Videos - What I tell people when they ask me about BlackBerry

Hey Everyone,

Youwyed posted a question regarding how to defend BlackBerry. Some people said that they don't defend them because it is not their job. However, I do. I love BlackBerry and I think they are the most secure devices out there and a great, real time communications device. Since I feel this way, when people ask me about devices I tell them what I think.

Frankly, before the OS7 devices, I never recommended BlackBerry, even though I used one myself. However, with the new OS7 phones that are so much easier to use and faster, I tend to recommend BlackBerry to most people (still not all, but most).

Anyway, I have had six people get BlackBerry phones since I got my new Bold and three Playbooks (maybe I should have RIM pay me for this but I just love the new OS7 BlackBerry phones) and this is what I tell them.

I made four short videos after reading Youwyed's post yesterday.

I left a bunch of stuff out and the target audience is a non-BlackBerry user but if a BB user wants to give me some tips on things I can do better or just something cool, feel free to let me know.

I made it a point not to attack any other platform and hope we don't go down that road with this. Just happy with my Bold and feel it is a good option for many people.

Video 1. Why BB. The easy stuff.
1 of 4 Why BB.mp4 - YouTube

Video 2. Customization. Kinda Cool.
2 of 4 Customization.mp4 - YouTube

Video 3. Apps I use. I know, I should have said that we get free DocsToGo.
3 of 4 apps I use.mp4 - YouTube

Video 4. Wrap up.
4_of_4 Wrap Up.mp4 - YouTube


Hey, if you like sharing about your BlackBerry like Youwade and myself and if you like some of this videos then maybe they can help someone decide.

If you do watch them, let me know what you think.

Thanks. :)

Update 23 Nov 2011.
Hey, here is a fifth short video of BB Protect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SjP0I1EnOk

BTW, I made these videos with the BB Playbook.

Thanks guerllamo7! I never knew that about holding the "Q" key. hehe. :D

Lots of helpful information in your videos for people curious about BlackBerries. I even learned some new things and I'm a veteran user. Thanks for making these.:)

Whoa! Holding down the "Q" key is awesome!!! Thanks!

RIM should pay you.

Jake2826,
The following thread is pretty helpful on tips. I saw it a while back and its pretty neat.

http://forums.crackberry.com/general...pluses-666574/

Lots of BB magic.

Great videos, I suggest you rename them so when people are searching for videos about Blackberry they will find them, 1 of 4 Why BB.mp4 is not a good title to search for!

Hey darth_anakim,

I don't know for a fact that android devices are what you claim them to be. I made it a point not to mention other devices or say BB was better but since you bring it up here are things that I know for a fact:

1. Androids suck your battery and it is not because of talk time. It is the huge screen and dynamic graphics which I don't need and they don't push all your mail. They only push g-mail. Everything else gets delayed 15 to 30 minutes or battery issues come up again. The app I use the most by far is e-mail so it matters.

2. Android devices are not more customizable than the Bold 9930. Some have NFC, some are world phones, and so on but the Bold does everything I want and need.

3. If it boils down to apps, then I know that a friend of mine that just got the latest and greatest droid pays $30.00 dollars per year for virus protection. He had to pay 14.99 for DocsToGo Premium edition, which all BBs get for free. His facebook app does not update as promply as the BB one, he does not have BB protect built into the phone so he had to pay for that as well. Yup, they have more apps but I'm not into fart apps or video games so to each his own. You make a good point though. People see the number of apps and draw the wrong conclusion about BB.
Do droids have a shortcut for CB? I don't think so. This is a great app and resource that makes the knowledge of thousands of BB users available for anything you want. I got a fellow CB user to show me some neat stuff on SCM and another for NFCL. That is worth bucks right there in my view.

4. Even if your droid was a 1.5Ghz device it is a data consumption hog. It does not use it as efficiently as the BlackBerry so when you reach your throttle limit your device will download data slower. Although it is a carrier issue it is an issue that has an impact on the device.


Right now I don't want to walk around with a TV attached to my hip. Just not my thing.


Here is another fact for you.
Report warns of Android security issues, increased malware, Web attacks

Scary Android security hole in 99% of phones: PANIC! - Computerworld Blogs

As for battery life. I had the latest droid and a big reason to come back to BB was the terrible battery and if you have a Nexus S. Here is what is really happening in my view:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/...7c026d10&hl=en

Hope this helps you. :)

Be careful when you talk about facts they may actually not support your argument at all but quite the opposite.

I said nothing at all against android or any other device in the videos so don't knock on BB with views. If you take the time to make comments then I suggest you back them up with facts, like links to credible sources.

By the way, I've said many times that if I ever left BB I would go back to Android. There are a few issues as with all phones but the droids are pretty cool.

darth_anakim,

I posted a few links on your security comment. Your device only pushes g-mail. I like the ability to swap batteries and probably most importantly, I don't want to walk around with a TV on my hip. The Bold 9930 is the perfect size for me.

Bottom line is we don't agree. You like Android and I like BlackBerry. That's O.K. its a forum.

Have a good day. I won't keep this back and forth going. See ya.

Good comments for both BB and droid phones. It just comes down to what you want to use your phone for. After having a droid, and then going back to BB, I will say my old droid phone was the best phone for playing games and watching movies. The big screen was perfect for that. But I later decided that security, push e-mail, and battery life was what I wanted most. Do I miss the Google turn by turn navigation? Heck yea!! Telenav is also turn by turn navigation on my bb, but it's not nearly as smooth as the Google nav. But at the end of the day the bb was my device of choice. Pro's and con's for each device out there.....people need to really need to think about what they want to use their phone for. Happy Thanksgiving! :)

I think it's a good video that details the things Blackberrys are capable of. I think one of the things with marketing though is RIM needs to pull people from other devices. As you know, we're all very partial to our devices that we carry.

I'd like to see a video on what BB can do that Android can't and then what BB can do that Apple can't. And throw in what BB can do that the other can also.

For example, on the LED notification light, a lot of Android phones have built in LED lights now or have apps that give you that functionality. So if you have someone on Android that's on the fence about switching to BB and they like this fact about their Android, well, the BB can do it too...no problem. I found myself obsessively checking to see if my notification light was going off. So this became a distraction. Berry buzz was fun because I could create a disco light. I prefer to have a recurring audible beep that alerts me for missed texts, emails, phone calls (I can customize to which 'beep' as far as sound, type, length, etc for each one). However, the LED light is an important function to some.

On customizing, I'm not sure. You'd have a hard time comparing BB with Android on customizability. I think Android has hats off to any mobile platform when it comes to customization. You can change wallpapers, number of screens, size of icons, what the icons look like, dock vs no dock vs multiple docs vs launchable folders within one icon, etc. I did enjoy the keyboard shortcuts but having gone to a virtual keyboard, I much prefer the virtual keyboard now. I don't think any platform will ever touch Android in terms of customizing. This is a moot point to some though. For example, my wife wants everything stock. She could careless about customizing except maybe changing her wallpaper on occassion. Her importance is--reading books, facebook, texting. So for her, she loves the 4" screen, no smaller and no bigger. I'd like to see BB come out with a touchscreen phone that had a large screen. This might pull some people in like her that are used to having a 4" screen and don't want to go down in size.

I will say that I got better battery life from my 9700 than any phone I've ever had. I can get up to 10 hours on my LG Thrill. I can put in a bigger battery to get better battery life or choose how many widgets and running services I have or turn down my screen brightness. They have developed new screen technology that apparently is increaseing battery life by days and weeks at a time. Right now they're running it on a couple of tablets in Asia and the results are fantastic. I think most of us that have Android phones realize that we have battery eaters. I wish battery technology would keep up with cellular technology. However, I have a friend that got an Android and does nothing but complain about the battery. I asked him why he got an Android phone and not a BB if battery life was his main concern. He didn't realize that the BB had such good battery life. I think BB wins here against any platform until these new screens come out as standard screens on large touch screens.

I have Gmail and exchange on push. I don't notice any extra battery drain on push than non-push. Well, maybe not true push...Gmail and exchange come in about 2-3 seconds after it hits my laptop. But a 2-3 second delay isn't bad. I don't work in an environment where a company will lose billions if I don't see an email with 2 seconds of when I normally would have. I will say though that one of the MOST aggrivating issues I ever had with BB was email truncation. A vast majority of my exchange emails were truncated and I'd have to get on my laptop or check it from the mobile browser. So email on BB was more of an experience in frustration. I've never had email truncation on any of my Android phones. And, no, I'm not running 3rd party email applications. I do get anywhere from a few dozen to just under a hundred emails a day. Maybe if I were getting more, then battery life would be an issue. Of course, if that were the case, it'd drive me nuts and I'd just set my email notifications to be delivered on a certain interval. So this would be a good point to hit on in comparrison.

Docs to go, I think I paid the one time $15 dollar fee. Anyway, I've had Docs to go full version for years now and no matter how many times I've changed phones or flashed new operating managers and had to reinstall it, I've never been hassled about paying for it again. A lot of Android phones are now coming out with document editing software like Docs to go. I don't know which ones are better than the others. I've always just used Docs to Go, so that might be an interesting comparison on document viewing/editing software that comes with the phones vs what someone might have to purchase. I haven't tried Google docs on my phones as far as creating, I do some editing from time to time. But on my laptop, I much prefer Google Docs since it has 'on they fly' saving and it's saved to the cloud. This way I don't have to do the "save as" option. Darth mentioned Polaris and I have that also but I haven't even looked at it. I'm used to Docs and so it's comfortable when it comes to document stuff on my mobile device.

Apps? Oh man. The upside and downside of Android is the crazy amount of apps you can look through on the Market. Lots of good stuff, lots of junk. I haven't been to the BB appstore in awhile so I have no idea what's in there now.

I do like how BBs have multiple size touchscreens. When I pull out my 9710 on occassion, the screen looks so small. So maybe going to the larger screens is becoming a handicap. Not sure.

Anyway, food for thought. I was just thinking about if I were to ask about why someone carried a blackberry, it would prob be because I was comparing what their phone could do that mine could/couldn't for the ease of switching over and having functions I don't currently have. I think a lot of people get nervous about switching platforms because there's a learning curve.

Reading you're post it's pretty obvious you love your Android phone.

You really know your Android phone so why would you need to see a direct feature-for-feature comparison. Don't you think you only need to see what the bb can do and then compare it to your beloved Android phone :confused:

Originally Posted by anthogag

Reading you're post it's pretty obvious you love your Android phone.

You really know your Android phone so why would you need to see a direct feature-for-feature comparison. Don't you think you only need to see what the bb can do and then compare it to your beloved Android phone :confused:

I do. I loved my BBs that I've had also. It wouldn't be for me unless the BBX came out and then I would wonder what BB could do that Android couldn't. I was making the observation that he was making the video because to a certain point a lot of people that have never used a BB have the belief that BBs are boring and can't really do anything. So you have an individual that's never used a BB before and they are thinking about switching and aren't locked onto a platform. Then the video comes in to compare what they have now vs what a BB can do and it gives them a more informed decision on whether they should switch or not.

Why would most people think BB's are boring. I don't think people have a formed opinion about the brand :confused: People hear it's a business phone...but they see celebrities using it...they heard London rioters used BB Messenger... BlackBerry is cool!

Brand recognition is really strong with the iPhone and Samsung, Motorola, and HTC are relentlessly flooding the market with a dizzying-array of Android devices...the average consumer can't resist the pressure to think there are only 'two' brands.

RIM needs great media reviews for the pb and phones.

Originally Posted by kilted_thrower

I do. I loved my BBs that I've had also. It wouldn't be for me unless the BBX came out and then I would wonder what BB could do that Android couldn't. I was making the observation that he was making the video because to a certain point a lot of people that have never used a BB have the belief that BBs are boring and can't really do anything. So you have an individual that's never used a BB before and they are thinking about switching and aren't locked onto a platform. Then the video comes in to compare what they have now vs what a BB can do and it gives them a more informed decision on whether they should switch or not.

Really? Nothing you said is worth any salt. If you really want to educate people about android do as guerllamo7 done and make ur own videos and tell people what you like about android osed devices. It amazes me how ever time somebody makes a view about BBs somebody from android or ipos has to chime in. If you didn't notice CB was nice enough to give yall ur own section. This was a nice no bashing thread just to get some newbies feet wet or tell somebody alittle about BBs if they where considering 1.
guerllamo7 I watched your videos. Even though as clear spoken as you where I found them lacking. The view of what you where doing on you Bold wasn't clear at all. I thought that was a must. If someone that has never used a BB they still don't have a clue. I thought you left out some really cool BB features. I'm not picking just saying I don't think the videos was even close to complete. I however applaude you in taking this on. Good job.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

The person is a pr troll. If you read his post he is describing BB features found in Android phones. These pr paid-posters need to continually look for creative ways to put anti-BB information in this forum in a way that won't attract attention. :eek:

The average Android user could care less about what's happening in a BB forum. :)