BlackBerry

[Guest martinwcooper]

Just thought I'd report back on using BlackBerry with my MDA III. In short, it's excellent!

To be honest when I signed up I thought I'd end up cancelling it, but now I'd say it's easily worth £10/month. The integration into Pocket Outlook is seamless, and now I find myself sending loads of emails from my phone whereas before I hardly ever used it. It's also much faster than I had hoped for, and contrary to some reports I've hardly ever had the situation where it disconnects from the BlackBerry service without reconnecting - it drops the connection when you make a call, but then connects again straight afterwards.

If anyone is tempted to try it, give it a go! ;)

[Guest xda-rocks]

I second that, but mine doesn't always reconnect after dropping the call. At just £10/month it's cheap as chips.

[Guest jfran]

I guess the blackberry service is ok, but isnt it £15 per monthor has the price changed, anyway I have found alwaysonmail to be just as good at a fraction of the cost

rgds

jim

Edited May 18, 2005 by jfran

[Guest TigerNet]

...have you got a link to sign up??

[Guest boyo69]

...have you got a link to sign up??

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

www.alwaysonmail.com

and it is indeed very good!

[Guest bronksy]

www.alwaysonmail.com

and it is indeed very good!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

thats not Blackberry though.. it's another type of 'push' email using different technology.. by a company called Smartner, not RIM who sell Blackberry

[Guest jfran]

I didnt say it was blackberry, but it is just as good at a fraction of the cost of the rim solution, however the only thing I have against it is that for the internet edition I can only configure 1 email account whilst with the blackberry web client you can add up to 10 pop accounts

rgds

jim

[Guest bronksy]

I didnt say it was blackberry, but it is just as good at a fraction of the cost of the rim solution, however the only thing I have against it is that for the internet edition I can only configure 1 email account whilst with the blackberry web client you can add up to 10 pop accounts

rgds

jim

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

you are correct.. but you can set up a separate mail address (like [email protected])

and then forward all your mail to this account and have always on mail pick it up.

This way if it deletes things you've not lost your orig messages.

Alwaysonmail also compresses the mails, and let's you know how big the whole message is, so i set it to download 2k, and then i can see if it's worth looking at!

I find the the PPC edition much more stable than the Smartphone edition.

It's 50 quid a year welll spent!

[Guest boyo69]

thats not Blackberry though.. it's another type of 'push' email using different technology.. by a company called Smartner, not RIM who sell Blackberry

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

that's true, however, i have dabbled with Blackberry Internet edition and the annoying thing is that whilst you can delete from the device and subsequently your internet server, it doesn't sync with your pop server and therefore you get home and have to download the same messages again !!!

at least with alwaysonmail, it sync's with the pop server so you can leave important mail on and delete the rubbish !

[Guest xda-rocks]

How can the Smartner solution be cheaper - surely you have to pay for the Smartner subscription and the GPRS charges on top?

The BB solution costs just £8.51/month plus vat and that includes 50MB of data and this is subject to a 'fair use' policy, which means they don't charge if you go over 50MB.

[Guest bronksy]

ok.. just got me thinking.. so you're running actual blackberry on your device, not alwaysonmail..

how does the GPRS get charged though.. do you no use your networks GPRS? Can you give me details of this then? 9 quid a month for fair use email seems a good deal then...

[Guest xda-rocks]

The BB connects through a separate APN and you don't get charged for the email data and they only give you 500kb of data to use for surfing etc (useless). If you connect using the normal T-Mobile APN you get charged as per your price plan. The BB gprs is always on (apart from when you make a phone call) and you get an new email address (yourname)@instantemail.t-mobile.co.uk which gives you truly instant email, but the BB account can poll up to 10 your own pop accounts (which it does every 15 minutes - so not truly instant) You can however have your isp forward emails to the BB account (if your isp supports this) then it is instant. The cost is £8.51 plus vat (£10)/ month for up to 50MB of email only (subject to fair use), but you don't have to sign a 12 month contract - you can add or remove the BB service at any time and only pay for the days of the month that you had it enabled.

[Guest bronksy]

cheers for that..although im assuming this is on t-mob only?

So Its 120 per year..but i pay 50 a year for alwaysonmail and 4 quid for data so 98per year. admittedly i dont download big attachments over GPRS but still do have my email being checked all day.

tell me also..if i forward mail to the bberry email account its instant..but can i see how big the email is so to choose whether to download it?

what happens when roaming?

cheers

rick

[Guest xda-rocks]

Yes, only on t-mobile.

Does the £4 option give you enough gprs data to check a whole month's worth of email?

Attatchments are listed separately with option to download.

Don't know about roaming. Friend of mine went to Thailand via Amterdam and it worked OK - don't know how he will be charged though.

[Guest bronksy]

i'd be surprised if the roaming charges are not massive.. 10 quid a meg usually..

To be honest the 4meg is usually enough, perhaps I may go a meg over, but my gprs bills are about 4/5 quid a month.

Alwaysonmail apparently does some sort of intelligent compression so you don't get big emails. I set it to download just 2k of the message , and this is usually quite enough to read the email, and I can always mark the rest for download.

I like the idea that I can use any email addres. I have to say it's quite good, better than I though it would be. Would I be correct in saying that O2 put it on their devices as standard or not?

[Guest Pondrew]

I don't believe any of the other providers in the UK currently offer Blackberry on a Blue Angel...

But I could be wrong! ;)