Accepting BlackBerry into your life..
Where to start? Thinking through what I actually want to say I think the best place is to mention that through my limited celphone and smartphone experiences that I have registered and gone through the motions to make a post about my fanaticism on a fairly substantial internet website devoted to said device. Quite the feat! Despite the fact that I'm an extremely lazy internet user, I was convinced enough to go through all of that so I could spout about my wondrous journey with BB.
I felt sharing this would help add to the BlackBerry community too. There are some interesting dynamics to be explored within! A few concepts here are extremely magnified due to the small pool to draw from - 70,000ish.
I like how owning a BlackBerry actually helps (me) justifying owning another gadget! As for the minimalists amongst us the BB is perfect as being your central device :)
My experience with mobile phones in general is limited. From what I have seen and done etc and what I know and understand about all of these types of devices I know BlackBerry just works. No matter what. With extremely awesome battery life.
On the social side of things BlackBerry is SO popular here in Bermuda that I wouldn't be surprised if 3/4 of the population owned one. A population of just under 70,000. We could sell out one of your mediocre stadiums and leave room for more!
BBM is the thing here. I am able to see from a business point of view and now from a social point of view the power of this device. The PIN and barcode scanning have become a social phenomenon here. A significant portion of the population in Bermuda has a BlackBerry of some sort. It is trendy to say, "What's your 'BB'?" and the reliability of connection methods is astounding - scaling across prepaid customers, plans and the broke. A fair bit of BB owners here only access BBM and through WIFI. My carrier here is DigiCel and I'm on prepaid. This device makes owning a celphone no hassle what-so -ever. $50 USD a month for unlimited data and I only ever need to put, per month $10 of talk time, totally $60 USD. As for everyone in everywhere else in the world you might think that is a lot for a prepaid plan you need to take into account the differing scale of economics and cost of living vs your area. My phone bill is significantly lower from a lot of other people because I'm able to utilize the abilities of this device. The communications robustness permeates through a lot here. Because of that owning a BlackBerry for social and personal reasons and only owning one phone fit perfectly in place - with many owning a 2nd BlackBerry! So many people own a BlackBerry that having to deal with a a non BB user is such a minor nuance - only because of not being able to communicate through BBM.
Bermuda has horrible coverage and these incredible devices just always work here. The display of EDGE and edge etc is always very accurate for showing where (now) both providers cannot reach. I took the original Storm to the Philippines. I traveled from Bermuda > New York > Alaska > China > Philippines and my phone just worked. All of it. It worked everywhere despite being on a very unreliable originating provider. It always works for me and is great at sharing media with my friends.
I love how there are a lot of form factors for the phone. All offering the same experience but in different ways. This is one thing I think has really helped play into the success of the device as a whole. Such a great way to get one to almost every taste. (Some people just can't be pleased)
I work in IT sales and I'm always convincing our clients to buy a massive mircoSD card for their BlackBerry and an iPod Touch.
All in all this a great device that works in an area that is not part of a continent. I felt it was important to let the community know that this device has influence on this type of level. Only because we all know how superior BlackBerry is at doing everything else ;)