[keithykeith]

I updated my 8830 to a Tour because I wanted a camera and the ability to roam internationally. Biggest. Mistake. Ever. Between the ineptness of Sprint (thanks Advanced Technical Support for all the data loss) and RIMs decision to release yet another substandard, behind the cutting edge device, I am left with a half-functional device, phone calls in to damn near every supervisor and their mother. I have a whole page of cell numbers for managers and directors now, I should list them on ebay. There is something satisfying about wasting three hours of someone"s time who gets paid very well with a mundane problem that should have been resolved 3 levels down had the people in those positions had a clue.

Issues:

1. The trackball sucks. I guess RIM has finally acknowledged this issue. I had this problem on the original unit and replacements one and two. My current unit is working fine... for now.

2. The video sucks. You take video and you can't play it back, it freezes. Send the video to another phone and it plays fine, as do videos sent to your Tour taken elsewhere. Clearly a software issue, the idiots at Sprint made me do a device swap which caused me to loose a weeks worth of e-mail when they did not bother to correctly configure it on the new, new, new, new phone.

3. The browser still sucks. Best browsing experience ever my fat behind. This is a universal issue across all blackberries. I still cannot surf youtube, register for a yahoo account or perform basic tasks. This is 2009, not 1999. Its time to get with the program, RIM. When I'd love to install Opera Mini or Skyfire, but none of those work with the tour, of course.

4. Three-way calling is broke. When you try to add a participant, it disconnects the first caller. Yay for functionality!

5. Having the address book on two lines sucks. Whoever thought this was a good idea should be taken out behind the shed and shot.

6. The inability to save applications to the media card is dumb. If this was the case, the damned phone should come with 1 gb of mem instead of 256 mb.

7. The tour takes far too long to restart, almost 10 minutes. It also freezes and is subject to periods of non-responsiveness.

8. The battery life is poor. The 8830 was not that great, this thing is even worse.

Due to the ineptness of Sprint, I've lost lots of data, missed weeks worth of emails and just generally been in phone ****. I hate Sprint and now I hate RIM too. I've waited too long for the long-promised upgrade to the 8830 and for it to be such a hunk of junk is ridiculous. When I pay $400 for a phone, I have a right to expect it to work out of the box the first time.

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[jay0911]

Opera mini does work for the tour

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[StraightWisdom]

Maybe it's time you for a different model/type of phone...

[kurpaige]

Why in the world do you own a Blackberry? You obviously don't like the OS.

[keithykeith]

Maybe it's time you for a different model/type of phone...

Oh, I'd love to go back to the 8830. But they don't sell it anymore and I am not going to buy another one. I should have kept it but this phone seemed to work fine for the first couple of days. Then all the issues started. I need a world phone and sadly this thing is the only option on Sprint.

Why in the world do you own a Blackberry? You obviously don't like the OS.

Its not the OS that I have issues with. Its this phone. Other than the dumb update of forcing the address book onto two lines, the OS is fine. It took 3 min for my 8830 to reboot, this thing takes like 10 or more. This one stops responding often, the 8830 did not (except Sprint Navigation used to love to crash my 8830, but that's a Sprint sucky software issue, not a RIM issue). Do I really like the OS? No. I like Palm far better. But Palm doesn't have a world phone that Sprint sells.

[QUOTE=jay0911;3351808]Opera mini does work for the tour

How? Its not on the list on the Opera site and when I try to download it, I go in a loop between the landing page and the 3 ways you can get it page, I never get to an actual download page.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Cyrilmak]

Get a Storm on Verizon. With the updated OS it's an excellent phone. The browser is much more usable on it since it's a nice large display. It's still not up to snuff when it comes to say IE Mobile or Safari, but it's still a world better due to the screen size. I love Bolt, every bit as good as Safari imo.

The trackball issues is a known problem with the Tour, regardless of network. Not installing applications to the memory card is a hitch that every smartphone has... That's why there is ROM and RAM. The Tour has 256MB of ROM for apps and 256MB of Ram then a memory card slot for media. Trust me that's a very good amount of ROM space. With the Storm we only have 128MB of ROM/APP space while we have 192MB of RAM.

If memory serves only the Storm and Bold have 1GB of onboard memory for media plus the memory card slot.

Your Tour should not take 10 minutes to reboot, there is an obivious issue with hardware, or the current OS install.

Battery life, video issues, etc will be ironed out by OS upgrades just like it was on the Storm and every other BB. The Tour I played around a lot with however did not have bad battery life or video issues.. So I suspect you probably are not closing out applications properly, or are leaving Bluetooth or somthing on when not in use? (just a guess..). Also it is a world phone just like your old 8800 series and Storm so make sure to put the network on 1XEV and not global, that will help your battery out a lot.

[keithykeith]

Well, this is the 4th Tour I have had (original plus 3 replacements) and all of them have taken 10+ min to reboot. There is another thread I was reading that seems to suggest this is based upon the size of the mem card installed.

I just renewed my contract with Sprint. Can't go to Verizon right now.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[cluubias]

I do agree they needs do something with the browser. And more memory would have helped, I love my tour and blackberries in general I don't wanna see them go down the same path as palm with their smartphones before the pre. They were all the same.

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[mradlauer#CB]

All of the problems you describe are OS related...as much as you might think they arent...

My Sprint Tour is damn near perfect...as have all of my other Blackberries of the the last 3 years.

All the apps that I download from the Blackberry App world get archived on my media card...And can be re-installed or "restored" from there instead of re-downloading.

The browser does suck and yes RIM has acknowledged it and is working on a better solution. Opera Mini works great on my Tour...as do most of my apps...

It seems there is clearly some kind of issue with the batch of devices your store got or whatever because all of the issues that you've complained about are not an issue to me. Although the trackball is a bit sensitive compared to my curve, but meh!

I have 10+ apps and probably 6-8 themes on my phone and still have well over 100mb of "application" memory. My biggest app is E-Office at 3mb.

I would say that I'm a power user considering that I conduct most of my daily business and personal work on it...and I get a full days use out of a charge...Again no clear explaination for you issue.

If your losing weeks worth of emails on your phone and dont have a back-up like an office or web client your asking for trouble.

I've also never experienced the video issues you've seen...I take and send alot of vid/pics and have seen no issues.

I'm not trying to bust your balls here...Just trying to give you a comparison of my device to yours. Seems to be hit and miss for some people. Sprint has been pretty good to me over the last almost 10 years. When I do have issues they usually get resolved quickly.

Good luck!

[AlwaysLostSometimes]

I updated my 8830 to a Tour because I wanted a camera and the ability to roam internationally. Biggest. Mistake. Ever. Between the ineptness of Sprint (thanks Advanced Technical Support for all the data loss) and RIMs decision to release yet another substandard, behind the cutting edge device, I am left with a half-functional device, phone calls in to damn near every supervisor and their mother. I have a whole page of cell numbers for managers and directors now, I should list them on ebay. There is something satisfying about wasting three hours of someone"s time who gets paid very well with a mundane problem that should have been resolved 3 levels down had the people in those positions had a clue.

Issues:

1. The trackball sucks. I guess RIM has finally acknowledged this issue. I had this problem on the original unit and replacements one and two. My current unit is working fine... for now.

Never had any problem with the trackball. Responds well for me and I have Tours currently in my household.

2. The video sucks. You take video and you can't play it back, it freezes. Send the video to another phone and it plays fine, as do videos sent to your Tour taken elsewhere. Clearly a software issue, the idiots at Sprint made me do a device swap which caused me to loose a weeks worth of e-mail when they did not bother to correctly configure it on the new, new, new, new phone.

Never had any problems with the Video either and I just recorded events at a wedding but 3 weeks ago. And the fact that you lost all your emails is your own fault. I save everything to the server. You just set yourself up for failure.

3. The browser still sucks. Best browsing experience ever my fat behind. This is a universal issue across all blackberries. I still cannot surf youtube, register for a yahoo account or perform basic tasks. When is RIM going to release a browser that is worth even one half of one ****? This is 2009, not 1999. Its time to get with the program, RIM. When I'd love to install Opera Mini or Skyfire, but none of those work with the tour, of course.

Opera Mini works fine, but I prefer using Bolt.

4. Three-way calling is broke. When you try to add a participant, it disconnects the first caller. Yay for functionality!

Never ran into any problem with 3 way calling as I've done it for the past 3 conference calls I had yesterday.

5. Having the address book on two lines sucks. Whoever thought this was a good idea should be taken out behind the shed and shot.

I don't know what you're complaining about here.

6. The inability to save applications to the media card is dumb. If this was the case, the damned phone should come with 1 gb of mem instead of 256 mb.

Buy from Blackberry App World and your problems are solved. Most of the time you should be saving the DM files anyway. You're always given both, that's why you back it up.

7. The tour takes far too long to restart, almost 10 minutes. It also freezes and is subject to periods of non-responsiveness.

3-4 minutes to start up for me and I'm running about 20+ apps for work relations and fun and games.

8. The battery life is poor. The 8830 was not that great, this thing is even worse.

Are you serious? I've been running off of the same battery charge for the past 2 days. I get pissed most of the time because the damn thing won't die. And I'm one to charge only once the battery is depleted.

Due to the ineptness of Sprint, I've lost lots of data, missed weeks worth of emails and just generally been in phone ****. I hate Sprint and now I hate RIM too. I've waited too long for the long-promised upgrade to the 8830 and for it to be such a hunk of junk is ridiculous. When I pay $400 for a phone, I have a right to expect it to work out of the box the first time.

You can return the phone back within 30 days. Clearly it hasn't been 30 days for you, so I don't really know if I should believe you about having this phone. So cry a river, build a bridge and get over it. Not happy with your purchase, then return it back. Otherwise stop complaining and deal with it.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Everything I've needed to say is highlighted in red.

[keithykeith]

The messages that were lost are not due to a lack of backups, they are due to the fact that Sprint screwed up a device swap. The messages never made it to my device, because Sprint had it setup to send them to my old device that I had to trade in due to an issue with the trackball and the video camera.

The video issue has affected all but one phone I have had of this model. The issue with the video has been confirmed by the Sprint store manager on six different phones in his store (out of 40 he has sold so far) who has escalated it to his DM for reporting to RIM. I should know by Monday what the deal is there. Sprint was inept at handling what is clearly an OS/software issue by forcing me to swap devices, which resulted in the data loss because they did not provision the new device correctly.

The district manager for the Sprint store I have been dealing with told me that RIM recently acknowledged an issue with certain batches on the trackball issue. The issue is horizontal scrolling does not work on some units or is extremely inpercise or erratic. If you have one that is acting up, it won't get better, take it back and tell the store manager to check the etickets on that device as its a known issue.

Sprint is decent at providing service for most things. However, when tech can't figure stuff out, they tend to resort to serial device swapping or endless transfers in effect playing hot potato with problem customers or devices instead of fixing the issue, or in the case of a new issue that is with a new device, using channels to report that issue to the vendor (RIM).

Sprint tech support is best handled by:

1. <unacceptable statement moderated>.

2. Being persistent and not taking no for an answer ever.

3. Demanding large account credits when Sprint poops where it eats and persisting until you get them.

4. Avoid allowing Sprint to place responsibility on you for their mistakes.

5. Get the name, ID num and call center location of everyone you talk to. All managers have direct lines, get those numbers and do not take I don't have one for an answer.

6. Obtain, record and retain DID numbers for escalation queues, so that you can escalate your own issues when you encounter someone to inept to do it for you.

These six steps allow you to make Sprint's customer service staff useful.$ without them, you're screwed.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[keithykeith]

Everything I've needed to say is highlighted in red.

lol, you can believe whatever you want, pal. I'm holding the damn phone in my hand.

If you are on the same battery for two days, you must not be spending much time on it talking. I get about 3 hours of talk time, but it will stand by for days if I don't use it.

Reboot time does indeed seem to be tied to the size of the mem card. I took my 8gb card out and put the 1gb in and it booted much faster.

The address book displays entries on two lines. The 8830 did not. A call to RIM confirms that this cannot be turned off. Such is stupid.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[vinniemac]

The messages that were lost are not due to a lack of backups, they are due to the fact that Sprint screwed up a device swap. The messages never made it to my device, because Sprint had it setup to send them to my old device that I had to trade in due to an issue with the trackball and the video camera.


Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Device swaps only change the MEID. It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to do the INCREDIBLY EASY e-mail set-up with your user name and password:

In summary, epic fail on your part.

[DBabskie]

I have a first release Sprint Tour with 0 problems. If you don't like it or believe it has numerous problems simiply return it.

[mjbesen310]

the OP just doesnt know how to use his Blackberry and tries to blame other people.

[AlwaysLostSometimes]

Still on Friday mornings battery charge. Phone calls still being made, crackberry still being updated and guess what I have 1 bar left. Like I said my cell phone is my home, small business and cell phone. I use it more than anything. My battery life is doing just fine. I wish it would die so I could charge the damn thing.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[12MaNy]

Great crybaby post.

Hahahaha!!!



To the OP: It sounds like you had a defective Tour from the problems you're complaining about. As far as the device features you're complaining about (internal memory, phonebook...etc) you should've done a little more research and/or looked at the specs before you bought it. Stop complaining and go return it.

[keithykeith]

Well, the unit I hold in my hand has only one remaining issue and that's the video camera. If I keep pounding on Sprint, I should be able to get them to escalate that up and get a software fix.

The longer reboots, short battery life, etc seem to just be things I will be forced to deal with for now.

Does anyone know how to install Opera Mini? I can't seem to do it from the website. Anything would have to be an improvement over the current browser.

Does anyone know when RIM is going to release a decent browser? Is that going to be part of 5.0?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[six4seven]

My TOUR is the best berry I have ever had. This includes the BOLD and 8900. Your problems seem to be exclusive to you and it sounds like SPRINT is the the reason. Cancel your upgrade and move providers!

TO ALL YOU DOUBTERS, the blackberry TOUR is by far the BEST DAMN Blackberry on the market!!!!!!

[six4seven]

I didn't bother to read any other posts, but your battery issue is due to your TOUR running on 3G network speeds and this requires greater battery drainage. Switch your mobile network options to 2G and your battery will last a couple days (not sure if this is an option for your unit, seeing how mine is unlocked).

[12MaNy]

Well, the unit I hold in my hand has only one remaining issue and that's the video camera. If I keep pounding on Sprint, I should be able to get them to escalate that up and get a software fix.

Why don't you just re-load the OS yourself?

https://www.blackberry.com/Downloads...B7B318FFCF74C6

The longer reboots, short battery life, etc seem to just be things I will be forced to deal with for now.

Re-boot shouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes. As far as battery life....the Tour has great battery life! If yours doesn't, then something isn't right with your device or the battery.

I didn't bother to read any other posts, but your battery issue is due to your TOUR running on 3G network speeds and this requires greater battery drainage. Switch your mobile network options to 2G and your battery will last a couple days (not sure if this is an option for your unit, seeing how mine is unlocked).

Nope sorry...Tour has great battery life regardless. I'm on a 3g CDMA network and I only have to charge my battery every other day.

[AlwaysLostSometimes]

Sadly but at last it's time to charge my battery.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Cyrilmak]

OP there is a very easy fix. Ditch Sprint go to Verizon get the Tour there. I'm assuming you are within 30 days. Verizon is much better than Sprint anyhow, at least it always was for me.

[12MaNy]

OP there is a very easy fix. Ditch Sprint go to Verizon get the Tour there. I'm assuming you are within 30 days. Verizon is much better than Sprint anyhow, at least it always was for me.

^ Hahahahahahaha!!! Are you serious with that comment? Verizon Tour has more problems per capita than Sprint Tour. Besides, your gonna start a flame war making comments like that.

That's like me saying "Battlestar Galactica is much better than Star Trek. You should definitely ditch Star Trek and switch to Battlestar Galactica"

[dohturdima]

OP: If you have problems with your Tour, go ahead and get another replacement. I had no problems with mine after replacing it due to a trackball/battery door issue.

My experience with a Sprint Tour:
1. Battery life - not great, but getting an AutoStandby app that automatically puts my phone into standby mode (without inserting it in the holster) allows the charge to last a full day. My GPS and bluetooth are always on and it is on 3G network constantly, which explains it. If I turn off location for GPS, bluetooth and set the phone to 2G the battery life will improve markedly. But I choose to keep it in the charging pod instead when at home/work, and charge it in the car... would turn off all 3 of these if I really had no way of charging the phone and needed to max battery life. Another option is to get another battery and a portale battery charger, take the charged battery with you and swap it in.
2. Brower options: I use Bolt and Opera Mini (google both). Get the unsigned version of Opera Mini and you are OK. Bolt requires 3 lines of info and they will send you a download link. Both are better than standard browser, which isn't too bad either IMO.
3. I haven't had any problems recording, playing back or copying/pasting video w/ Tour. Pretty good video quality, too. I use a Class 6 Transcend Micro SDHC card, which helps due to high read/write speeds. Maybe it's your Micro SD card?
4. No issues whatsoever with address book. What do you mean, two lines? What's more, Google sync works flawlessly and allowed me to synchronize calendar and contacts with my other phone (iPhone).
5. I have a SERO plan with Sprint, and having Tour on SERO is icing on the cake

I hope you work out your issues with the phone and keep it.