- Dec 28, 2011
- 6
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- 18,510
I've been looking to replace my 1st generation iPod Touch for years now. I'm not naturally an Apple fan, but we got this device from work. I switched to it when my Palm PDA started dying. The Touch also eventually worked poorly and unreliably for a host of reasons. Android looked like a solution, but I held back because of what I read about its security model. I keep a lot of information on PDA that definitely should not go into the cloud or be accessed by any app other than the host notes/contacts/calendar app.
The BB now seems to be the best solution, so I browsed online articles and videos. Now I'm wondering if I can get feedback from those familiar with the device on how it meets my itemized requirements.
As a reference point, let me be clear that I think Palm use to be the golden standard. Being a throwback to those days, I don't use many of the capabilities of the new devices. I don't do games, social media, I am not constantly connected, so the BB hub is probably not a clincher. About the only real-time communication I do is texting and cellphoning on my cell phone. For my past PDAs, the core apps are calendar, contacts, & notes. Over the years, I've gotten to appreciate WiFi-enabled capabilities like mail (IMAP), maps, browsing, streaming music/radio, the occassional short video. Apart from WiFi, I have also gotten spoiled with MP3 files, podcasts, camera, and not having to use Palm's error-prone stylus/graffiti.
Things that I haven't experienced on the same device but would like to are phone, texting, data plan, video recording, and landscape orientation slide-out keyboard. A non-slide-out takes too much display area, and a portrait oriented keyboard is too error prone for my hands. It is a blessing for one-hand usage, but I'm willing to give that up. I've never seen a device with slide-out keyboards in both portrait and landscape orientation, and I doubt that any vendors will make a slide-out of any orientation for the BB 10.
About security, I realize that BB has the firewall between the corporate and personal use, but this will be a personal device so that is a nonissue. More of concern is avoiding a hazard that a friend described with respect to Android -- he said that there are times when the user can hit the wrong button and sync contacts with Google's cloud. This was a deal breaker. The only thing I want clouded was email, since I use gmail anyway. Other than that, clouding is a definite no-no. Does BB email have to go through the RIM cloud, or can I set up an IMAP client directly to gmail? How does one sync calendar, notes, and contact with Outlook? Does it go through a USB cable, home WiFi, or does it have to go through a cloud? What about syncing media files such as sound tracks and pod cast episodes?
The final thing I'm wondering is a bit of a biggy. It just drives me nuts that OS/app developers insist on throwing the time-of-day in your face at every turn. I am trying (as I always have been) to convert myself from a night-owl to a normal person with enough sleep. Being constantly hammered on the head with the time is the death knell for this. This behaviour is baked into the DNA of most devices/OSs. The irony is that I doubt most people care about the time of day at every waking second. Is there a reasonably simple way to ensure that the time is not shown except when specifically needed?
The BB now seems to be the best solution, so I browsed online articles and videos. Now I'm wondering if I can get feedback from those familiar with the device on how it meets my itemized requirements.
As a reference point, let me be clear that I think Palm use to be the golden standard. Being a throwback to those days, I don't use many of the capabilities of the new devices. I don't do games, social media, I am not constantly connected, so the BB hub is probably not a clincher. About the only real-time communication I do is texting and cellphoning on my cell phone. For my past PDAs, the core apps are calendar, contacts, & notes. Over the years, I've gotten to appreciate WiFi-enabled capabilities like mail (IMAP), maps, browsing, streaming music/radio, the occassional short video. Apart from WiFi, I have also gotten spoiled with MP3 files, podcasts, camera, and not having to use Palm's error-prone stylus/graffiti.
Things that I haven't experienced on the same device but would like to are phone, texting, data plan, video recording, and landscape orientation slide-out keyboard. A non-slide-out takes too much display area, and a portrait oriented keyboard is too error prone for my hands. It is a blessing for one-hand usage, but I'm willing to give that up. I've never seen a device with slide-out keyboards in both portrait and landscape orientation, and I doubt that any vendors will make a slide-out of any orientation for the BB 10.
About security, I realize that BB has the firewall between the corporate and personal use, but this will be a personal device so that is a nonissue. More of concern is avoiding a hazard that a friend described with respect to Android -- he said that there are times when the user can hit the wrong button and sync contacts with Google's cloud. This was a deal breaker. The only thing I want clouded was email, since I use gmail anyway. Other than that, clouding is a definite no-no. Does BB email have to go through the RIM cloud, or can I set up an IMAP client directly to gmail? How does one sync calendar, notes, and contact with Outlook? Does it go through a USB cable, home WiFi, or does it have to go through a cloud? What about syncing media files such as sound tracks and pod cast episodes?
The final thing I'm wondering is a bit of a biggy. It just drives me nuts that OS/app developers insist on throwing the time-of-day in your face at every turn. I am trying (as I always have been) to convert myself from a night-owl to a normal person with enough sleep. Being constantly hammered on the head with the time is the death knell for this. This behaviour is baked into the DNA of most devices/OSs. The irony is that I doubt most people care about the time of day at every waking second. Is there a reasonably simple way to ensure that the time is not shown except when specifically needed?
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