BlackBerry Bold thursday round-up

After reading threads all over CrackBerry.com, I have came to the conclusion that some BlackBerry Bold’s have memory issues, example taken from CrackBerry.com

“OS Version 4.6.0.125 (Platform 4.0.0.134) Mine had 20MB free out of the box.

A few hours later it had 5MB with no new apps, photos or other files added.

I deleted all the unused languages and had 40MB after the restart.

A few hours later I had 15MB.

If there is a memory leak, it can’t be blamed on a 3rd party app because I haven’t added any.

I was really hoping to have more room to play with on this unit.

Best regards,   

Carl”

A few other members reported the same issues. It seems like that this could be fixed with a firmware update.

On another note, people have also been complaining about the Bold’s browser being very slow to load and sometimes don’t even fully load the pages, even after waiting 3 minutes! (these sites were probably graphic rich also). The HotSpot browser is also slower than the Bold’s Internet Browser with 3G on. Also turning Javascript on the Bold “literally adds minutes”. I hope RIM can fix these issues with a software update of some kind!!!

Why I prefer iPhone email over BlackBerry email

 

Just like the title says, I prefer iPhone email over BlackBerry email. I was a three year BlackBerry user prior to my purchase of my 16GB Black iPhone 3G. These are the reasons why I like iPhone email better than the BlackBerry (BIS) email.

1. My iPhone email can display rich text (my BlackBerry could do this also because I was running beta OS 4.5) but still even with OS 4.5, the iPhone beats the BlackBerry in displaying email.

2. Email on the iPhone is simple to organize, all you have to do is tap edit>select email(s)>select folder>done. That how easy it is to organize email on iPhone. I could not organize my email like that on the BlackBerry.

3. I can scroll through my emails faster on my iPhone by scrolling my finger down the iPhone’s Multi-Touch screen. On my BlackBerry I had to use the track-ball, which sometimes could take forever on longer emails.

4. I know this doesn’t happen very often at all, but I like how I don’t have to worry about RIM’s servers going down like they did a few times this year. With my iPhone, my work email is always running 100%.

5. Integrated apps. I like how iPhone integrates Google Maps into emails. So that if lets say “Jill” sends me an email with the address to the restaurant she wants to go to tonight, I can tap the address, it will bring Google Maps up, and then I have the choice of calling the restaurant, mapping a route to the restaurant via GPS, or bookmarking the restaurant for later use.

Fizz Weather review

By request, here is my review of the Fizz Weather App that is available on iTunes.

Initial Thoughts-

My quest to find a good weather app was about 1 week long. First I tried the $14.00 weather app, and that was not all “that”. Then I considered the WeatherBug app, but after reading the reviews, it seems like it was just a “bug”. So then I found the Fizz Weather app. At first I was a little skeptical because the other weather apps were all not too good. But after reading the reviews, I decided to try it out. 

User Interface-

The UI for Fizz Weather is way better than most of the other weather apps. It is very graphic rich and for the most part looks like the native weather app that Apple provides. 

Functions-

Fizz Weather for iPhone has 5 Day forecast, 2 day forecast (it’s more detailed than the 5 Day forecast), Current conditions for your location, Maps (which include Radar in motion, Satellite in motion, Forecast for major US cities, and Google (which I don’t really know what it does). Plus it has the current conditions or the airports around your location. On top of all that it will notify you when you start the app up if you have any weather alerts for your location (such as Server Thunderstorm Warning, Winter Storm Warning, Flood watch….etc..)

My take-

The Fizz Weather app is really reliable and stable. Compared to the other weather apps in the App Store, this one beats them hands-down. If you are considering a weather app for your iPhone, be sure to check out Fizz Weather, it will be hard to find a better one.

BlackBerry Bold memory issues?

After reading a thread on CrackBerry.com about how the BlackBerry Bold’s memory is getting filled up really fast! This is Kevin’s (founder of CrackBerry.com) original post-

“ Hey All,

Ok.. Here’s my deal. Bought a new BlackBerry Bold 9000 from Rogers. Using it for approximately 48 hours. Have yet to install ANYTHING. All I have really done is browse the web and check out the preloaded media samples.
This morning I get a pop-up on the device – your “memory is is low”. Use the memory tool to remove unnecessary languages. 
I did that. Now I have a whopping 9 megs of “File Free” on the device out of about 97 megs of “File Total”. 9 megs doesn’t leave a lot of space for installing/operating apps. Browser cache is cleared too. Booourns. 

So what gives? Anybody else running into this issue? Reasoning? Solution? 

Not too excited at the moment!”

Then more user’s replied with the following-

“I too am finding the memory to be surprisingly low for having 128MB of flash. My database sizes are approximately 2.9 MB total. Also, I have only installed WLM, WeatherEye and Facebook.

If I use the Bold for a short period of time (web browsing mostly), my free memory will drop to around 19MB. It’s gone down as low as about 9MB after several hours of use. I’ve been pulling the battery several times a day because of this.” -drb227

I’ll be keeping up with the thread about this issue.

iPhone saved me! (from getting rained on)

Here’s my story:

Saturday afternoon I was at an Air Show, I knew that a thunderstorm was approaching, but I didn’t think about it. Until I started to see a black line of clouds waaay in the distance. BTW, there was around 12,000 people there. I pulled out my iPhone and went to my Fizz Weather App and checked out the local radar loop. Sure enough, there was a strong line of t-storms headed our way very fast. So I told my dad we need to go get cover right now. So we headed over to the nearest cover we could find. So we hid under an Air Force C-130 jumbo jet (The first pic is me standing by the jet’s landing gear before it started to rain). People had no clue about the approaching t-storm, most of everyone got soaked. But thanks to my iPhone we were sparred from the rain . The second pic is an F-16 I took after the storm

 

iPhone firmware 2.0.1/2.0.2 sound issues

I have been following a thread on The iPhone Blog about iPhones with issues with sound. The main issue is that when an email or text message comes in, no alert sound is made to notify the user of a new message. I have experienced this on about 20% of all my texts. Thats not that much, but it gets annoying when you aren’t notified of a new message, and then you pull out your phone to find 4 new emails and 2 new texts from the last 2 hours. If you are experiencing this issue, report it to apple here.

iPhone 3G cracking up? Nope. It’s not laughing.

A few weeks (July 30th) ago there was a real scare about iPhone 3G’s backs developing small cracks. Most of the reported incidents were white 16GB iPhone 3Gs. Although a few black iPhone’s developed cracks also. From reading/posting on numerous forums on iPhone’s backs cracking, most people came to agree that it was a large batch of “sour” iPhones. Most threads about this topic are long inactive, so if you are looking into an iPhone 3G, don’t be too concerned about the iPhone 3G cracking issue.

iPhone/iPod Touch screen tests

Here are some screen tests I did on my iPod Touch screen, pretty cool.

**If you are having 3G reception issues**

If you are having 3G reception issues with your iPhone 3G, go here and complain!! http://www.fixmy3giphone.com/