bought a Blackberry Curve 8100

[QueBert]

Not exactly sure why I bought this, I have no need for Exchange on a phone. But any ways, this is my first BB, I generally haven't liked their phones at all in the past but I wanted to give one a real try instead of just using my friends for a few minutes so I can form a better opinion on it.

When I take the battery out and put it back in it takes A LONG time to get to where I can actually use the phone, maybe 65 seconds. I thought my Moto Q was slow, I get a spinning hourglass that just spins and spins, is this normal?

I put a 1 gig microsd card in it, it comes up in Windows when I connect the phone, but in the phone it seems to come up whenever it pleases. I installed mediaPlayer so I can watch video full screen and about 75% of the time when I go to the browser it shows only "device" and no "media card" Maybe I'm "special" but I couldn't find any default media player built in. I'm sure there is one but the menu system is funky to me. I hated it at first now after a few hours I'm realizing I just need to get use to it.

The address book is ugly, on my Motorola Q I bought a program called Photo Contacts Pro, which was very sweet. I don't see anything like this but maybe I'm not looking hard enough. I would be willing to pay for an app that will liven up the address book to something not so plain and boring.

I have a Plantronics 925 bluetooth headset, which supposedly works with the Voice Dial on the phone. I press the button on my headset until it beeps, wait get another beep and nothing. If I activate voice dial using my phone the headset does nothing. If this doesn't work is there a 3rd party app I can buy?

I know plenty of BB only forums are out there but I only hit up AT for all my forum needs. I would like to figure these things out so I can learn to like these phones

 

[DivideBYZero]

8100 Pearl or 8300 Curve?

- The Boot time is slow. It should be ~2 minutes, but will feel like 10 when you're sitting there watching it.

- The MicroSD card will NOT be available to the device when you are connected to your PC and have it mounted as a flash drive. This is to prevent contention between the device and the PC it's mounted on. When you disconnect, the Media player(default OS one) rescans the content, so it may take a while to appear in the list. The default media player does full screen video so you don't really need a 3rd party app.

- The address book can take pics and show them tagged on emails from the contact and will show the pic when the contact calls. The list is ugly, yeah I suppose, but functionality wins over flashy looks. Type any part of your contacts name or details and get them instantly. Way better than pictures and revolving GFX IMHO. YMMV. P:

- Voice dial and BT should work flawlessly. The BlackBerry official BT headset is a Plantronics Voyager unit rebranded. I have it, it works 100% with V.Dial. My GF's BT car system works with the BB V.Dial. Check the manual for the headset or follow the next bullet point...

- Update your OS. Check your current version by going to Options/Advanced, then 'About'. If you are on anything lower than 4.5 you need to upgrade. The 4.5OS is a big improvement. Do a search on CrackBerry forums for a good link for your device. WARNING! The 8100 != 8110 != 8120, etc. Each model has a different OS and cannot take the OS for each other. You will not brick your device, I'm just saving you some time. WARNING#2: The OS update will take about an hour, that includes a full device backup, OS upgrade and reload of all your stuff.

PM me or post another thread if you have any more issues!

/0

 

[QueBert]

lol sorry itt's a Pearl DOH!

the OS is the latest T-Mobile offers, I was tempted to update to 4.5 but I read a lot of people doing it and having issues with their SIM card dying and such. Before I read about all the people having problems I did try to update to 4.5, I followed the directions to a tee and would get a fatal error every time it tried to read/load the ROM. Not sure why. Any ways I decided to wait until T-Mobile tests and officially releases 4.5 I'm still trying to get use to the UI, it took me a long time to find out how to turn on the camera, I'm sure there's an easy way but I'll be damned if there's an icon or quick launch button - without configuring the side button to launch the camera. I should probably, no definitely RTFM, it's a big sucker thou heh. I'll go start on that today.

So far aside from not understanding the UI and the battery life being horrible this phone isn't bad. I got Voice Dial to work with my BT headset it's pretty slick, and I read the 4.5 OS update will add A2DP support. Right now I don't think much of the device as a media player, but all I need to do is find a decent peice of software to play my music, any suggestions? All the app's I'm finding cost like 20-30 bucks I did try Mediaplay but it seems pretty generic.

 

[DivideBYZero]

In all reality the standard 4.3OS media player is pretty good. It will show the album art if it's in the album dir on the media card, and 4.3 WILL have the AD2P profile. Pair up the device to your BT Stereo device and you'll get an option in the media player to output to BT device. I've done it plenty of times and BlackBerry even sell a Stereo Gateway for this very purpose.

4.5 is a valid GOLD OS for the 8100. T-mo are just dragging their feet with acceptance testing. All new stock devices are 4.5. The ROM failure was probably related to the device version I highlighted above.

To get to the camera there is a camera Icon. You can move ANY icon around on your screen by hitting the BB key and selecting 'move'. If you put it in the top 5 icons it will also show in the 'Home' screen of your profile (dependent on theme). You can also use the camera from the pictures app. It will be at the top of the list, above the thumbnails.

 

[QueBert]

I tried to install 4.5 again with no luck, I downloaded it from the link on the crackberry forum so it should be valid. I installed it on my PC, deleted the .xlm file from the common files\rim\apploader directory, when I ran the desktop app it said it found new updates and listed a bunch. I let it do it's thing and I get the critical error, my BB reboots and nothing has been updated. I've rebooted my PC and my BB and tried, no luck at all. Not sure what the problem is as far as what's on it, there's nothing much I just got it and haven't had time to install anything.

any ideas man?

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: QueBert
I tried to install 4.5 again with no luck, I downloaded it from the link on the crackberry forum so it should be valid. I installed it on my PC, deleted the .xlm file from the common files\rim\apploader directory, when I ran the desktop app it said it found new updates and listed a bunch. I let it do it's thing and I get the critical error, my BB reboots and nothing has been updated. I've rebooted my PC and my BB and tried, no luck at all. Not sure what the problem is as far as what's on it, there's nothing much I just got it and haven't had time to install anything.

any ideas man?

Check here for help with error codes.

HTH

/0

 

[QueBert]

thanks for the link, it's not actually giving me an error code. I think I've decided to wait on 4.5 for now. From what I'm read others saying about it, it doesn't seem to that much better than 4.3, at least not enough for me to spend my time worrying about it. Today I'm breaking into the manual so I can figure out all the crap poking around hasn't helped me with

pretty nice phone though, I'm starting to get use to the keyboard on it too.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Yeah, when you 'get' SureType you'll forget what it's like to use full qwerty. I've just done the switch the other way, from 8120 to Bold with the Full qwerty and it was hard for the first couple of weeks. The thing I found hard was the shortcuts. There are tons of easy shortcuts on the Pearl. There are even more on the Bold, but I didn't know them!

 

[TheBiggmann]

Mini Hijack I suppose, sorry. I just bought a Curve 8330 and it's running the 4.3 OS. I have Alltel mind you, so I know they tend to be behind in things. When I install the desktop assistant and hook it up to my computer will I be able to upgrade the OS from there?

 

[NiKeFiDO]

dbz where is me new os?

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: NiKeFiDO
dbz where is me new os?

I have it on a USB sitck. It'll be available in 'the usual place' tonight or tomorrow. WMK!

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: TheBiggmann
Mini Hijack I suppose, sorry. I just bought a Curve 8330 and it's running the 4.3 OS. I have Alltel mind you, so I know they tend to be behind in things. When I install the desktop assistant and hook it up to my computer will I be able to upgrade the OS from there?

Yes. Get a copy of the latest 4.5.xxx OS (GIYF), then follow the instructions in the package or from howard forums/Crackberry.com, etc.

JUST MAKE SURE YOUR OS DOWNLOAD IS FOR THE 8330. NOT 8300, 8310 OR 8320. THESE WILL NOT WORK FOR YOU DEVICE.

HTH

/0