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Originally Posted by rickmahn
The real news is BlackBerry Connect. Finally a US carrier is selling and supporting a device with BB Connect pre-installed.
I hope this bodes well for future releases of BlackBerry Connect for Windows Mobile and Palm.
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My thoughts exactly. I suspected that the reason we never saw any Blackberry Connect gear here in the US was because the carriers were waiting for the NTP suit to wrap up. Now that it has, it's encouraging to see another BB option other than a RIM device. And if you're like me, a PPC junkie working for a place that has installed BES as the ONLY wireless remote mail option (in other words, "no we're not buying you a phone with Bluetooth so you can remote into the network with your PPC when you can have a Blackberry") than stuff like this is a welcome change from the tyranny of RIM devices.
What's so bad about RIM's devices you ask? Well, for one none of the Bluetooth Blackberry's support being used as a modem via Bluetooth. The closest RIM gets to this is USB tethering with the 7130 and maybe the 8700. To date Bluetooth is only for handsfree stuff. Think Outside has a Bluetooth Blackberry keyboard, but that's about it.
To date, Blackberries don't make very good phones either. If your device is part of a BES system, and the security policies are in effect, your Blackberry needs to have a password typed in to unlock it. For the email and PIM purposes, this is completely understandable. But for using it as a phone you still have to type in the password. Also, none of the Blackberries have the standard telephone alphabet printed on them (which is also understandable as there is just no space to print them) and this is a problem if you ever have to dial phone numbers that are given in letters. Like 1-800-COMCAST for example.
If the Nokia 9300 can act as a Bluetooth modem, this changes.