The Strawberry Project

According to a tweet from @blackberry earlier this week, then today was inked as the official release day for the new Blackberry Bold handset from Research In Motion. I’ve been using the handset on a daily basis since leaving for Chicago and so have put together a few notes on what you can expect from using it

Similarities between the Bold and iPhone are bound to be drawn given the styling of the RIM device. It remains a trackball and keyboard based input system, so there’s no change to a touch interface yet, although that is rumoured to be coming with the ‘Thunder’ product expected at some point this year (pick up a pinch of salt at this point).

The Bold is the first RIM device to have HDSPA capabilities, and if I heard correctly, T-Mobile (UK) are teaming up with 3 (UK) to provide greater 3G coverage across the UK. Data transfer speeds, using a BES server for the usual data compression and encryption, will likely be at least twice as fast as existing GPRS coverage. Add on top of that the ability to use WiFi, and you’re getting towards a single device that could just about have you leave the laptop in the bag for a long journey, though I don’t think any device has got to the point that you could leave the laptop at home yet.

All the extra services available on the handset obviously put a greater strain on the battery. One differentiator with the iPhone is that you can actually take the back off the phone and swap your battery out. If you’re away from power for any length of time as a business traveller, believe me when I say this is a necessity. The iPhone 2.0 at least doesn’t have the battery soldered in to the device, but you still need to be an expert safe cracker to get the smooth case apart, and you’ll probably find that it invalidates your warranty. Certainly not something you’d be doing in the field.

I’ve had issues with the quality of the browser on RIM devices before today, and on the pre-release version of the Bold firmware, this continues to be the case. A number of the more popular business/traveller social network sites that I’d normally make use of just don’t work all that well on the current version of the browser, which is a great shame as the new screen is really great.

A couple of weeks ago we were lucky enough to attend the VIP Preview for T-Mobile’s introduction of the Blackberry Bold in the UK, and RIM had provided us with some test handsets a while before that. There was a fair bit of conversation amongst people around the iPhone as a competitor platform, as you might expect, and we’ve certainly had the same questions asked of us at work. The new public sector list prices for iPhone put it almost head-to-head with the exec RIM devices and data plans, but there are noteable differences - particularly depending on your backend architecture and security requirements.

More on this when we receive our release handsets.

Tags: blackberry, bold, launch, review

I spent part of yesterday’s ride taking snaps with the Blackberry Bold to see if I could get the geotag feature to work.  Here’s the results.

Blackberry Bold photos

As you an see, the additional Lat/Lon EXIF data is working fine and dandy. I’ll have a look at the full Gmaps integration with GPX track data in a bit. DIY chores to do right now

Tags: 9000, blackberry, bold, geotag, photo

Went out for a pootle on the bike today to get over the fact that I’ve been on flights and sat in meeting rooms for the past week or so. It’s all @jimphelps fault, as he’s been going out pretty much the whole time that I’ve been cooped-up inside

The weather was glorious today - warm, with a bit of a breeze (as ever, it seemed to be anabatic and therefore detrimental to my inbound speed). The heat was also a bit warm for a climb, so I took a detour out to Rocky Mountain Cycles in Llantrisant to grab a new Camelback. If you’re in the area and need a friendly bike shop, then there’s nowhere better - they even filled up the Camelback for me and topped it off with some powder to keep me going. Pretty good job really, as I was out of bananas and hadn’t eaten much before setting out.

Aside from avoiding decorating and other rather dull chores that need to be done around the home, the idea today was to test out the geotagging of the new Blackberry Bold (9000). I wasn’t convinced that it was doing anything when I was out in the States, but it seems I was wrong. It was almost certainly due to the overshadowing of all the tall buildings downtown that was preventing a good lock. Here in sunny Wales, where we’re lucky to see the sky, it’s no problem. I’ll re-edit this later with some of the images tagged for the trip.

Max speed today was down a little on what I might have expected for the route. I’d have thought that I’d have been able to hit 45mph without too much trouble, but it seems that wind resistance was going to spoil that for me on the way back down from peak ride height. The other problem area was 30 miles out on the return leg - I’d forgotten there were a couple of short but annoying climbs on the way back in - and paid the price for it. Oh well, that’s part of the fun.

Track for 26th July 2008

Tags: blackberry, bold, camelback, cycle, garmin, geotag, geotagging, gps, kona, rhondda, rocky mountain cycles

I’ve been out of South Wales for the past week in Illinois and London on business. The former was a trip to Chicago to do 2 very important things: 1) have lunch with Ed Brill of IBM to discuss Notes-related things, and 2) find out whether TOGAF 9 will make it to being new shelfware this year (short answer: no).

It was a pretty packed few days, but I did manage to walk a few miles on the Saturday to take in some of the sights and test out the camera on the loan Blackberry Bold I have.

Things I’ll probably not get around to blogging about include: Walking Tour; Architecture; Public Gardens; Institute of Art, and; Millenium Park

On the latter, however, I did manage to catch Headlights playing live in Millenium park on the Saturday afternoon, and they were awesome

So in brief, Chicago was exactly like this.

In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s like that every day.

Tags: architecture, blackberry, bold, chicago, ed brill, ferris, headlights, millenium park, notes