[afropoika]

Good evening CrackBerry abusers,

Over here, it's me! ...one of the very few special BlackBerry addicts. Yes I know, there are no carriers, who support BlackBerry in my country. No problem, a BlackBerry without Data Plan is still a beautiful masterpiece in my eyes. It all started when I traveled around Europe and got my first BlackBerry, the 8700c. No I will not make any drama, but don't be afraid; the 8700c is still in pristine condition and is taken good care of -- even if not in use.

Now, I have the BlackBerry Pearl 8110. I did hope to get my hands on the Wi-Fi model, but eBay listings didn't share love with me at the time. Anyway, I really love the Pearl for being the only BlackBerry that's not too bulky to fit in my pockets (and yes, I am serious). The trackball is an overall improvement from the trackwheel on the 8700c, but most importantly I love the Pearl for its keyboard; going for a thinner BlackBerry does not mean to give up QWERTY! I am not a native English speaker though, therefore I benefit little from SureType, but Multitap is good enough for me and certainly faster to type with than the "standard ABC".

I chose BlackBerry, because the OS allows me to configure pretty much everything (and being a Linux junkie I love this part the most) and also the PDA features of the BlackBerry are super fantastic. Never seen such a good calendar on a smartphone before, and I've seen quite many of them! I'm a student by the way so it really is important to me to have a good PDA with me and with BlackBerry that's one device less to carry around!

Now to my actual rant... I really believed RIM was a good company, who stand up for their customers... maybe I was wrong or there is still hope. When introducing BlackBerry to my friends, I told them that one could have the same OS, applications, games and themes in many different forms. You can get the Storm if you want an iPhone-like BlackBerry, or the Pearl for a traditional looking "chocolate bar phone", maybe the Pearl Flip if you want a flip phone or any Curve for that professional full QWERTY device you've always been looking for to replace your WinMo. I really wanted this "tradition" to continue in that it is BlackBerry, only in different forms. However, it seems RIM is about to drop the Pearl and Curve 83xx from the list, because both are still on OS 4.5 and there's even no rumors alpha/beta 4.6 OS!

Makes me really angry. I agree there are maybe too many Curves out there and with the introduction of Curve 8520 it seems logical RIM wants to leave the Curve 83xx series out. However, even my 8700c has OS 4.5 and it is considered a legacy BlackBerry now, should we consider Curve 83xx and Pearl 81xx series legacy as well because of OS? Certainly NOT! You may leave out the Pearl 8100 if you like, but the Pearl 8110/8120/8130 are currently the only BlackBerry smartphones out there in that lovely candy bar form and I want to keep with one, simply because it fits my pocket the best. Why should Pearl Flip continue to live on? Here where I live, flip phones are considered out of fashion. Don't know how it is there in the U.S. and Canada. Just makes me angry this kind of thing but maybe there is hope.

Please RIM put out OS 5.0 or at least 4.6 for Pearl so we know you are still caring for us! One nasty problem to be fixed is there already, lock the Pearl and hold down the Power button, guess what? It turns off!

[/random rant]

[Reed McLay]

You cant stop progress.

The first generation of consumer BlackBerry have 64 Mb of memory, later devices increased the memory to 96, 128 and 256 Mb.

It is not reasonalble to expect software designed for large memory model to run correctly on a memory constrained model.

The odds are pretty good, when the upgrade OS is released, some of the best features will be ported to the earlier devices, official or otherwise.