Power Users of Curve
 

I was at the ATT store today, looking at BB Pearl and Curve. The sales guy came up and so I asked him how many contacts you could store in a BB. I said I had about 4000 in my Treo 650 (Verizon). He stammered and said you could only have about 400 in the BB's.

Now, the Pearl is a PDA, right? Not a standard feature phone. So I would think the BB's are only limited by the available memory. Am I correct? Can I expect to store a huge Outlook database into a BB?

Disclaimer: This guy also said BB's didn't have "non-tagged" voice dialing and that you would need a voice tag with each entry. He was dead wrong on this, so I'm skeptical on how much he really knows about PDA's and SmartPhones and BB's.

So I want to hear from "power" BB users. That is, people who live in their BB's with hundreds, if not thousands of contacts. Do you regularly search through (one-handed) these? Do you use your calendars for daily planning? Do you keeps tasks and alarms there? Do you also get lots of emails, web use and PC sync (wired sync to Outlook)?

How responsive is your phone (how fast is the user interface)?

Are you close to maxing out memory?

What are the good things/bad things about your phone/PDA?

Would you buy this again? Why or why not?


Please don't flame here - be constructive with your comments: good or bad.

Thanks,

While I don't have that many contacts, there are plenty of folks here who have thousands of contacts in their BB's. The rep was wrong.

I personally don't know anyone that has that many contacts but I can't believe that there is a 400 entry limit. [someone else will probably comment about this one since I'm only using about 250 right now]

Yes, I consider the Pearl a PDA -but a real pain if you're a heavy user since there is no full-sized keyboard. If you do most of your entries from your desktop and merely use the phone as a reference piece, then the Pearl may work for you. But if you're going to be hammering away at this thing making calendar and address book entries on the fly, I'd go with the Curve since the full keyboard is a world of difference (speaking as someone who has owned a Pearl and now has the Curve)...

I'm a fairly moderate user of my BB. I constantly use the voicedialer as I'm on the road about an hour each day. I use the calendar function to track my family work schedule as well as appointments for my two businesses. Works very well for tracking and entering information. I personally don't use the tasks or alarms as I use a paper-based system for tasks and don't need alarms for appointments. I get tons of emails --both from my Yahoo and BB email addresses. The two-way rectification with Yahoo is simply amazing. It will actually beat YIM to notifying me of a new email! I sync with two different PC's (one at work and one at home) with Outlook and have had very little problems with it. I use the web on the Curve mostly for quick reference lookups (movie times, Wikipedia checks, etc).

It's fast enough that I have never thought about it! Updating the OS will definitely take some time to do but day-to-day operations are very snappy.

Not at all.

I think this sort of question would be best answered by a professional reviewer but I will say that I have found very little in the area of "bad" on this phone yet. In fact, the one problem I did have with it (not being able to shoot video) is being solved with the next OS update!

In a heartbeat! I've never been happier about a single product as long as I can remember. I have actually changed my wardrobe to accommodate my Curve (I no longer wear shirts that don't have a chest pocket to keep my Curve close at hand). Now mind you, I use my Curve for a lot more than just what the BB series does. Besides keeping me close to my email, calendar, and contacts, I use my BB as a media player through my daily travels. I have a 4GB MicroSD card for videos and music, I play it while I'm in the shower as my personal boom box, when I'm on a work site by myself, I can use stereo bluetooth headsets to play tunes and still never miss a call. In fact, once a call is ended, it will pick up exactly where the music left off! I have used the Curve as a second music player for a recent wedding I was DJ'ing where I needed to work two individual sites at the same time. The list goes on and on. Hope this helps...

There is no limit to contacts. The only limit is the device memory.

A work associate has about 3,000 contacts on his 8830, including addresses, and I've never heard him mention any problems with the contacts. Although searching for a name gives a lot of matches for a given search, unless it's a very unique name.

Everything perpetualjon said about the benefits of the curve I agree with. I've had my curve for 3 months now and I love it. Both my wife and I got them and it has made things a lot easier. I looked at Treos before going with BB and don't regret my decision.

I use my curve with Outlook and am able to sync between the two with no issues. I use it as a calendar, alarm and task manager too. I can't write things down b/c I'd lose them. I'm not close to maxing out memory b/c I have an sd card to store my pics and music.

The BB is great for all those features and also works
Now that I have it I'm always attached to it. Even though it syncs with Outlook I barely look at Outlook for my calendar even when I'm at work.

I wanted a phone, organizer, and access to email and my BB does all of that and more. Sorry if I was all over the place but I hope it helps.

BTW the AT&T guys was had no idea what he was talking about.

I have yet to read anything, anywhere, about an arbitrary limit on the number of entries you can have -- aside from the limit posed by the amount of memory available.

There's one downside, though, that I can think of when you have that many entries. I have about 400 entries, and when I make a number of updates in Outlook and resync with my Curve, the next time I use Voice Dial it has to rescan the entire phone book to build its voice look up table. This takes a few seconds with 400 names - not a bit bother. But I can imagine that, with 3000 names, it would take considerably longer. Anybody here with that many names able to speak on this topic?

- Jon

perpetualjon SHOULD be a professional reviewer. I have had every OS smartphone out there except Symbian (from a Samsung i500 to the Treo 650 to the Blackjack to AT&T Tilt), and the Curve is the best communcation/PDA converged device out there. His experience is very accurate for this device. I've only got 2200 contacs on mine, but no problem at ll.

Not sure how long it takes to scan, but is it even useable with thousands of entries? It gives me the wrong choices most times and I have just 150 contacts.

I personally have 422 as of this point on the phone, not the SIM. These aren't just names / numbers either, they are full fields and memory is not an issue.

**EDIT**: Get yourself at minimum a 2GB Micro SD card for pics, music, docs and so on. I just bought a 2GB card for my wife's Pearl and she said she didn't / wouldn't ever have a need for it and she's already using it. I love it when I'm right supplying her with the "necessities!!! :)

I agree w/cmguerra77, I LOVE my Curve and so does my husband. Both of us just coming off the "iphone" (we used to have the 8700 from Tmo, but got swept up in the hype & yes, the "iphone SUCKS in comparison the BB) It has everything I need & use it to. I don't have as many contacts but calendar, alarm, FAST emails, BB messenger, all that I use on a daily basis. I actually find the Yahoo!GO feature quite handy & my husband is trying out the TeleNav Premium GPS (which is working good so far) A GREAT handheld organizer, compact & sleek design perfect for everyday use. I've tried alot of phones/pda & sticking to the BB!
*Previous phones I've had: Sidekick, BB 7100T, Treo 680, BB 8700g, iphone

I agree... his comments were informative and covered many of my questions. In fact, everyone in this thread has offered great (useful!) feedback.

One question for you in particular: do you use Voice Dialing with 2200 contacts? How quickly does it find your contact? I don't mind a few mistakes here and there - I can "learn" how to speak BB for my regular calls. Just curious how long it takes to search 2200 contacts during a voice dialing?

I have about 1300. JC is right. To give you an idea my database sizes see below. Options>Status - Menu Key - Show DB sizes.

Now I basically keep all emails so I can search and find them from the BB. Others do things differently. Should be no problem for alot of contacts but for that many do keep backups as I could see corruption causing issues.

Database Sizes

Total Size: 10831.6K

Address Book: 1317/277.6K
Application Permissions: 276/20.4K
Attachment Data: 27/1.9K
AutoText: 123/7.8K
Browser Bookmarks: 82/19.5K
Browser Channels: 0/0.0K
Browser Data Cache: 2/5.1K
Browser Folders: 5/0.2K
Browser Messages: 1/5.4K
Browser Urls: 5/0.2K
Calendar: 409/421.1K
Categories: 8/0.4K
Content Store: 35/510.3K
Email Filters - 21756: 2/0.3K
Email Settings - 21756: 1/0.3K
Enterprise Configuration: 0/0.0K
Folders: 379/12.7K
Memos: 26/13.2K
Messages: 8799/9183.1K
MMS Messages: 3/155.9K
Phone Call Logs: 190/62.7K
PIN Messages: 9/3.2K
RMS Databases: 7/28.7K
Saved Email Messages: 38/54.0K
Searches: 13/1.8K
SMS Messages: 124/36.6K
Tasks: 31/7.9K
WAP Push Messages: 0/0.0K

I have just under 1000 entries and the scanning takes a bit and incorrect choices occur more often with more entries.

Since Curve only has ~"54mb", ( minus that with the OS, other app that we add) came out about ~20Mb ( this is before Email, messages, call logs, sms etc)


Realistically what is the save contact # , before the Curve get bogged down b/c of low memory?

I do not know how long you have been around wireless and the people who sell it but if you are as knowledgeble as you seem to be, you should know better than expecting the sales people to know alot about what they sell.

Others have covered your questions so I will speak to the difference between the pearl and the curve

The most noticable drawback of the suretype keyboard is not (for me) text entry. With a week of full time use 90% of people can get to the point where suretype works as well and as fast as a QWERTY keyboard.

The problem I have with suretype lies in its lack of keyboard shortcuts. I use keyboard shortcuts exclusively to access the essential 'work' functions of the phone: mail, calender, address book, tasks, alarms, bb messenger, google talk and notes. This allows me to keep an uncluttered homescreen with nothing but icons for useful 3rd party programs. Launching any of the 'work' functions is a matter of a press of a button. No need to use the trackball or go into the menu. This is perfect for one handed use and as small and sleek as the pearl is it cant match this.

The larger size of the screen on the curve will make it easier to browse the web or view documents.

The Curve will feature a built in spell checker and has better incoming and outgoing sound quality.

Overall the curve is the better choice. The pearl is on the edge of obsolescence with the launch of the pearl 2 (on verizon only for now).

...
 

I have 1145 contacts on my bb 8310

The dude probably things that BB saves contacts to the sim card or something.

That guy is a total idiot. I have 3264 contacts plus lots of apps on my Pearl. Great phone and PDA