Playbook Question

[Dolby]

If those that have it - if you tether your BB to the Playbook and get the phone functionality (ie emails) on it - do the emails stay on when you're not tethered?

So it simply syncs BB > Playbook?

 

[stricken]

nope. All those things are only availab;e while tethered. As per Blackberry World article earlier today... native implementations are only coming in August... (or so they say)

Get an iPad and get it over with.

 

[Dolby]

Thanks!

I'd think about it if it did flash

EDIT : and had USB
EDIT : and has card readers
EDIT : and had stero speakers
EDIT : and had a standard display port

 

[Ecco]

Why havent RIM not offered BIS on these devices - so weird. Thats the whole reason most people buy blackberries. Its like they somehow believe their devices can compete with the rest without BIS - doubtful.

 

[CranialBlaze]

Why havent RIM not offered BIS on these devices - so weird. Thats the whole reason most people buy blackberries. Its like they somehow believe their devices can compete with the rest without BIS - doubtful.

Simple, its wifi only, not possible for BIS to work without a operator network, BIS/BES will be enabled on the 4G editions that will be released later this year, they are holding them back as 4G/LTE support will be finalized later this year and they want to add another nail into the toy pads coffin as the toy pad can only do up to 3G were as the sim enabled playbooks will be able to do wimax, LTE and 4G.
This is also the same reason for no native apps, the wifi will never have native email and BBIM clients as they need the the BIS to work which will not without the sim card, the wifi is targeted primarily at the current BB market, the LET/4G/Wimax will be targeted at the non-owners.

Think about it, if you had a BB and a playbook both with separates sims and pins and bbims, would you then selectively choose which contacts get which pin, will you invite your entire contact list to your playbook, if so which device should your contacts contact you on, what if you have the PB on you and forgot the phone in the car or visa versa.
As a BB owner i rather save the cash and take the wifi, i really do not need my emails and IMs on 2 desperate devices, **** i don't even keep them on my pc anymore, i want it for the new functions and essentially the bigger screen, i want it for tether. I am not about to go buy another sim card and pay for another bis subscription when i can simply connect it to my current device.

That's why i wont waste my cast on that toy pad, apple is renowned for chowing bandwidth, research shows it uses at least 30% more data than any other handset, and that was the iphone/3g, its quite possible that the toy pad uses more and this was compared agaisnt data usages of j2me, symbian, android, winmob and bb devices. This research was done in a country were wifi hot spots are as common as coco cola, imagine how much more data is uses compared to standard devices in a country like ours were wifi hot spots are as scarce as honest politicians.

Apple mobile devices are internationally the most expensive devices to own and that's got nothing to do with their actual selling price.

 

[CranialBlaze]

Thanks!

I'd think about it if it did flash

EDIT : and had USB
EDIT : and has card readers
EDIT : and had stero speakers
EDIT : and had a standard display port

I love apples hatred for flash, they spent all of 2009 stating that they will never support it because its such a security risk and makes them vulnerable to hackers, then a few month later at the hacker os convention Mac was the first OS to get hacked and the hackers themselves said flash was a waste of time, their are far easier ways to hack a machine than a browser plugin, apple had no comment.

Flash may have security holes, but mac is a security hole, that's why many international companies do not allow tier staff to get iphones and if they do choose to get a one as a personal device they are not allowed to use it on the internal network and they not even granted access to the internal mail server.

 

[Ecco]

Think about it, if you had a BB and a playbook both with separates sims and pins and bbims, would you then selectively choose which contacts get which pin, will you invite your entire contact list to your playbook, if so which device should your contacts contact you on, what if you have the PB on you and forgot the phone in the car or visa versa.
As a BB owner i rather save the cash and take the wifi, i really do not need my emails and IMs on 2 desperate devices, **** i don't even keep them on my pc anymore, i want it for the new functions and essentially the bigger screen, i want it for tether. I am not about to go buy another sim card and pay for another bis subscription when i can simply connect it to my current device.

You assume RIM's target market are BB owners only then. Foolish if that is the way RIM is going. They already loosing marketshare on their phones.

 

[CranialBlaze]

You assume RIM's target market are BB owners only then. Foolish if that is the way RIM is going. They already loosing marketshare on their phones.

They not loosing market share, theirs is actually increasing, report came out last week about it. They way they working with the playbook is not the brightest, but currently for non-bb owners the playbook is pretty useless, you can only IM via 3rd party apps, you need to use the browser for any emails, there is no active push service, but unlike apple who is an extremely limited device the playbook has opened up a hole new world for mobile development, it is the only device that supports app development in every know format including html5 and flash, its integration with android means it now essentially has the largest app market as the android market is said to surpass apples within the next 6 weeks, and even though currently integration is limited with androids appworld, the final touches are ready and the release date for BB OS7 with 100% android integration as well as the counter update for the playbook has been pushed from Q4 to Q3.

With the gsm devices release sporting 4G it will be 1 of a handful of devices that support that speed and both vodacom and mtn are testing LTE towers in major cities meaning wew ill also be 1 of the few countries to support the network speed, something apple will only be releasing in their next ipad. RIM is thinking long term with the playbook and for the most part the wifi edition is really a testing ground, 1 that's being paid for by us. We buy the device, we find a problem, we report a problem, they fix the problem, that way when the LTE device is launched all the initial problems will be solved and a quick in house test of the LTE hardware can be done before launch just to route out any major bugs

 

[Dolby]

Think about it, if you had a BB and a playbook both with separates sims and pins and bbims, would you then selectively choose which contacts get which pin, will you invite your entire contact list to your playbook, if so which device should your contacts contact you on, what if you have the PB on you and forgot the phone in the car or visa versa.
As a BB owner i rather save the cash and take the wifi, i really do not need my emails and IMs on 2 desperate devices, **** i don't even keep them on my pc anymore, i want it for the new functions and essentially the bigger screen, i want it for tether. I am not about to go buy another sim card and pay for another bis subscription when i can simply connect it to my current device

You make a point about 2x BIS contracts - but it'd be great to have the option of using either BIS ord HSDPA. I have a BB - but I'd still like a 3G Playbook with standard SIM.


BIS is limited in speed - right? Will that change in the near future? It's pretty painful to use at times and it'd be great to have - for example - a 2+2 promo SIM for 149.00 sitting in the Playbook.

 

[CranialBlaze]

You make a point about 2x BIS contracts - but it'd be great to have the option of using either BIS ord HSDPA. I have a BB - but I'd still like a 3G Playbook with standard SIM.


BIS is limited in speed - right? Will that change in the near future? It's pretty painful to use at times and it'd be great to have - for example - a 2+2 promo SIM for 149.00 sitting in the Playbook.

The speeds only limited by your handset and network, the better your 3G coverage and the lower the usage is on that tower the faster your speeds get, the source server also has an effect.

 

[Dolby]

I have a Torch and Bold 9700 - both of which should get me decent speeds?

On speedtests, Vodacom gets me between 3-5mbps - almost instant. So same coverage yet the BB lags.

How sure are you its limited? Is there a way to test speeds?

 

[CranialBlaze]

I have a Torch and Bold 9700 - both of which should get me decent speeds?

On speedtests, Vodacom gets me between 3-5mbps - almost instant. So same coverage yet the BB lags.

How sure are you its limited? Is there a way to test speeds?

Define lags, only app i seen to do speedtest is gone, cant find the download any longer, the developers shut the project down. I simply compare on my download speed, @ 3mb your absolute peak download speed will be 384k, but to achieve that you would probably need to be under the tower and the only one using it.

You must also remember that BIS runs on a separate network from normal network internet, you could run the test simultaneously and a 3g modem will get a different result to a BIS enabled blackberry, depending on network traffic the modem could be slower than the handset or it could be faster, all depends on coverage and overall usage.

 

[Dolby]

It appears you're right ; I just downloaded at 200kb/sec.

Why does it seem longer?
Could latency effect a BB more?

 

[Dolby]

For example on this forum - I type my reply and click 'submit reply'

I see 'requesting' at the bottom of the screen for 2 or 3 seconds before the page refreshes. On the PC, its near instant - as are my friends' Anroids.

EDIT : More like 5 seconds between refreshes!

 

[CranialBlaze]

It appears you're right ; I just downloaded at 200kb/sec.

Why does it seem longer?
Could latency effect a BB more?

Latency will affect anything, but for browsing its different to downloading, browsing is done using a compression algorithm on the RIM server, i have seen browsing sometimes faster when on edge than 3g, but thats simply perception.

For a wireless signal everything from the thickness of your wall tot he position of a leaf, speed of the wind and even intensity of the sun could affect your latency, its over the air so the air has a huge effect. Also 3G on most handsets is still on the 2100MHz band, its a really cruddy band and easily prone to external influences, the higher the frequency the the narrower the band and the shorter the effective range and the quicker you will loose speed the further away from the tower you move, also the higher the frequency the less likely it is to penetrate even the most seemingly insignificant objects, a simply sheet of 80g paper is enough to obliterate the signal of a 108mb wireless router, you put a sheet of paper on 1 side and every connected pc on the other side of that sheet will instantly drop the connection.

This is why cellc has the 900mhz umts network, BB does not support it yet, but other handsets do, so where with a 2100mhz you can get say for example full speed within 10km of the tower, @ 900mhz you will have the same speed up to 50km away, so with vodacom now you speed would drop in this example from 10km already but cellc you will only see the drop after 50km.

The newre BB handsets like the 9900 thats coming later this year will support the 900MHz, they should also then be supporting the 21mbps connection speeds.

 

[CranialBlaze]

For example on this forum - I type my reply and click 'submit reply'

I see 'requesting' at the bottom of the screen for 2 or 3 seconds before the page refreshes. On the PC, its near instant - as are my friends' Anroids.

EDIT : More like 5 seconds between refreshes!

PC is a direct link, essentially so are androids and other mobile devices, BB goes from vodacom to europe then to mybb then back to europe before jumping down to vodacom and to your phone, other handsets go to voda, mybb, voda and phone. Pc works about the same way.

Also fixed line way lower latency, 384k adsl will ping JNB in about 60-80ms, a 21.6mbps 3G modem will do it in about 300ms, logically that makes no sense, but its the big dif between copper and CO2.

 

[Dolby]

... But then we get back to what I said at the start

BIS is slower and it'd be nice to have an option of a quicker browsing experience

 

[CranialBlaze]

... But then we get back to what I said at the start

BIS is slower and it'd be nice to have an option of a quicker browsing experience

Will never happen, not as long as your using BIS, its not physically possible unless they place a BIS server closer to South Africa.

Technically its not slower, it just has a higher latency, page loading time is fast, its the initial connection that's slightly slower, kinda splitting hairs over a few seconds really. Remember there was a time when we used GPRS.

 

[Dolby]

I understand its physicas and it probably won't happen - but a few seconds when quick browsing is noticable ... 5 seconds every link I click.

Hence an option would be good
When looking for info and following links (not reading the whole page) I can easily click on links 6 or 8 times per minute (30+ seconds of waiting) and it'd be great to browse at my old Cell C speed

 

[CranialBlaze]

I understand its physicas and it probably won't happen - but a few seconds when quick browsing is noticable ... 5 seconds every link I click.

Hence an option would be good
When looking for info and following links (not reading the whole page) I can easily click on links 6 or 8 times per minute (30+ seconds of waiting) and it'd be great to browse at my old Cell C speed

Suppose each to his own, never bothered me, also I am always on edge anyway.