[erikras]

Hey everyone. My first two smart phones were BlackBerries on Verizon. A Pearl then the Tour. Currently I have a Droid Incredible that has been a good phone but not great. I love the web browser and camera, but the BB's (especially the Tour) seemed to always work better as a phone first and for texting, email and calendar.

I have a few questions:

How useless is the web browser? I know the Tour was unbearably slow and didn't format a lot of pages correctly. Has RIM improved greatly since then?

I'm a Google guy when it comes to Gmail and Google Calendar for personal use. How well do the latest apps keep you BB calendar and contacts synced with Google? (For work this is a non-issue since we use standard POP3 accounts.)

I have a REAL digital camera for taking pictures, but do use my camera phone a lot to snap pics in the field for work. How's the camera on the 9930 compared to the ones on the latest Droids which are quite good?

One of my biggest sticking points with Android phones is battery life. It just plain sucks. I went from getting 2-3 days on the Pearl to 1-2 with the Tour to barely a full day with the Droid. Do most of you still get away without charging from the time you get up until you go to bed? I'm just talking 30-60min of phone, a few dozen texts and checking Facebook in the web browser a few times. Nothing too crazy.

Any other opinions from those of you who have switched from Android to BB would be appreciated.

[mc21]

Hey everyone. My first two smart phones were BlackBerries on Verizon. A Pearl then the Tour. Currently I have a Droid Incredible that has been a good phone but not great. I love the web browser and camera, but the BB's (especially the Tour) seemed to always work better as a phone first and for texting, email and calendar.

I have a few questions:

How useless is the web browser? I know the Tour was unbearably slow and didn't format a lot of pages correctly. Has RIM improved greatly since then?

I'm a Google guy when it comes to Gmail and Google Calendar for personal use. How well do the latest apps keep you BB calendar and contacts synced with Google? (For work this is a non-issue since we use standard POP3 accounts.)

I have a REAL digital camera for taking pictures, but do use my camera phone a lot to snap pics in the field for work. How's the camera on the 9930 compared to the ones on the latest Droids which are quite good?

One of my biggest sticking points with Android phones is battery life. It just plain sucks. I went from getting 2-3 days on the Pearl to 1-2 with the Tour to barely a full day with the Droid. Do most of you still get away without charging from the time you get up until you go to bed? I'm just talking 30-60min of phone, a few dozen texts and checking Facebook in the web browser a few times. Nothing too crazy.

Any other opinions from those of you who have switched from Android to BB would be appreciated.

I came back from Android also and I had the Droid Incredible for about 6 months before I offed it to craigslist. The web browser is still slower than android's but it is usable. It isn't the best but it isn't nearly as bad as it used to be on the tour (I had the 9630 and 9650 also).

I have no apps that is specific for gmail or gcal but I just added my email account (gmail) and had it sync my contacts and calendar and all seems well. It is just as good as my Android with one exception. I have a shared calendar between me and my gf. That calendar showed up on Android but not on the BB. Just realized this yesterday and will be trying to see if I can get it to add my other calendars in.

The pics on this camera are just as good for the most part. If you blow up the pic on a monitor, then no but just looking at it from your phone or even tablet, they seem the same. I am using the same micro sd can I could not tell by the picture quality when I swapped phones. The only thing is that it is bad at are close up pictures. Other wise, if there's enough light, it's pretty good.

Lets say that I use my phone about 4x more (just so much easier to text and email so I don't mind doing that from the phone now) and my battery life on the 9930 is about 6 hours better than my Droid charge with the extended battery. I usually charger every night after about 20 hours of up time and I am not quite in the red yet.

Going to BB you lose a lot of apps but you get a decent amount of functionality: multi LED notification, call quality, keyboard, battery life, quicker (by quicker I mean text, email, calendar, calculator, and stuff like that). In the apps department some big things that I missed from Android was the navigation. I ended up paying for telenav and it's a good replacement. Oh I seem to be wasting a lot less time on my phone trying to tweak it so it last a full work day haha.

[galleon]

As I posted in another forum, with about the same usage as you mentioned above, I'm getting 24+ hours of usage with the latest OS leaks. As soon as I spend more than 20min browsing and downloading files over Wifi that goes down to closer to lasting only a working day.

The web browser certainly isn't as good as Android but its MUCH better than even OS6 was. Personally I don't have any problems doing what I need to do on it.

And the keyboard? We all know, I won't say it again!

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[1AlexSu]

If you don't miss any of the android apps, then BBB9900 is the choice - so far the best BB i ever have, I have been using BB since the very first day it started - provided by my office.

For personal phone use and web browsing - I would prefer Motorola Razr Droid or Samsung Galaxy Note, but the battery use simply can't compared to BBB9900.

[ADGrant]

How useless is the web browser? I know the Tour was unbearably slow and didn't format a lot of pages correctly. Has RIM improved greatly since then?

I'm a Google guy when it comes to Gmail and Google Calendar for personal use. How well do the latest apps keep you BB calendar and contacts synced with Google? (For work this is a non-issue since we use standard POP3 accounts.)

I have a REAL digital camera for taking pictures, but do use my camera phone a lot to snap pics in the field for work. How's the camera on the 9930 compared to the ones on the latest Droids which are quite good?

One of my biggest sticking points with Android phones is battery life. It just plain sucks. I went from getting 2-3 days on the Pearl to 1-2 with the Tour to barely a full day with the Droid. Do most of you still get away without charging from the time you get up until you go to bed? I'm just talking 30-60min of phone, a few dozen texts and checking Facebook in the web browser a few times. Nothing too crazy.

Web browser is decent even if the screen is a bit small.

Google integration is awful. Both Android and iPhone do a much better job.

The camera on the 9900 is the worst on any high end BB. Much worse than the 9780 camera and way worse than the iPhone 4 or 4s. High end Android devices are probably closer to the iPhone than the 9900.

Android phones have reputation for poor battery life. a 9900 should be much better as should an iPhone. The older BBs are much better than the 9900 or iPhone.

[barryww1956]

i switched to the 9900 from the Motorolla Atrix 4G. I like the Bold's call quality much better. And love that keyboard as well. I have no issues with the Gmail sync, it's all automatic for me. Not near the apps as Android, but I never used them much anyway. Of all the phones I have had, this 9900 is by far my favorite and would buy it again in a heartbeat.

[ADGrant]

i switched to the 9900 from the Motorolla Atrix 4G. I like the Bold's call quality much better. And love that keyboard as well. I have no issues with the Gmail sync, it's all automatic for me. Not near the apps as Android, but I never used them much anyway. Of all the phones I have had, this 9900 is by far my favorite and would buy it again in a heartbeat.

Gmail BIS sync takes hours to sync server changes such as deletes or clearing read flags back to a Blackberry. Calendar sync works ok but only supports one calendar. Contact sync is a disaster.

[world traveler and former ceo]

As I posted in another forum, with about the same usage as you mentioned above, I'm getting 24+ hours of usage with the latest OS leaks. As soon as I spend more than 20min browsing and downloading files over Wifi that goes down to closer to lasting only a working day.

The web browser certainly isn't as good as Android but its MUCH better than even OS6 was. Personally I don't have any problems doing what I need to do on it.

And the keyboard? We all know, I won't say it again!

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

well said! i agree...keyboard is too amazing!