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Facebook application launches for RIM Blackberry

 

This is great news. According to many sources Facebook is launching a new mobile version for RIM Blackberry. This is extremely great news for my Blackberry 8820 I traded in for the iPhone.

Truth is, one thing I loved about the iPhone is the ability to go to a mobile version of Facebook and quickly browse my profile for any updates or friend adds. Now the advantage of Facebook running on iPhone was that it ran through the Safari Browser so it was a rich image based site on the iPhone. Whereas, so far on the Blackberry 8820 internet browser websites appear text based which is common among many mobile internet browsers. To improve this experience I downloaded and installed the Opera Mobile browser from the first day for my 8820. Though this Opera Mobile is a better experience, it does not come close the the iPhone Safari.

So far Facebook has announced their mobile version for Blackberry devices but I haven’t been able to get my hands on an actual sample. The above photo is a photoshop rendered combination. So I hope Facebook has addressed the visual experience.

Update:  I found on TechCrunch a link to go and get the Blackberry Facebook application. I went through the porcess and it took me to a download page:

http://www.blackberry.com/facebook/mobiledownload. 

Unfortunately after accepting the terms and going to the download page it sends me to a download page that has no download … will report when things are taken care of.

I returned my iPhone. It Sucks.

 

On October 2nd, 2007 I anxiously went into the AT&T store to purchase my 8G Apple iPhone.

After all the hype, I was preparing to buy the iPhone as soon as the price went down and a few of the early adopters finished writing their reviews about the good and the bad for the iPhone.

After reading many reviews I considered it was worth the hype to buy one.

Of course I was blown away by the GUI and the user interface features that are in my opinion 3-5 years ahead of any other smart phone on the market. All of my friends and family were equally impressed with its innovative look and functionality. I immediately began to play with all of the features and to make it part of my lifestyle.

Going through different features I began to notice that the IT people at my office could not get it to connect to Microsoft Exchange. For whatever reason they did not want to use IMAP so I settled for POP email. No big deal. What was a big deal was the fact that now I could only get my email every 15 minutes (the minimum time allowed by iPhone). Whereas, on my previous Nokia E62 smart phone being connected to Microsoft Exchange I would recieve my email prior to them appearing in my Outlook at times!

Speaking of synching, forget automatic synch Outlook, I need to manually synch it every time I connected it to my dock that was connected to my office laptop.

Then I went to text message my friends that I got the new iPhone… I went to add a second friend to my send and realized their was no multiple text messaging along with no copy/paste to even manually send it to multiple friends. I would have to manually type in for each friend the same message!

Ok, I thought. Just some getting used to. However, after days went by more and more of the features that I was finding on all of the “iPhone Sucks“ websites were becoming evident.

By October 16th (14 days later) I had enough. I made the decision that for my business (enterprise) needs I just cannot lose any more productivity.

Final verdict: The Apple iPhone user interface is 3-5 years ahead of its time and untouchable (no pun intended) by other devices to date. However, for business users I hope Apple has something in the pipe to develop an iPhone for enterprise users. Then the Blackberry that I got in exchange for the iPhone will have a long way to challenge!