I've had my Tour since it's launch on Sunday the 12th. I've been really happy with it seeing how I upgraded from an old Palm Treo 755p. I've done one hard reset because i felt the device was a little laggy after using it for 2 hours straight (inputting all my contacts which VZW couldn't transfer over, lol) but the reset was probably not even really necessary.
I've downloaded a ton of apps which are pretty cool and some pretty stupid (bluffcall, bbtran, youmail). Already I only have around 90mb of internal disk space which kinda bugs me. I wish apps could be installed and ran from the external micro sd card
A big plus I've noticed is the multimedia player. I've read in certain forums that users think it's kind of lame and plain but I really like it. The sound quality is also awesome! I swear it sounds better than my ipod nano (although I only have the 1st gen nano, lol).
The biggest drawback I've experienced with my new BB Tour is the SMS texting. With my Treo, I'm used to having my texts in chat format with my peers. This is my first BB so I am not used to the way sms texts are set up. I've called VZW regarding this seeing if I could set the settings differently so see my txts in chat format and they said that has always been a BB user issue and should be fixed with the release of 0S 5.0 coming in the later months of this year. The VZW operator did suggest I set the sms texts to view up to the last 50 txts received so it shows my txts in a somewhat threaded format. This has made little improvement however. This is seriously the biggest drawback to the Tour I believe and I can't believe BB hasn't fixed this issue. I could have swore that my friends with pearls had threaded chat format texting. If I am wrong, someone please correct me and direct on how to set up my SMS text settings to the chat format.
Another regret is that I upgraded the phone through a VZW store. Last night I was searching slickdeals.com and saw a post about BestBuy offering the Tour for $99.99 with 2-year contract and $149.99 for VZW customer upgrades. I'm not totally sure if this promotion applies to ALL Bestbuys but it obviously worked for someone. I ended up paying $312 for my Tour ($269.99 +tax) although I'm not sure how I incurred $42.XX in tax. I do also have a $70 mail-in rebate so the device will end up costing me around $242? I plan to call VZW later today to get clarification on how I was charged $42 in tax off a $269.99 purchase.
I am however happy about my data plan. With the Treo I was paying $45 for the unlimited data plan. Well not really, I get a state workers discount which is 20% so it ended up being around $33 for the data plan. Now with the BB Data plan I only pay $24 ($29.99-20%) which I am very happy about. I highly suggest everyone to look into possible discounts offered to you through your employers. It saves me a lot of money. Special pricing on phones, plans, features, and accessories is AWESOME!
Getting back on track with the Tour, the build quality is great! It feels sooo comfortable in my hands and the weight is nice compared to my old Treo BRICK. I don't have any complaints regarding the screen ripple because I don't really notice it. I like the material the Tour is fashioned with. It seems pretty durable seeing how I accidentally dropped my phone yesternight
!!!! Thankfully the Tour wasn't harmed AT ALL! lol
Battery life seems to be just ok although I have been using the device pretty consistently throughout the day. I've heard rumors about the battery life only getting better after a few charges but i am really hesitant to believe those rumors seeing how that usually only applies to Nickel batteries that have the memory effect. I addressed this issue with the VZW rep and he said that he doesn't believe it either but wouldn't be surprised if it were true (wow buddy, great help!).
All-in-All I'm happy with my Tour. My experience with it would be near almost perfect if it weren't due to the SMS text drawback that I am experiencing. But again, I am open and all ears to those that have a fix for this if there is one ;D
Oh on a side note, I read a couple weeks ago before the Tours release that VZW plans to upgrade their network beyond 3G in the later months of this year (probably in their Q4). I addressed this with the sales rep at the VZW store when making my Tour purchase and he confirmed this to be true. He said the added network functionality will include video messaging and other futuristic features only seen in Japan for the past 5-10years. I've been witness to such cell phone functionality because my friend from Japan visited me like 6-8 years ago and she showed me her phone from there. It was crazy! Without going too much into detail on that, I can't wait for the new network to launch later this year. In the meantime, I'm very happy with my Tour!
How did I survive?!
Linear Mode
