a Dell Streak 5" for more serious web browsing needs)

[pilsbury]

RIM has, in my evaluation, always produced highly reliable phones that have been very well designed but are always slightly conservative.

I have no problem with this since I prefer leading edge over bleeding edge in my day to day technology that I actually rely upon.

The processor speed is not the whole story. There is a trade-off between performance and battery life, for instance.

Talk of a 2Ghz processor is fine but what powers this beast? Does it have a huge battery making a bulky phone? Does it have very poor battery life in an effort to keep size and weight down? Does the CPU throttle when it is not beinbg used?

More pixels on the screen all need managing and even with a GPU (which needs power) more CPU ticks are needed to run a higher resolution screen. We all know how desktop gaming machines require bigger power supplies and ventilation when high performance GPUs are installed. Well, physics does not give up and go home when all this worms its way into a cell phone.

High load graphics applications like Flash will also load the system and munch the battery.

The 9800 is a compromise and it is not the right-out-there, state of the art beast. It is in fact a very good addition to the BlackBerry line. My guess is that it will work well and the hardware will be solid and reliable.

It will not blow away the iPhone 4, nor will it out perform various Android platforms.

What it will do is to be a platform for OS 6 and all that this brings.

I am looking forward to OS 6 and to the new WebKit browser.

Probably the best post Ive read here on CB-VERY well done.

[Radius]

Let me add one more thing about CPU specs. To most people all they see is numbers. Processor A has 500Mhz while processor B has 1Ghz.

Pop quiz, which one is faster?

Quite possible the 500Mhz CPU. Here's the thing, speed is not necessarily tied to performance and power. Let's throw some numbers out there.

Some processors will run at say 24Mhz and that's the crystal they use. However they actually run 4X as fast due to a PLL (phase lock loop) inside the CPU that acts to increase the clock speed.

Second, what architecture is it using? I can guarentee a 100Mhz CISC processor will not do anywhere near as well as a 75Mhz RISC processor. Less speed, much higher performance.

Beyond that comes extra bits on the CPU dye itself. Is there any kind of hardware acceleration they're using to speed things up? If so then the hardware wins over sheer brute force processing.

So the numbers a lot of you see don't really mean squat. Yes it's got a faster crystal but that is pretty much meaningless.

Also it would be naive to think RIM would release a product that is Flash capable only to have it not able to run Flash because it is drastically underpowered. I just don't see that happening.

[GJW]

Understand your concerns, but it doesn't really matter if the phone has a 624MHZ processor, the phone moves. Its pretty fast.

Sal - can you comment on how the phone compares to the 9700 in terms of the overall user experience for email, browsing, phone, battery life (ignoring for this question the obvious difference in user experience given a touch screen vs non-touch)?

Also, how does the slide's keyboard compare to the 9700 in both size and feel?

Thanks in advance...

[JasW]

RIM has, in my evaluation, always produced highly reliable phones that have been very well designed but are always slightly conservative.

I have no problem with this since I prefer leading edge over bleeding edge in my day to day technology that I actually rely upon.

The processor speed is not the whole story. There is a trade-off between performance and battery life, for instance.

Talk of a 2Ghz processor is fine but what powers this beast? Does it have a huge battery making a bulky phone? Does it have very poor battery life in an effort to keep size and weight down? Does the CPU throttle when it is not beinbg used?

More pixels on the screen all need managing and even with a GPU (which needs power) more CPU ticks are needed to run a higher resolution screen. We all know how desktop gaming machines require bigger power supplies and ventilation when high performance GPUs are installed. Well, physics does not give up and go home when all this worms its way into a cell phone.

High load graphics applications like Flash will also load the system and munch the battery.

The 9800 is a compromise and it is not the right-out-there, state of the art beast. It is in fact a very good addition to the BlackBerry line. My guess is that it will work well and the hardware will be solid and reliable.

It will not blow away the iPhone 4, nor will it out perform various Android platforms.

What it will do is to be a platform for OS 6 and all that this brings.

I am looking forward to OS 6 and to the new WebKit browser.

Very, very, very well said, sir. Kudos to you for a fine and incisive post. You have struck the proverbial nail squarely on the head, and with great force.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[urgod]

It has indeed a 624MHZ processor.

Which is awful...

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[sdmcwilliams]

My biggest problem with this is why can't RIM give us the best of at least something? The new devices are solid and will work but they are mid-level performers at best. The new flagship device should have a fast processor, 16-32 GB of memory, great battery life, etc.

If I am going to spend $200-$300 on a new phone every 2 years I want the best phone that I can buy. When I bought the Bold I spent good money for it because it was the best one that RIM made at the time. If I buy the 9800 I don't want to be in the same boat that I am in now after 12-18 months. I love my Bold and how reliable it is. I am just tired of the low app memory, the limited app selection, crappy apps from RIM (AppWorld, FB app, etc). I find it a telling sign that RIM's own AppWorld app leaks memory worse than any app I have installed.

I really don't want to have to go to the iPhone but after using my new iMac at home I am starting to see why people are such fans of Apple. They are simple, fast and reliable. I guess I will just have to learn to type on a touch screen.

[Vajraja]

My biggest problem with this is why can't RIM give us the best of at least something? The new devices are solid and will work but they are mid-level performers at best. The new flagship device should have a fast processor, 16-32 GB of memory, great battery life, etc.

If I am going to spend $200-$300 on a new phone every 2 years I want the best phone that I can buy. When I bought the Bold I spent good money for it because it was the best one that RIM made at the time. If I buy the 9800 I don't want to be in the same boat that I am in now after 12-18 months. I love my Bold and how reliable it is. I am just tired of the low app memory, the limited app selection, crappy apps from RIM (AppWorld, FB app, etc). I find it a telling sign that RIM's own AppWorld app leaks memory worse than any app I have installed.

I really don't want to have to go to the iPhone but after using my new iMac at home I am starting to see why people are such fans of Apple. They are simple, fast and reliable. I guess I will just have to learn to type on a touch screen.

I am in the exact same situation as you. Every 2 years I am willing to drop $300-$500 for the latest and greatest, I am not an incremental updater. When I bought the Bold 9000, it was really cutting edge (IMO - we can argue over specs) the market has moved a lot since 2008. And I don't feel the jumps taken in the 9800 are worth it. I'm still not upgrading until Fall, and will take a serious look at the 9800, but as a tech junkie who cares about stuff a lot of people don't care about. The Droid Extreme looks quite intriguing.

[gregorylkelly]

I love the BB OS and want to stick with it, but it would be nice to have a little bit better hardware. I don't ever want to worry about running out of app space and I don't want developers having to create half assed apps so they don't take up too much memory. There are iPhone apps that would barely fit on my Storm2 (thats ******* pathetic). I really don't care about the processor speed or GPU because of the battery issues, but what I want is a fix to this 256 and 512 MB memory bull****. I should have 8/16/32 gbs of memory that can be used for apps, music, video, documents, and porn if I chose. Not 256mbs for apps and an optional 16gb microSD for all my other crap.

[Moonbase0ne]

I love the BB OS and want to stick with it, but it would be nice to have a little bit better hardware. I don't ever want to worry about running out of app space and I don't want developers having to create half assed apps so they don't take up too much memory. There are iPhone apps that would barely fit on my Storm2 (thats ******* pathetic). I really don't care about the processor speed or GPU because of the battery issues, but what I want is a fix to this 256 and 512 MB memory bull****. I should have 8/16/32 gbs of memory that can be used for apps, music, video, documents, and porn if I chose. Not 256mbs for apps and an optional 16gb microSD for all my other crap.

I never actually thought about it like that. The fact that the BB has such a limited amount of memory to be used for Apps means that developers have to always be more careful about memory which means the Apps won't be as good as they probably should be, in theory.

I just don't get why they keep upping the memory for media, etc... but they keep App memory so small, yet they are obviously trying to tap into the App market, especially with these new Super(really RiM???) Apps. How "Super" can a developer make them when he has to worry about memory issues.

I also don't understand why adding Apps to the Memory Card can't just be an option. Since security is such a big issue(Even though most who bring it up really don't need it as much as they think they do), why not give users/companies the option as to rather or not Apps can be stores on the Micro SD or not. Consumers would surely appreciate that and Business IT could simply turn the option off.

[Radius]

I never actually thought about it like that. The fact that the BB has such a limited amount of memory to be used for Apps means that developers have to always be more careful about memory which means the Apps won't be as good as they probably should be, in theory.

I just don't get why they keep upping the memory for media, etc... but they keep App memory so small, yet they are obviously trying to tap into the App market, especially with these new Super(really RiM???) Apps. How "Super" can a developer make them when he has to worry about memory issues.

I also don't understand why adding Apps to the Memory Card can't just be an option. Since security is such a big issue(Even though most who bring it up really don't need it as much as they think they do), why not give users/companies the option as to rather or not Apps can be stores on the Micro SD or not. Consumers would surely appreciate that and Business IT could simply turn the option off.

You have all completely missed the point. Completely. Read my post above to begin with.

Now read the bolded part above. This is not the case. More limited resources create applications that are fundamentally more optimized. Case in point, where I work we use CISC 186 based processors and we outperform te competition who use 386 based processors in almost every way. Why? Our resources are limited so we fine tune everything.

The real problem is lazy developers. They want unlimited resources so they don't have to think and create bloat-ware that consumes huge amounts of memory to do the simplest of tasks. I am very much against this. Even on my PC where I have 8GB of RAM and more hard drive space than anyone truly needs, I created a data logger that is less than 1MB in size and uses almost no RAM. The end result? Something that competes with other applications that are well over 10MB in size just for the executable.

And I've gone head to head in testing with other companies and it turns out I can do a lot more than they can. Working on the theory that resources are limited regardless of what you have forces you to create better applications. However, far too many people take resources for granted and create garbage.

And as for the apps on the SD card, it's possible but they would need a lot more RAM. Enough to contain the entirety of all running applications as they cannot execute them from SD directly. RAM, while still being cheap, costs a pretty penny in the end. As for why they don't just add more on-board memory, only they know for sure. It is probably a limitation with the CPU they use and addressing, I have no idea though.