RIM BlackBerry 7230 Smartphone

My Handspring Visor finally gave out, so I looked for a replacement PDA. If you've looked at PDAs lately, you probably noticed that the field has deteriorated over the last few years. Sony was a promising contender, but they've bailed out entirely. And phones that sync with your PIM (personal information manager) are out there, but there too the selection is still quite limited. Besides, I already have a phone, so I was about to resign myself to a low-end Palm.

Then I remembered the Blackberry. Research in Motion's Blackberry is no larger than the Palms, yet offers a keyboard. So I picked one up.

My first 20 minutes with the device were encouraging. The construction is solid, and your critical PDA apps are there. That's all I wanted. I did notice a couple of strangely obvious little usability issues. For example, main screen is a bunch of icons for the applications, like that of a Palm device. You roll the highlight through the applications with the thumbwheel. But when you get to the last one, the highlight doesn't roll off the end and go back to the beginning of the collection; it just stalls there, and you have to roll all the way back through the list. This is like a clock stopping at 12 and making you go all the way back down to 1 when setting it. Not a huge deal, but it doesn't bode well for the thought that went into the interface design.

Of course, the interface on a device like this will always be a trade-off. Text entry with the keyboard is far faster and more accurate than with a Palm's stylus. But on-screen navigation is cumbersome, forcing you to roll through many fields (sometimes while holding a control key) to reach the one you want, then clicking the wheel and often selecting "change" from a menu. But many of us set most things up in Outlook or another PIM and only occasionally enter things on the PDA. The important thing is to have your information backed up and portable, with alarms for appointments.

As a software developer, I was also intrigued to find that the applications on the Blackberry are Java-based. My one foray into Java in the past went very well; so despite a lack of free time to mess with it, I liked the idea of an approachable programming interface.

The trouble began when I installed RIM's desktop software, Desktop Manager. The Desktop Manager installer presents only two options:

A. Blackberry Enterprise Server or Blackberry Desktop Redirector
B. Blackberry Internet Service

Where is option C, "no messaging service" or "stand-alone"? The descriptions for both of the above options mention corporate or third-party involvement, with specialized servers and administrators. What if we don't have or want any of that? The user is left to guess which option is the least offensive; that, by the way, is option B. Selecting option A will result in encoded sync E-mails arriving at your regular E-mail account's In box several times a day from blackberry.net, despite your not having subscribed to any service nor even being capable of using the Blackberry for E-mail.

Trouble continues when you go to make sure your Blackberry's OS is up to date. One would expect to find everything he needs on RIM's Web site. Well, they have the latest Desktop Manager software (4.1), but the latest OS for the device itself is nowhere to be found. The Blackberry OS is currently 4.x, but the last one listed on RIM's site is 2.7 (check it out at https://www.blackberry.com/Downloads/entry.do). As it turns out (they don't tell you), even 2.7 is no good; it's only for the model 900. This is insufferable on the manufacturer's own site. RIM shirks the OS-delivery duties off on wireless providers, but what are customers supposed to do when they aren't using a wireless provider? Those providers' Web sites won't let you access the OS downloads without a phone number that's on their network, and some providers don't support the 7230.

So apparently people are supposed to troll the Blackberry forums on various Web sites until they find current software, which may pay off but is not acceptable as a solution, and it's not even practical for the less Web-savvy. I got the job done, but I don't think the casual Web user would quickly dig this stuff up. For your information, the T-Mobile-branded OS can be found at http://www.t-mobileapps.com/downloadcenter/Software_List.cfm?selDevice=8

So, what about the functionality of the device itself? I expected the Blackberry's PDA functions to be at least as mature as Palm's, since it's a more recent OS and should have taken the best of its competitor and then refined it. But the fallacy of that expectation started to become clear when I learned that RIM has just added, in version 4 of its OS, the concept of "categories." Apparently, up until now, everyone's phone numbers, tasks, and memos were all jumbled in giant lists. How was this deemed acceptable even in version 1? I don't know, but it seemed that I didn't have to worry about it because the feature has been added.

Not quite. After syncing with Outlook, I went to check the data in the PDA. I pulled up Address Book and tried filtering my contacts by category. Pulling up the list of categories, I inexplicably found things like "recipes" and "presents to buy." These were categories from my memos and tasks, mixed in with the categories for contacts. Again, how does a problem like this make it out the door?

Other, one-time syncing problems occurred. On the second sync, the Desktop Manager flagged every task as changed, showing nonsensical due dates (like the year 2765) for each one. None of my tasks in Outlook have a due date, so apparently the Desktop Manager failed to initialize that field to zero. When I opted to ignore the supposed changes, Desktop Manager re-added every task, creating duplicates. On subsequent syncs, it happily allowed the huge discrepancy in the number of tasks between Outlook and the Blackberry. News flash for RIM: That contradicts the whole concept of "in sync." I had to go into the Desktop Manager's "Backup and Restore" utility to delete every entry in the Tasks database and start over.

Now for the most damning problem: Appointment alarms from Outlook are not working on the Blackberry. Appointment times come and go without a peep. I spent a lot of time doing extensive troubleshooting on this, trying to determine a pattern. I found one: If you set up an appointment with an alarm in Outlook and then sync the Blackberry, the alarm will not sound unless you open the appointment on the Blackberry and edit it somehow. For example, change the time by one minute. My guess is that re-saving it writes its entry in the database correctly, which is not being done by the syncing software. This pattern clearly suggests that it's a software defect and not a setup issue.

For me, this alarm defect renders the device unusable. There are other problems, such as the Blackberry's failure to delete a program from the device when instructed to (and claiming that it was done). But let me stop here and summarize the product as disappointingly immature. The lack of common-sense functionality, the poor syncing with Outlook, and the lack of a central place to go for software updates are too much to take.

Leaving PDA hunters back at square one...

UPDATE: I have two support requests in with RIM, filed in the most roundabout manner through a back-door E-mail link I found on their site. In fact, the first bug report concerned the total lack of a bug-reporting link on the Blackberry site. The other one reports the absence of the current OS from the site. For their initial response I had to give them a D-. They infuriatingly sent the same boilerplate response to both reports, nothing more than a collection of irrelevant and inapplicable suggestions, which revealed that they do not bother to read customers' E-mails. They'd best be summarized as, "Talk to anyone but us." About their own Web site?

I can't overstate how offensive it is for a company to waste customers' time by ignoring the content of their inquiries and sending them garbage responses. When I said as much in my response to their response, I did receive a message apologizing. But then they asked me to re-state the problem, when my original message was already embedded in THEIRS, a few lines down! Unbelievable.

UPDATE 2: I received a response about the missing OS downloads, and that response still referred me to wireless carriers. RIM did not explain why it doesn't distribute the core OS and leave only specific modules or customizations up to the various providers. It's ludicrous. This is as if Microsoft refused to provide updates or patches for Windows, but instead forced you to go to the vendor from which you bought the computer, years later. That vendor could be long defunct. Or maybe you built your own computer.

Same problem here. Maybe you don't have a wireless provider. Maybe you've discontinued it and switched to a regular mobile phone because they are much smaller than a Blackberry. And as we all know, the wireless industry is far from stable. What happens if your provider goes out of business? With the Blackberry, you're screwed.

RIM never addressed the serious bugs I reported. So, after spending far more time and giving many more chances than I think the average consumer would, my conclusion is that there is no way anyone should buy this product for himself. The only people using Blackberries should be (and apparently are) people who were given them by a mid-sized to large employer who requires mobile E-mail access, runs the necessary server and relay service, and pays for it all. Even then, you still have bugs to contend with.

Note that this product is listed under the PDA category on this site. But its own manufacturer does not support its use as such, and therefore I'm giving it the lowest possible rating. Perhaps it should be moved to the phone category.

What a missed opportunity for RIM, and what a waste of time for me. But hopefully not for you!