Good looks and great functionality -- what could be better than that?
I have very much looked forward to having a BlackBerry that was a cross between the Bold and the Curve. The Bold is beautiful multi-functional and has quite a nice leather-ish back plus it has both WiFi and 3G but the big size is kind of a turnoff. Besides it's on the AT&T network which is expensive since minutes data and messaging are included separately. (One of the reasons I had to cancel and give up on the iPhone 3G as much as it pained me to do so.) The Curve is smaller lighter and has WiFi on the T-Mobile network but no 3G. What is a multitasking mobile girl to do? Why I got the BlackBerry Tour 9360 of course! The Tour while beautiful and functional is not free of flaws but more on those later.
The Tour is a little larger than the Curve 8900 but not by much. It is available on the Sprint and Verizon networks and it is a CDMA/3G EV-DO phone. This replaces the old World phone. The look of it is quite nice. Black with silver/chrome edges (Verizon's Tour's edges are somewhat darker) and with a slick black finish on the back it is indeed very attractive. (However the battery cover feels a little flimsy to my taste like it would break if I accidentally dropped it.) It's got the latest BB operating system which means you will get the neon-like menus. The resolution is gorgeous much brighter than the Bold's and that is saying a lot! The QWERTY keyboard is smaller than the Bold's though and it might take some getting used to the slightly sparse keys depends on what rocks your boat. With Verizon you get VCast and with Spring you get the Sprint Music Store. Both networks are similar in speed and voice quality but I admit that the phone calls sound better on the Sprint network. You get all of the goodies -- applications from BB's App World the Mobile Office applications that go well with push e-mail (the main reason why I switched to the BlackBerry) FaceBook AIM and RIM's new multimedia functions. You can watch YouTube videos but there is no dedicated YouTube app. The phone is quite good but there are some areas that need improvement. For example:
Poor Battery Life: You will have to charge this baby up at least twice a day if you're one of those people who can't put their BlackBerry down or has to use multiple functions.
Crashes/Lags too Much: It's very frustrating to have to remove the battery put it back in and do a force reboot because of some glitch that shows up from nowhere or because the phone is lagging. I hope there will be a firmware update that will fix this problem soon.
No WiFi: I knew I had to give this wonderful function up when I decided to get this phone. Alas I still have the iPhone. Even though I can't make calls with it because I've cancelled service with AT&T I can not only still use the iPod feature but also watch YouTube videos download songs from iTunes and surf the web via Wifi. It's like an iPod Touch now really.
Doesn't Sync with a Mac: Well it can sync with a Mac but only with buggy third party software like PocketMac.
TrackBall is Tricky: It either moves too fast or doesn't move at all at times. This isn't a big deal but it's nevertheless irritating at times.
A Mediocre Browser: Even though the BB browser can now load HTML web pages it is still a far cry behind Mobile Safari (iPhone) WebOS (Palm Pre) and Android (G1). The browser is slow especially if you allow scripts to load and you need the trackball to zoom in and out and scroll up and down and side to side. Very time consuming and annoying. And no matter how much you zoom in you still have to strain your eyes to read the content.
That is all I can think of at the moment. All in all it is a good phone one of the best smartphones on the market now in fact. If you're not into touchscreen (I do but having used the iPhone I wanted my next phone not to be touchscreen) and love BlackBerry then get the Tour. It's got a more updated look plus all the things you love about the BB. Choose which network works best for you. As for me I chose the Sprint network because of its affordable data/voice/messaging package bundle and good network capabilities in this area. However the Verizon version has a more marketable appeal to it even with the complaints about call quality and whatnot. It's your choice.More detail ...
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