Recently I changed over from my beloved Blackberry Curve 8900 over to an iPhone 4 (http://www.joelhughes.com/blackberry-to-iphone4-before) - now I'd like to talk about how that panned put and whether my fears were justified.

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It's only a matter of days now before I shift over from my beloved Blackberry Curve 8900 to iphone4 and I thought it might be interesting to blog about what I (think) I'll miss and what I (think) the problems may be.

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The odd thing was that the version number was the same (v0.9.5.98) so I thought this was a glitch in the matrix....but I quickly realised I was wrong.

Differences noticed so far:

1) Username autocomplete is back - very useful!)
2) You can post to Facebook Fan Pages 3) Minor UI fixes
4) Native RT support
5) Foursquare integration appears more polished

The Fan Pages are automatically picked up from your FB account (if you have any)

...if I spot some more I'll update this

Joel
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

 Note: this is not the Gmail app - this is extra operating system functionality with relation to how your Blackberry deals with Gmail.

 To kick off the process I had to delete & re-add my email account. You can do this from the BB itself or via the website. I prefer the website route; (note to RIM - do I REALLY have to delete and re add? I mean - I had to re-add filters etc - what a pain!)

 As soon as I re-added my Gmail account a new message arrived from RIM letting me know that the Gmail upgrade was available and from where I could download it. Download and install was painless.

 At first I didn't think the upgrade had installed correctly as it does not seem to affect the default "Messages" app.

 Now this may be because I'm a BIS user but I've always got two routes into my email inbox - the "Messages" app and another app named the same as my email account. Typically I hide one app as there's no point having them both on display.

 This upgrade only affects this 'other' app - which now seems to be called "Enhanced Google Mail(tm) Plug-in".

 When you access your email via this app you'll notice the following:

 1) Add/remove star
2) Archive
3) Report Spam
4) Filter
5) Labels
6) Search

 Ok, each in turn...
1) Add/remove star
Does what it does on the tin. Adds or remove a "star" which is then visible when you review your email online (or via your actual Gmail app I guess). Note though that this is one direction only - whilst you can "star" via your BB, if you "unstar" via the web your BB won't change.

 Personally this doesn't bother me - yes it would be nice if my BB was an exact and continuous window into my email but it is not. I use my BB to review new emails and take action accordingly.

 2) Archive (Gmail terminology)
Archives the email. It then vanishes from your inbox (but not the "Messages" inbox)

  3) Report Spam
Not clicked yet but I'd guess this mirrors the online Gmail feature. Anyone have any comments?

 4) Filter
Not quite sure yet. When I click this it brings up a list of my "labels"..but these are different to what Gmail classes as "filters". Hmmmmm, some more investigation needed here I think.

 5) Labels
A great feature. Allows you to attach (and dettach) Gmail labels to your emails. Labels listed are as per your online Gmail account. This is very good to help tidy up your inbox via your BB.

 No option to add new label as far as I can tell.

 6) Search
Not as obvious here but note that search now has a "remote" search type - I.e. Search your full Gmail account - not just the extract stored locally; very useful.

 That's it for the moment I think. Personally I think this is a very upgrade.

 Joel

 Ps If I find some answers to the above I'll post some amendments.

  
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

 When I first got my BB I used it mainly for email (as you would, this is what the BB is famous for after all) but soon I discovered other great data apps; including Google Talk and many others.

 The major change though occurred when I started using Twitter a lot; both socially and as part of my web design/online marketing business to the point now that I primarily use my BB as my "twitter access point", my phone and (less so) as my email device.

 The other loser to me is RSS and Viigo etc - Twitter is now the easy feed for this information. Viigo need to really think about their future strategy.

 The BB after all is a data access device - as new apps and new ways of working with data come out, our usage patterns change as well.
 It would very interesting to see an analytics app for the BB to show our usage trends on mobile devices. I think this will increasingly show our interest in other data streams as we move away from email.

 It'll be interesting to see how my usage will change in the next year (eg is there a Google Wave app on the horizon?)

 Joel

 Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

 The shutter "noise" on the camera of my beloved Blackberry Curve 8310 is very annoying. I'd much prefer to snap at will without that howitzer of a "KLIK" going off.

 A mate pointed to be a app which does the trick. Great. Problem solved! But no...

 http://bit.ly/Ps2DW

 Sadly you have to pay for the app.

 Am I one of those loons who thinks that just because it is software it HAS to be free? No, not at all - people should be paid for their efforts, I've got no issue with that. It's just my skin crawls at the complete and utter pain of buying something via a mobile device...

 When I saw that I had to pay a measly $3.95 for the app I groaned inwardly. Not at the cost but at the hassle. You just KNOW the 15 web forms comprising the shoddy purchase path on the crappy BB browser will be pretty unbearable.

 ...compare that to simply deducting "credits" from my AppWorld account (which would essentially act as a billing wrapper); a seamless and painless one click purchase path. Job done.

 Heck I'd even pay $10 dollars for the app! or, even more interestingly, I'd be happy to pay $1 a month - but they were only asking $3.95 and I wasn't prepared to pay it. Funny how numbers work eh?

 ...I want to easily spend money via my BB. Anyone hearing me?!

 However, it aint perfect - here are some of my gripes:

 1) It crashes. Lot's of UI exceptions etc - urgh!

 2) Quite by accident, I discovered today that it handles pictures (via twitpic) BUT it does this really clumsily compared with other apps photo integration (eg facebook, flickr)

 3) Poor status light interaction. I like the status light to flash on my BB to tell me something new is up. I'd also like the BB toolbar to tell me which application wants my attention as well as the application icon itself. The worse thing is that twitterberry DOES interact with the BB status light but in a totally random way - now, for instance, my light is flashing like a cop car but why?!?!

 4) It's sssssslow. Why not cache recent activity? Does EVERYTHING have to be reloaded everytime?

 5) It doesn't seem to get updated very often.

 6) I'd love to me able to easily handle multiple accounts

 Still it's free I suppose!

 Joel

 It's not available from the Blackberry app store yet but you can grab it from http://amazon.com/bb

 The app is very slick as you'd expect from an outfit which takes usability and selling VERY seriously indeed!

 As is typical with polished apps such as this, the interactive experience is much better than afforded by the web browser and using a mobile site. As an aside, how can these mobile sites get "better" in general? Surely a polished native app is a sledgehammer to crack a nut? Perhaps a lot of the problem here is the primitive Blackberry web browser.

 A hidden gem on this device is that you can take a photo of an object and, moments later, it will be identified by Amazon and you can buy it (if it's stocked by them). Very clever! Am assuming this is either wholly or partially possible because of Amazon's human driven and monetised Turk service.

 My wife validly asked "ooh! Does this mean I could take a photo of someone wearing a coat I like?" The answer is probably no but it's such a killer app that this feature should be a service in it's own right - take a photo of something, get amazon Turk to identify it and then give a list of where it can be bought from and the app can take a minimal commission on the sale. Job done :)

 Sadly the app is currently very US centric - if I try to buy something Amazon don't realise that I am a UK based customer (even though it's in my profile) and therefore all prices are in USD and shipping is from the US so no buying from my BB as of yet. In fairness I think this is an affliction which affects the websites as well - the sites are very much separate with very little cross over intelligence. Hopefully a UK centric app will be available soon as I could see myself using it a lot: especially with 1-click (tm) turned on :)

 My issue was that it was getting fatter and fatter (which they can get away with in DesktopLand tm but which irks on the limited space of my BB). My other issues was that each new release brought new "features" which looked like bloated junk to me. As well was the vapoureware audiopodcast bit but, apart from that, there seemed to be more and more ads and an increase in what they called "channels" . All I wanted was a good, lightweight RSS reader. That's all.

 So I deleted it.

 After a bit of research I discovered FreeRange (http://freerange.inc) which seemed exactly what I needed but I did get some comments and tweets about a "lightweight" version of Viigo so, I tried it. But it was still a poor cousin.

 I also was uncomfortable putting my eggs in the viigo basket when I just couldn't see the lightweight client being part of their long term stratgey. Surely if it's not as much of a money spinner as it's 'fatter' sibling then it will be internally despised and will simply get the rough end when it comes to development?

 What is the risk you ask? Well it's faff to get your feeds set up and I don't want to go through that too often.

 So, I'm sticking with lightweight Freerange - it's fast and has great keyboard shortcuts. Basically exactly what I want. The webside interface is as naff as Viigo's but there we go.

 What they both need is a really zingy interface for discovering feeds...

 This is amazing because I have really found the app to be essential.

 But, in truth, what I found initially essential about it was the fact
that it was an RSS reader. My interest was piqued last year when it
looked like it might include audio podcasts but, seeing as that has
never happened (atleast on my Curve 8310 4.5 it has not), then, for
me, it is essentially an RSS reader.

 I was alarmed to see the latest v3 Viigo download size was something
list a 1MB! On a small device this is waaaay too much and Blackberrys
do not like running low on disk space (spend a lifetime looking at the
spinning hour glass anyone?).

 Viigo also has load of extra "channels" (RSS for dummies?) and now
that it is trying to appeal to "shopping" etc I think it's moved too
far from its RSS roots in search for a revenue stream.

 So I've downloaded a much lighter, smaller, simpler RSS reader instead
http://www.freerangeinc.com/ - it's much, much more swift to use. I'm
sure it'll take some getting used to and I'll report back later but
it's quicker and it's focussed on RSS which is what I want. I don't
want all that other Viigo stuff.

 Joel