IDKYCDT Moment: Internet access with non-Bridge apps through Bridge
So this definitely qualifies as one of CrackBerry Joseph's infamous "I didn't know you could do that (IDKYCDT) moments," and it has certainly made me appreciate my PlayBook even more. I haven't started a thread here before but this was such an epiphanic experience for me that I felt compelled to share it on the forums. So here it goes...
I purchased my 32 gb PlayBook in late November through Staples' Black Friday sale, but as there were none in stock at the store (I lined up at 4 am for the store opening at 6 :mad:), I did not receive my tablet in hand until the following Wednesday. Since then, I have found a new feature, either through browsing these forums (Blackjack's "Newbie Tips and tricks" was a godsend!) or through trial and error on my own, almost on a daily basis. With a few more features and capabilities that I expect to achieve by early next year, I will have completely liberated myself from requiring the need for my laptop while away from home. But I digress...
So anyway, I went over to my girlfriend's apartment last night and brought my usual setup with me (laptop, review books for school, chargers and cables, and of course my PlayBook). However, it didn't take me long to realize that I forgot one of the most crucial parts of my setup: my mobile modem! (My girlfriend does have internet but currently only has one wired connection to her own laptop.) Luckily, however, I already set up wifi file sharing on my PlayBook and had copied all of my review notes over, and I downloaded Files & Folders, so I had direct access to anything else I needed that I had stored through DropBox. But for the most part, I just used my Bridge connection through my Storm2 9550 to do any necessary browsing as my laptop sat there on the table like dead weight.
I was primarily doing review questions but needed to look up medical facts or definitions every once in a while, which my PlayBook's Bridge Browser easily handled. It wasn't long, however, before I needed some musical motivation. I had my iPod touch with me, but for some reason I decided to see what would happen if I clicked the Pandora homescreen bookmark that I placed in my PlayBook's media folder. Sure enough, it opened in the regular browser (since I used the native browser to create the bookmark). Of course this didn't surprise me, but what happened next certainly did.
Much to my amazement, Pandora actually loaded up AND started playing! At first, I was like, "okay, it had probably cached some files earlier and just loaded the playback from that one song, and will probably stop afterwards." Only, it didn't. It played a second song, and then a third. By now I checked to make sure it was really using the native browser (it was) and that I wasn't picking up wifi from anywhere (I wasn't). So it must be coming from the Bridge connection, right?
Indeed it was! I ran a few more tests to make sure I wasn't crazy and/or hallucinating from late-night studying. I loaded up, all on the native browser, a few websites that I had yet to visit on my PlayBook (Apple.com, my school's main page, etc.) and they all loaded up flawlessly, albeit a bit slower than usual. I then did the ultimate test and went to YouTube to fire up some videos. Again, the loading was a bit slow, but it wasn't terrible and above all else, I was just amazed that it worked! I took it a step further and tried it with the weather app, Poynt, the NFB app, and App World, and all but App World worked (which I had already known about, but decided to try anyway). I was beyond amazed at this point.
Now, you may be wondering why any of this matters. Well, for one, PlayBook owners that also own a BB smartphone might have already noticed that the native Browser and the Bridge Browser don't really communicate with one another, so the bookmarks, login info, etc. that you have for one are not recognized by the other. I used to think that if I wasn't in a wifi-accessible area, that I would be forced to use the Bridge Browser and have to input all my login info again (a tedious task, given the fact that I took Joseph's advice and use LastPass to create random passwords for all of my login sites, and yet have no app or browser plugin on the PlayBook...) However, by using Bridge with the native browser, I don't have to essentially "log in twice" to the same websites. Of course you may think that this now makes the Bridge Browser redundant, but I believe that RIM put it in place as a security measure, as it has a more direct connection with the information stored on your smartphone (if I understand it correctly, which I probably don't. But that's what I'm going with for now.) Which brings me to my next point...
Using the Bridge features of your smartphone, you cannot load certain media files embedded on websites; in my experience, this has been limited primarily to YouTube videos shared on Facebook. This is in either the native browser or the Bridge Browser, and it doesn't matter if you're also connected to a wifi connection or not. The window for the embedded window will show a chain-link fence-type graphic with an exclamation point over it. It took me a long time to realize that it was because I had one of my Bridge apps open as well (Messages, BBM, Calender, etc.), and I figured that RIM did this to protect your phone from content loaded over wifi. The reason that I believe this is because once those apps are closed, you can load media without any trouble. With this "new" feature that I just learned about, however, I can not only use my phone's data capabilities to connect to the internet, but I can also do pretty much anything I can do with wifi (so long as my Bridge apps are closed). This is important for me because, as I indicated earlier, I am currently sporting a BlackBerry Storm2 9550, which does not support anything past OS 5 and does not have Mobile Hotspot capabilities.
Sorry for the long post, but I thought that I'd share my experience with you. I'm sure that I'll have several more "IDKYCDT moments" before OS 2 is released in February, and I'll likely have even more once it is. Usually the novelty of a new device that I purchase wears off within a week or so, but I'm just as excited about my PlayBook now as I was when I first fired it up exactly two weeks ago today.
As CrackBerry Joseph asked in his "Custom folders and colors on your BlackBerry Smartphone" post, what IDKYCDT moments have you had with your PlayBook since you first received it?
Disclamer: I did do a quick search of the PlayBook forums and saw a few topics that mention this feature, but I wanted to take a different approach with this thread to introduce a cool feature that I had no idea about until late last night. My Playbook gets better and better each and everyday I own it!