My Issues With The BlackBerry
I love my BlackBerry. No surprise there, but I do have one major issue: the network.
When it comes to writing network aware applications its a total crap shoot. There are so many things that can go wrong that it really just leaves everyone scratching their head, and becoming ever more frustrated. When I first jumped into the world of writing BlackBerry apps that are able to communicate with web servers I thought to myself, "gee! This is easy!" Well it is... When you're testing on the emulator. Just wait until you decide to do a little BETA testing. Here's a very small list of things that can go wrong
Now not all providers will lock your network down like Bell Mobility does. Rogers (in Canada) is pretty good for allowing network aware applications to run nicely.
See to me it seems like RIM is doing its damnedest to make sure that they squeeze every last penny out of the BlackBerry users, and all that ends up happening is that the general user thinks that nothing ever works, and that their provider doesn't know anything (well, they're right on that one) and that all the programs suck. This isn't the case! The problem comes from the fact that everything can be locked down in so many ways that its almost impossible to tell where the problems come from!
Really the only way to ensure that the network enabled apps work fine is to connect these things to a BES server... Which unfortunately isn't cheap.
How can we fix this?
Let me know what you think about these points!
When it comes to writing network aware applications its a total crap shoot. There are so many things that can go wrong that it really just leaves everyone scratching their head, and becoming ever more frustrated. When I first jumped into the world of writing BlackBerry apps that are able to communicate with web servers I thought to myself, "gee! This is easy!" Well it is... When you're testing on the emulator. Just wait until you decide to do a little BETA testing. Here's a very small list of things that can go wrong
- Your BlackBerry hasn't been set up properly. This typically stems from your service provider not sending you all of the service books
- Your provider locks the network down. Sure you can surf the web from your blackberry, launch your Google chat client, and check your email, but when it comes to playing with any small third party applications you're totally out of luck.
- Your service provider doesn't understand what you're trying to do. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like any providers really know how the BlackBerries work. Sometimes you can fix your network connection issues simply by filling in your providers APN user name and password. A very simple procedure. The hard part is trying to actually find this information. Its damn near impossible to find this info on the web, and a lot of the information is out dated. Don't bother calling your provider for support, because they will think you've gone off the deep end! (If you want to find the APN information for your carrier BlackBerryFaq.com is a good place to start (direct link to APN article)
Now not all providers will lock your network down like Bell Mobility does. Rogers (in Canada) is pretty good for allowing network aware applications to run nicely.
See to me it seems like RIM is doing its damnedest to make sure that they squeeze every last penny out of the BlackBerry users, and all that ends up happening is that the general user thinks that nothing ever works, and that their provider doesn't know anything (well, they're right on that one) and that all the programs suck. This isn't the case! The problem comes from the fact that everything can be locked down in so many ways that its almost impossible to tell where the problems come from!
Really the only way to ensure that the network enabled apps work fine is to connect these things to a BES server... Which unfortunately isn't cheap.
How can we fix this?
- would be for RIM to open the documentation up a bit so that all network aware applications run fine on any network (like Google's applications).
- Get some actual BlackBerry support people who know what the hell they're talking about to work for the service providers,
- Release a free BES like hosting system that handles all your application data. (My IMAP email works quite fine when it comes to syncing my inbox on everything).
Let me know what you think about these points!
2 comments:
i only came here to get the scirbes cat photo
i only came here to get the scirbes cat photo
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