Congratulations RIM, you did it.
I don�t have to go into detail about how long we were waiting for these devices to drop or how many nights of sleep we lost leading up to the launch. To be fair, I don�t even think we saw the launch coming; suddenly Kevin posts that he picked up 4 9900s from a Rogers store and like dominos we started to see more and more stores stocking them and other carriers in Canada following suit right after the other.
I can proudly say I was one of the first in line to pick up a brand new 9900 from Rogers in Ottawa on �launch day�, needless to say I didn�t get a lot of work done that day, most of it was spent playing with this amazing new device. (I since returned it and bought one at TELUS) I was blown away by the speed. I think back to my first few hours with the 9900 thinking �this is as smooth as my iPhone, and just as thin, and� it�s� a BlackBerry!�
For the better part of a year I�ve carried around two phones with me, my BlackBerry device of choice at the time and my iPhone3GS/4. I left stuff like music, Facebook, Twitter and SIRIUS for the iPhone and left the BlackBerry to do what it does best: email, sms and of course BBM. In addition to that I split the two phones between work and personal uses. I�ve had BlackBerrys since the 7250 and have every single model carried by Rogers and TELUS, so I know what they can do, but the user experience for things like Facebook, Twitter and all that fun/social stuff just lacked performance on the BlackBerry platform.
The 9900 changes all of this. For the past 2 days I�ve carried my 9900 exclusively, leaving the iPhone at home, not even on the charger but in a desk drawer, draining. My 9900 runs Facebook 2.0, which we all know is a huge step up in performance. I have Twitter 2.0 installed as well, BlackBerry traffic, and a bunch of other specialty applications. I get my corporate e-mail on it, and my two personal email accounts. It all comes to one device now, the way it should be.
BlackBerry is a personality thing, to me it�s something that not only works as a communications device, but it assists in keeping your life together, it from time-to-time defines who you are. Past BlackBerry devices didn�t suck, at all, but they weren�t up to current technology standards. Now, I�m even more proud to show off my Berry to people around the office, I love being able to let them test-drive it without having to say �Oh, yeah, they haven�t quite optimized that yet� or �It�s a small processor�. They play with it and I now say �Yeah, RIM�s back baby!�
The only, and I repeat only issue I have is with the battery. Some users have great experience with it, others not so much. The stock OS that came with the Rogers 9900 was horrible, after coming off a full charge at 8am it would be down to 55% by noon with little to no use. My girlfriend, who got hers from Virgin Mobile the same night, can go two days with constant phone calls, BBMing, SMS, the whole deal. My current 9900 from TELUS seems to be right in the middle. So I�m going to try different carrier OS� and see what works best.
But all in all, congratulations RIM. Welcome back.
Yours,
Proud BlackBerry User.