Some Blues with My Blackberry

On the whole, I think I like the Blackberry concept. After all, where else can you find a cellphone that combines a phone, keyboard, email, web access, texting, and a whole host of other options? The answer is that unless you are willing to pay for something like an Apple iPhone or similar device, you won't find everything that you have on your Blackberry.

My current Blackberry, a 7100i that I picked up through Sprint/Nextel, is not my first experience with a Blackberry device. When they first appeared about a decade ago, I had an early Blackberry that offered primarily text and email. Graphics were practically nonexistent, unless you could use the green background and black lettering.

The key to the Blackberry, at that time, was the email. You could easily add the email boxes you wanted to monitor and have have them installed by customer service. It was quick and easy, but, at that time, the coverage was spotty (the cell network was nowhere near as robust as it is today) and finding a hotspot where you could receive your mail reliably took some doing. I actually didn't have that particular device very long as I was a contract systems administrator and the site where I was working provided it for me temporarily so I could monitor mails or machine problems by having logs and other things emailed to me.

I really didn't miss it, too much, when I turned in the equipment and moved on to my next assignment, primarily because of the coverage and because of the poor screen/text quality.

Let's fast forward to 2009, right now, and look at the Blackberry 7100i that I have had for about a year. It's a nice phone and it offers a whole bunch of features, such as photo email, memo pad, to-do list, email monitoring pages, calculator (a very handy feature, once you've mastered it) and a teeny little QWERTY-style keyboard that is more confusing than not.

Indeed, that's one of the things I would fix about this particular Blackberry - the keyboard. The keys are far too small for convenient texting - it could be that I have 10 left thumbs, but I don't think so - I do know my eyesight isn't as good as it was when I was a kid so trying to figure out the teeny little letters on the keyboard leaves a lot to be desired.

Then, there's the double-tap arrangement where some keys serve as two different letters. In reality, it's a triple-tap arrangement because not only are there keys which serve as multiple letters (the E/R combo under the number 1 on the dial comes to mind) but there's also the need to push another key to access the number that's just above the E/R and, if you want to capitalize the letters, then you have to push this tiny capitalize key on the lower right and all it looks like is an up arrow. And, if you want to use a special symbol such as an "@" then you have to hit a fourth key - actually the same key you use to access the numbers.

Is this confusing or not? Once you have used it for a while, it's not confusing, but until you get past that critical spot in the learning curve, you find yourself looking at the help pages or the manual to see how things work.

And, I'm still not sure of everything the phone can do and I have been using it for more just about a year.

Yes, it is true there are bigger Blackberry models on the market that offer bigger keyboard and larger screens, but I opted for the smaller sleeker model and I ended up with the smallest and sleekest keyboard you can imagine. Indeed, if there was one thing that I would change first it is the keyboard because it's just too small for real work. (Sometimes it takes me 10 minutes to key in an email answer that would normally take me a minute or two on a regular keyboard.)

Another feature that I would change is the cursor wheel/cursor. On the 7100i, there's a small roller wheel on the right-hand side that acts not only as the cursor, but also as the task selector. To activate a task you first roll the cursor to the icon you want on the color screen, but then you must push the wheel in to activate the task and then you have to roll the wheel again to get through the screens of the task, if it is a multiple-screen activity.

Backing out of an activity requires a separate key altogether that's just below the cursor key. And, turning the device on or off requires still another keypad on the upper left of the 7100i, while accessing the speakerphone requires pushing the other side of the keypad on the top. Again, like anything else you use for a while, it all becomes pretty much second-nature, but there's the learning curve, which, in some cases, can seem almost straight up.

Take a small task like turning on the Bluetooth capability. My wife kids me about using the Bluetooth earphone when I am driving, but it really does make a difference in hands-on driving. I don't have to fuss with a large phone instrument at my ear and drive one-handed. To me it is a safety issue, so I'll take the kidding. The more serious learning curve hear is the Bluetooth icon which is a blue item that looks more like an anchor than a Bluetooth antenna and then when you access it to turn it on, it says "Turn Bluetooth On" in its caption. Now, unless you know the default setting is off, you would be confused by the caption reading "Turn Bluetooth On" and you probably would think that the default was on rather than off.

If you think that's confusing, then how about an alternative way to turn on Bluetooth, using the set up pages that appear when you access the wrench icon.

I'd like to see the icons be more self-explanatory and I'd also like to see them a tad larger. (I realize the middle-aged eyes aren't as good as young ones but give us a fighting chance.)

I could go on with my nits to pick, but I'll close with two more that drive me bonkers. One is the on-hook/off-hook set and the other is the menuing system. There are multiple ways to call. First, you can open the phone book icon and find the person you want, by rolling (scrolling with the wheel) and then opening the menu where you have about a dozen choices including texting the person, using SMS messaging or calling the person. You roll up and down the menu to find the choice you want and then you push in the scroll/roll button. It does take time to get used to this. You also use this same menu to edit the entry.

Then, of course, you can just dial the number you want from the keyboard, but you have to be either at the call history list or the main screen to dial the number and then you have to push the green off-hook key to make the call. To end it, you push the red on-hook key (or you can simply open the menu, if you are using the phone book and roll to end call. Believe me, when I say, it's easy to roll by that setting.

And, if that's not confusing enough there's the menuing system itself which gets you either into the task you want or out of it. And, just getting into the Web requires you to either choose the preselected web setting or going to the link. If you go to the link, you just keep pressing the cursor and you go where the Blackberry directs you, however, if you want to go somewhere else you choose the "Go to" option and then you have to keyboard the whole thing which involves not only using the double-tap keys, but also the upper/lower case key and the symbol selection key on the bottom.

I'll grant you that I did choose one of the smaller Blackberry models on the market and if I had it to do all over again, I'd opt for something larger. Still, this could be a nice device if Motorola fixed some of the items I've mentioned. If it did make these fixes, the 7100i could be a really nice little phone.