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BlackBerry Tour Review
My first 48 hours with the BlackBerry Tour (on Verizon) has been a bit of a challenge.
The Verizon version of the new BlackBerry phone has a great form, but I'm not sold on the software under the hood! To wrap it up in one sentence, I will hold on to it until Nov 6th and trade it in for the new Droid!
Similiar to what I said about the HTC Hero (see video review), I am not afraid to dive into menus and figure things out. But to be honest, the BlackBerry OS has to be one of the most difficult and least intuitive I've used to date. Even harder to figure out than Windows Mobile, which was a surprise! I would NOT recommend the BlackBerry Tour for the beginner smart phone user, even for a geek like me, I'm still struggling with it after two days!!!
The things I like:
The physical build - The keyboard is nice. The phone reminds me of the older model Treo 755 by Palm. I like how it feels, and typing is pretty accurate, thought a dedicated "." button would have been nice, rather than two shift keys! It feels pretty solid, even though it's plastic. The screen is bright and clear, but it feels "short" compared to many of the new touch screen models. It's also not a touch screen, which I find strange and clunky. Even the Treo 755 had a touch screen.
It comes with a very nice carrying case/belt clip, which miraculously wakes up the phone when you slide it out of the case! It also comes with a few different electrical charging configurations (for when you travel to another country), a charger with a long chord (not USB), and a seperate USB synching cord. Now I just need to travel more so I can take advantage of all the different plugs (sheesh).
The things I wish were a little better:
The trackball is not easy to get used to. I wish it had a "D" pad instead. You can adjust the sensitivity of the trackball, but it still feels sorta jumpy.
The speaker is loud in most applications (music player, Pandora, speaker phone), and not loud enough in others (Navigation). This could be the fault of VZ Navigator... the turn-by turn instructions start out almost inaudible, then get really loud. The result is that you either miss the first part of the instruction, or get deafening street names. It also sounds a little "tinny", but what should I expect from a phone, right?
Camera - I like parts of the camera. It supposedly shoots 3.2megapixel photos with auto-focus, digital zoom, and LED flash. It also takes video. The photos themselves look good on the screen, but when sent to a computer via email, they look more like sub-megapixel shots. They are fuzzy and often have purple haze around the edges. There are a lot of useful settings you can change, but like most settings on the BlackBerry, they're not super easy to drill down to, or use. Zooming and panning in the photo album is also a tedious, multi-step process. There is a soft key on the side of the phone that comes automatically programmed as the camera shutter button. This is a nice feature that launches the camera and makes it much easier to take photos than reaching for the track ball.
Surfing the web is sort of like walking down the shrinking hallway in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. The pages load with text that is next to impossible to read. You can zoom, but not much, and not easily (through a series of tapping on the menu, scrolling to zoom - repeat). (Update - Download Opera Mini web browser... it's much better than what comes on the phone!) Because there is no WIFI (unforgivable), pages sometimes load slowly, depending on which almighty Verizon data coverage is available - read - "Where is that huge group of people that's supposed to be standing behind me when I'm trying to surf the web??? - Where's the map for THAT?"
Things I feel neutral about:
I have only played with it for 48 hours, but I still can't find any sort of "app store" on the phone. Perhaps one has to download apps to their computer and then synch with the phone??? How 2004 is that? (Update - This too does not come pre-loaded on the phone. Download "BlackBerry App World" and then you can download apps over the air... how hard would this have been for them to preload it???)
I'm sure with time, I could get used to how this phone'S functions. I've seen plenty of business users "Cracking" away at emails, etc., But honestly, I am not drawn to this OS WHATSOEVER. It feels several years behind the times, and not intuitive at all. I've heard the same for the BlackBerry touch screen models as well.
Battery Life:
It seems comparable with the iPhone, HTC He ro, Palm Pre, etc., and maybe even a little better. Smart phones today all seem to suck the life out of your battery pretty fast, especially when you engage the potential the devices are capable of. But, unlike the iPhone, the BlackBerry Tour has a battery you can swap out hiring the services of a technician.
Overall:
I'm very impressed with this phone's hardware, keyboard, screen, c amera, and App World (via the computer). But I don't like the operating system. It's fast at some things (calendar, and switching between apps), but clunky and years behind most other new phones (things are simply not where we've come to expect them to be). After two days, I'm still not clear why I have to have THREE different icons for two different email accounts. It's confusing and frustrating. So unless you love solving puzzles and have a lot of time to tinker (the included instructions are not much help), you may find yourself lost like me, and looking for something a bit less geeky.
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|68.190.148.xxx |2010-07-01 14:00:36 logan - very pleasedthis phone is way better than my old pearl. it's faster bigger more practical and the keys i can actually push! probably my favorite unlocked blackberry so far. bc i don't like the touch screens. anyways this is good for my business, email is easy to use, but the games and social media keep me busy while im bored between jobs. got 2 for me and my son at gsmallover .com we he loves his too. 2 thumbs up
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Last Updated (Tuesday, 24 November 2009 08:00)