Blackberry OS 10: An admission of guilt and punishment to loyalty.

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Sandeep Bhalla

Blackberry OS 10:

Blackberry has finally come out with a survival plan. A new OS 10. New models of phones Z10 and Q10. I wonder what the alphabet stand for. Perhaps Z for ‘Last’ attempt at touchscreen type OS. While Q may stand for ‘Question mark’ on continuing with qwerty keyboard.
Many good reviews are already on the net which give detail review of features of OS. Here is a review from the perspective of a consumer called upon to decide if it is a time to shift his loyalty away from Blackberry.
OS 10 is based on QNX which is a Unix like OS. It is the same platform on which all the previous touch devices of Blackberry were based. Take a look: Continue reading →

Vodafone India shareholders and creditors would love to know this!

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Sandeep Bhalla

There seems to be serious problems in operations of Vodafone India. There are certain facts the Vodafone’s India operation that stakeholders would love to know. But I do not know if they will like what they read but I have to tell as a consumer for over a decade and an honest person. I am thinking how to inform them these vital facts about the financial health of Vodafone India. Administration or operational problems are first signs of financial trouble. Any way let me capitulate the facts then we will deal with the problem of communication:
1. It is now consumer unfriendly. A company which exploits or ignores its customers get a kick in the back from the customers, either when they least expect it or when they thought they least deserve it. Continue reading →

The ideal Mobile phone with ideal features.

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Sandeep Bhalla

Mobile manufacturers are churning out new models of mobile everyday. New technological barriers are broken. Faster processors, gleaming display, niche looks and often larger display. I wonder if they cared to actually ask the consumer what they want? At least no one ever contacted me despite the fact that I am tired of receiving tele-marketing calls. Not a single call professing to survey for mobile phone features, has been received.
My presumption is there is no survey and phones are being churned out to resemble last successful product(s) but with some hardware changes. Software mostly untouched. A natural corollary would be that success of Samsung and Iphone is more a matter of chance of novelty of ‘touch screen’ than anything substantially material.
Therefore we have decided to document our requirements for a smartphone. Here is the list of expected features: Continue reading →

Blackberry contacts backup without BIS or app

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Sandeep Bhalla

Backing up the Contacts/Address book on black berry phone without Blackberry Internet Services or Desktop Software:

Desktop Software from Blackberry provides an option to sync contacts with the Windows contacts but I do not use Windows. It does not provide for backing up of the contacts as a stand alone file. Now with Gmail Sync gone dead. It may be a problem on some rainy day if the phone crashes. Searching for an app to sync or backup the contacts, I came across several apps in App Store, but none was working properly. For example:

JUMP Backup: works only on phones sold by Jump phones in USA. Wirefly had very poor review. Not a single user recommended it. Phonebook For Ever is a browser-based contacts web site in which each contact has to be manually typed/added. (Some pre-cloud/CSI technology) Contact Backup by Droid Mobile does back up the contacts for free but it retains the xls file which can not be opened or sent in unpaid version. In fact it can not be known if this file would be readable in paid version as well. Hence I did not go beyond trying the unpaid version.

There are many paid apps but there is no way to know if any will work. Especially when few apps actually deliver what they promise. A Paid apps called Backup Contacts by Amaira Soft, creates numerous vcard or vcf files in a folder on media card. It charges a meager amount of Rs. 37/- for this service but it is not worth it. Why? Because there is a simple solution like this, without any app.

Solution

Backing up contacts

This solution backs up the entire phone book via bluetooth and no app or BIS or anything is required except another device with bluetooth. If properly setup, just one click is required. Continue reading →

BlackBerry WeatherTrax from JaredCo has problems!

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Sandeep Bhalla

Unlike Android, BlackBerry has no native program for Weather Check. Jared and Company provides a free program called ‘WeatherTrax’ . However it has a problem giving weather. It appears that it gets confused between the minimum temperature and current temperature, some times. See the snapshots below: It may be noted that low temperature is higher than the current temperature on both occasions. In first snapshot low was 11 and current was 6. Similarly in the second, the low was 8 but current was 3 degrees Celsius. This is apparently some anomaly which needs to be fixed.

For the record, fog and cold weather has certainly hit hard, the life in New Delhi. While everything is normal the weather is not. Fog greets at all the places. Visibility is OK after sunrise rather at 8.00 AM onwards. This is a picture taken at about 10.45 AM:

The sunlight could be seen today at 11.00 AM. This picture (like the above one) was shot from Blackberry 9220 just when sun rays hit the ground:

BTW traffic on this road is always thin. It is not because of fog. Elsewhere it is the usual chaos.

Winter has frozen my thoughts.

New Delhi without Dust-storm.

Sandeep Bhalla's Blog

Relativity of truth is more complex than light.

Tag Archives: BlackBerry