Rant - Work issued 8520

[ben.keen]

So recently I switched from a Verizon Tour to the Droid X. Well the company I work for does not support the Droid so I had to be issued a firm BlackBerry. Being part of the BES team at my company, I talked to the property manager and got an 8520 and man oh man, what the heck is T-Mobile thinking?!!?

Why are they still running this device on 4.6 when other carriers have pushed 5.0 out to their devices? Now I know why so many of my users have dumped their company BlackBerrys for personal accounts with other carriers. I forgot how bad 4.X was compared to 5.0. Yea, I can be a leaked version of 5.0 on my device and blah, blah, blah; but I can't sit here and tell my users they can't do that because its a firm device and by putting unoffical software on the device it could cause issues. I just can't believe that T-Mobile is behind this much. Oh well, I'm not paying for the device but just wanted to vent a little.

[NorrisCell]

Originally Posted by ben.keen

So recently I switched from a Verizon Tour to the Droid X. Well the company I work for does not support the Droid so I had to be issued a firm BlackBerry. Being part of the BES team at my company, I talked to the property manager and got an 8520 and man oh man, what the heck is T-Mobile thinking?!!?

Why are they still running this device on 4.6 when other carriers have pushed 5.0 out to their devices? Now I know why so many of my users have dumped their company BlackBerrys for personal accounts with other carriers. I forgot how bad 4.X was compared to 5.0. Yea, I can be a leaked version of 5.0 on my device and blah, blah, blah; but I can't sit here and tell my users they can't do that because its a firm device and by putting unoffical software on the device it could cause issues. I just can't believe that T-Mobile is behind this much. Oh well, I'm not paying for the device but just wanted to vent a little.

North America is behind as a whole in the cell phone game. They always have been. There are official 5.0 versions out there for the 8520, so you don't have to run leaked versions if you don't want to. Don't point the finger solely at T-Mobile. AT&T, Rogers, Telcel, you name it. None of them have 5.0 updates for their devices, besides the 9000. There's no real downside to running a different carrier's OS, besides the lack of MyFaves icons for some TMO users.

[JeffreyVB]

Completely understand where you are coming from. I was a little ticked that TMo never released a 5.0 OS for the 8900. When I called Customer Care I was told, "sorry, that phone has been EOL'ed". I ended up loading the non-T-Mobile .822 OS on mine.

[Artemis68]

I think carriers overall are pretty slow in rolling out updates...

The way I see it though (maybe I'm wrong) is that carriers are more about the service rather than the hardware itself. It's really up to the user to deal with OSes and tweaking to maximize the usage of the phone for themselves. Carriers just supply service and coverage.

Maybe that's not how things should be but that's just what I've noticed.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[48593039584729]

The 8520 is a toy phone, reflected in the price and build quality.

[curve247]

Originally Posted by 48593039584729

The 8520 is a toy phone, reflected in the price and build quality.

price doesnt reflect its a toy. RIM just put that pricepoint to move units. and i have a 8520 as a backup and i think the build quality is pretty good. lets be honest that RIM's build quality hasnt been great recently, so dont blame it all on the 8520.

the 8520 is a good phone for what it was made for, beginning users and non-hardcore users. Coming from a tour i completely understand you dislike of the phone, but thats no the phones fault.

i know i am a power user of my bb and thus i have a 9700. knowing that i wouldnt buy a 8520 for daily use. so maybe you should think more about who buys the phone and what its really intended for.

then again if you are still using a pearl flip, thats a toy phone....

rant over.

[ben.keen]

Originally Posted by curve247

price doesnt reflect its a toy. RIM just put that pricepoint to move units. and i have a 8520 as a backup and i think the build quality is pretty good. lets be honest that RIM's build quality hasnt been great recently, so dont blame it all on the 8520.

the 8520 is a good phone for what it was made for, beginning users and non-hardcore users. Coming from a tour i completely understand you dislike of the phone, but thats no the phones fault.

i know i am a power user of my bb and thus i have a 9700. knowing that i wouldnt buy a 8520 for daily use. so maybe you should think more about who buys the phone and what its really intended for.

then again if you are still using a pearl flip, thats a toy phone....

rant over.

I have to agree, pricing has nothing to do with how good a device is. I've had devices that cost 200 or 300 bucks and performed really bad. I'm not saying that the 8520 is a bad device, in fact I think its a great addition to RIM's BlackBerry line up I'm just surprised that TMo would hold their users back by not providing the latest update. Yes, I know and understand that updates need to be test on networks and blah, blah, blah; but to have every other carrier with 85XX BlackBerrys running on 5.0 you would think TMo would take a step back and look at the update again. Even if a device is EOL, updates should still be provided because there are people still using them.