My First Crackberry (tm)
 

Just got my first BlackBerry (aka digital leash) for the office. It's a Curve 9250, whatever that means. My personal phone is a t-Mo DoubleShot (MyTouch 4G Slide--a keyboard is a must-have for me). I have avoided this for years but my dept moved to a new division and when I work from home I'm expected to be available instantly during on-hours.

I'm really surprised, this thing is actually a pretty slick little device. Once I get used to the (yet another) goofy keyboard layout I will be much happier with it than with my Slide.

Why?

It's small. Significantly smaller than my DoubleShot.
The UI is easy to use and puts everything where you need it.
It's 100% integrated with our Exchange servers, so I have my calendar, work email, etc. available instantly.

RIM clearly understands the usage model for a corporate mobile device. If I wanted something to ***** around with and play games, movies, MP3s, etc., I might choose a different device. But for staying in touch with the office and getting work done I have a feeling these things are the gold standard.

Soon you'll wonder how you ever got along without one.

It is a great device for work and staying in touch in this instant communication world we live in.
I moved on to an iphone since I work abroad.

Tools not toys
 

Yeah, they have lost out on the whole coolness factor but for work....they are still a great choice. Companies like them because they offer good security and intergration with other ops systems. Lets hope RIM can figure out its finances because they will be missed if they fail.

Blech! I've been given blackberries a couple of times, I don't like them. Heck, I prefer an android Pioneer to one. I can normally get Corp email on them, and can even set them up to connect to VPN if necessary. I've even used them when at lunch to connect to the Corp vpn, then connect to network gear via SSH.

I'm not a fan.

Fwiw, you can do all of that on an iPhone, plus it's not an antiquated POS....


Blackberry died 2 years ago, it just forgot to tell its corpse

Wow. There's some hate'n right there.

Clearly you've missed the point "RIM clearly understands the usage model for a corporate mobile device."

Now go play Angry Birds until you feel less, well, angry.

RIM has stepped on their *****s so many times in the last 2 years, I stopped counting. Their tech has totally missed the boat when it comes to the rest of business productivity apps available on Apple/Android.

RIM is hemorrhaging money. The only play they have is to sell their patents. I would be surprised if they are around by this time next year.

Sorry, but they gave you an antique. It's like driving an Old Ford Model A. Sure, it will get you where you need to go, but it won't do much else.

BB is an enterprise product, currently the others are more of a consumer product. If you work in the enterprise, and you understand the security concerns of the consumer devices you're probably going to go with RIM for now.

Possibly when "Good" gets a little better you may see a change, however, people and companies do not want their work data mixing with their personal devices. Anyone that has to answer to PCI, or HIPPA and is subject to frequent audits does not want their wedding photos mixing with their corporate email.

There are other hurdles still, like remote device destruction and key management as well, I could go on forever.

I always root for the underdog. I bought in a month or so ago. Risky? I suppose so.:D

My unit is a Bold and seems to work good for the mostpart aside from the odd lockup that a reboot aways fixes. You do get used to the keyboard!

Love the Blackberry but mine died and moved to a Samgsung Skyrocket and except for the terrible touch keyboard, like it.

Still miss the blackberry but they MUST upgrade the puppy if they are to survive...

BYOD is a wave. Its going to wash over all of this.

I am no fan of Good either, but there are huge cost benefits to BYOD and people don't want to carry two or more devices.

PCI, HIPPA and some legal/finance are verticals need the additional security. Most don't, and you should expect a BYOD plan to come really soon.

I totally agree, we're working on BYOD as well, major cost savings to us of course.

The worker drones get so exited bout BYOD, "woo, i can bring my own device and be a unique snowflake".. (let's ignore that most of the snow flakes all want an Iphone, not much uniqueness)
Not realizing that essentially they now pay and use their own phone for work rather then getting an expensive phone from work to use for free..
Work phone breaks, hand it in , get replacement, work phone old, drop it, get a new one.. free
Now they use their own, mostly iphones for work with a MDM client on top.. they pay for it themselves, if it breaks, they gotta deal with the replacement.. if they loose it, they gotta pay out of pocket to get a new one..

The company obviously is happy, cause it no longer has to pay for phones.. It's a joke really how stupid employees can get and pay out of pocket just to get to use their own particular choice of phone..

My idea is different, if they want me to use the email and calendar function on a phone company better give me a phone that works and works in a way i like.
Or else i'm just not going to use the smart crap much and i'll just use it as a brickphone.

Exactly stijn... I love my personal iPhone, but no way would I use it for work. They issued me a POs android for work, but it's on the exchange sync so it's handy. The full time folks get iphones that they can pay a small fee and use personally, which I'd jump on if I was full time...

Some of the other guys in my dept have done the BYOD thing with their iPhones (no Android allowed, yet).

There is absolutely no way in HELL would I let our IT dept anywhere NEAR my personal phone! :eek:

Plus, I hate the iPhone. I need a keyboard.

I'm telling our clients to start working on an exit strategy from RIM, they have only one shot left with the new OS next year but I don't think it will save them.

As far as BYOD it's here to stay, we recommend MobileIron over Good....

Curious - why do you classify the work provided Android a POs? Is it really old and/or having issues? What does your personal iPhone do for you that the POs does not? I have handled several phones that were a POs so I do believe you. I also know some folks who have zero experience with an Android phone claiming the same.

OP - personal preference I guess. My company phone was RIM based. When became independent I went with iOS then Android. Might entertain a Nokia Windows phone next...not sure on that. Frankly from a functional standpoint I don't see how a RIM device is any better than a smart phone when it comes to corporate calendars and email - IT department details withstanding.

I've had to carry dual phones, one personal, one corporate. Inevitably you will get cross pollination.

I prefer to use my personal device for both. My plans have always included enough minutes to cover both.

I've worked it one of two ways, either expensed the business percentage of calls or just worked out a flat monthly rate. The flat monthly is the easiest to get done. Go to IT or finance, find out how much it costs per corporate phone supplied, have AP add that to my pay check under reimbursed expenses (not payroll taxed).

I've also never had an issue getting the company to replace a personal device although in fairness I've only had that come up once.

The benefit for me is,

My phone bill is subsidized.

I don't have to carry multiple devices.

If I jump ship my contacts can still reach me.

Works for me.

YMMV

I like BYOD.

Did a stint with CA.

Hated the Dell they issued me and all the restrictions on getting my work done that came with the corporate policies.

Pretty much used it for corporate email only.

Carried my PPC MacBook and used that for the bulk of my work.

The day that 17 in Intel MacBooks came out I ordered one.

Loaded up Parallels and migrated the Dell as a VM.

Locked the Dell up in my office and a when I bounced did not have to worry about cleaning it up before handing it in.

IT had no clue that the computer they'd been updating and maintaining remotely had not been turned on in a year.

The Blackberrry requires Blackberry Enterprise Server in order to sync with Exchange. There is no native Exchange support. This does allow the information to be encrypted when transmitted so if you are worried about someone listening in that way it would be difficult to read that information. On the onther hand, once received on the phone it is open for anyone to read if they are able to unlock (or someone forgot to lock) the phone.

On the IT side I prefer a non RIM device for support as you can use a product like Meraki to limit the ability to use certain apps while on the corprate network.

Don't forget Domino and Groupwise support which hardly any other platform offers.

and once it has been received on the phone it's not open to anyone to read if the Admin has locked it down properly, eg, encryption on the device memory and on the SD card with mandatory password and device lock timeout..

As far as security goes, none of the others has the security capabilities on the phone like the BB has out of the box. They aren't even in the same league.

You can lock those things so hard , they become useless to even the actual user..
And so far there has only been one vulnerability, via the sdcard encryption (which anybody worth his salt when it comes to actual security would not have allowed anyway).

For corporate purposes it's still the best thing out there.
The only major negative aspect is the relyance on RIM for the SRP connectivity.. That's the Achilles heel of the entire BES><BB thing.
It's also what makes money for RIM and the network operators..

I don't understand why Apple or Android doesn't offer a phone with a real physical keyboard. They both sell very similar phones. A physical keyboard is the best for business applications and easy typing.

I think that RIM/Blackberry will sell a ton of phones once they get their 6 new phones out later this year or in early 2013. I would buy one and I'm sure that 78 million Blackberry users are dying to upgrade to the latest BB10 phones.

I think that they will recover with the business crowd (big money) but will never get back to where they were 5 years ago.

Rim is in trouble , even with the new phones coming up

They brought out Mobile fusion Universal device server to support other phones on Android and IOS and it's a dog

And Blackberry Device Server to replace BES.
And compared to BES it's also a low spec POS backend.

At this time there's no information available that says the new phones will even be backwards compatible with BES.

So Admin's are all happy with BES, it does the job, well, stable.. easy to manage, easy to administer devices, very high specced with policies and features.

And the replacement is a POS that can't even do half of BES. and rim does a pisspoor job at communicating.

Even worse. There is NO upgrade path. It's a totally new platform.


Essentially RIM gave up the customer base by telling them "you gotta do something entirely new" Which means the customers start from scratch , which also means they have no reason not to compare with ALL the players in the field.. There's no incentive to simply "upgrade" cause they can't.

And in comparison with the other players, Mobile fusion just ain't all that great.


What they should have done.. is keep BES, and bring out a Blackberry Connect Client for Android,IOS,and nowWindows 7.. They used to have Blackberry Connect for Nokia, Siemens, Erickson, all kinds of 3rd party phones.
They should have just revamped that for Iphone and Android..At a fraction of the development cost no less. Just 3 apps, done.

The existing customer base would have been like "oh cool, so we already got the backend to do Iphone and android right here? we don't need Mobile whatever or Zenprise whatisinaname? Great!"
and the Iphone/Android crowd would have been like"oh, we can get to keep our gadget phones, and still get world class proven technology security and all it's meant to be? awesome!"
They would have been years ahead of the competition instead of slacking around at the bottom of the MDM pack..

But hey, what do i know, i'm not a CEO, CTO or CXOwhatever at any company..

I agree 100%, and that is the primary reason I haven't switched to an iPhone or Android. These things seem like decent alternatives, but I'm not keen on having yet another thing I have to keep charged:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1347362621.jpg


I am also frustrated by the lack of apps for the blackberry... my wife has an iphone and it really does some need stuff (stargazer etc). There are also more/better productivity apps for the iphone (mileage etc)

Also, my wife's iphone also takes GREAT pics... I wouldn't chose one phone over the other based on that, but it would be be very useful for my work to be able to snap higher quality pics when I need to. Every day I shoot quick pics for work (house inspections, taking pics of broken things I need to replace, taking pics of things for reference and as reminders). The blackberry pics are appalling... surely it wouldn't be too hard for them to put on a better lens/image processor.

Yep. I have 1 user left on our BES. The rest are migrated, but I already had the BES in place. Would have been easier/better to just change their phone on the BES, and keep all of the high zoot security.

I know you can lock them down, but my point was that if the userdoesn't have the automatic lock and forgets to lock the phone and puts it down at a bar then someone else has access to all that info. I guess my point is that all the security in the world doesn't help when the end user leaves the front door open. Mine works fine other than I get no reception at our house so I still use my personal phone for when I am on call. There is a readon Verizon doesn't film the "Can you hear me now?" near our house.

With all the faulty upgrades and misqueues that Good keeps delivering, I think messages carved in stone and delivered via slingshot would be a better option! :mad:

Randy

That's what I was saying, but I would like to hear more real world experiences with Good, we have been recommending MobileIron for a couple of years

There are IT policies to prevent that from happening.

Sure if the user sets down the phone and within 2 minutes it get's picked up, nothing can stop that from happening, on any phone or computr device

But the IT policies on BB allow it to auto lock so fast that users will be annoyed by it... It can be done way stricter then any other platform out there.. I have the list of policies they apply in Defence applications... You don't wanna know how bad those phones get locked down.. it's almost impossible to still use em with all the locks they put in place.. basically phone out, phone in, email over secure line, no apps, not even the built in ones, anything else is verboten.

I can confirm this....

And that is why the users hate me.

It is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both. :D

Most of the people here get along with me just great, but this is a facility that gave multiple good to great awards to people for showing up on time and getting to work right away. That isn't much pf a paraphrase. One of the management asked why we couldn't allow the residents to use computers on the corporate network unsupervised. Fortunately I don't really care if they like me or not. This is my job and I do what needs to be done to remain secure. But I can do it with a smile. Mostly because I am generally a nice guy, but other times because I know it will tick someone off. I love April 1st around here.

Everybody hates the security guys until the stuff hits the fan and you save the company from a DDOS attack, or you protect a million customers SSN numbers.

Of course the flip side is you also get the blame if that happens. :)

Where have you been?!? The first Google phone, the G1 had a full qwerty keyboard, the G2 also had a full keyboard. There have been at least a half a dozen other android phones with keyboards. I had both of the phones that I mentioned and only just upgraded from the G2 earlier this summer.

Frankly, since the introduction of Swype, the hardware keyboard is essentially an anachronism. Swype is much faster and easier than any physical keyboard on any phone that I've ever used.

I will say that the iPad/iPhone keyboard sucks.