It's one of those things for which you constantly have your leg pulled. Having an old, pre-historic phone, a Blackberry. Yes, for years I had clung to the original smartphone, while the rest of the world moved on. But there comes a time when you have to decide between turning the page and closing the book. With RIM on life support, it was time for me to accept the possibility that there wouldn't be BlackBerry a year from now. And therefore I decided to take the plunge & switch to an Android.
But before we come to that, let me first list out some things which I absolutely loved on my BB: the red indicator light, the physical keyboard, BBM, its Email integration, BIS, security etc. Sadly, the LED has been replicated on most Android phones & does not remain an exclusivity. And my BBM contact list has come down to 3 or 4 people. Most of them have moved on to Whatsapp. The only thing that was keeping me from switching was the physical keyboard. While I could swear by the accuracy & speed of a physical keyboard over a touch-based one, shifting to touch wasn’t much of an issue since I had used a Galaxy Tab 2 for over 2 years. So, that left just the email, BIS and security. As far as security was concerned, android provided a basic level of encryption which was good enough for me. Also, I wouldn't be wrong if I said that Gmail™ has become the de-facto choice for mails today (not considering corporate accounts), and what better ecosystem to handle it than Android itself. And by overlooking these trivial issues, I was getting a great app eco-system (Play Store), an up-to-date OS and a modern looking device, albeit less professional. So, at the end of the day i thought that would be good tradeoff. But it turned out to be not so promising after all.
Incident 1: I was attending an admission tour conducted by Alliance Française de Bangalore on the 26th of October. I have a habit of switching to silent mode before entering gatherings such as this. Selecting ‘All Alerts off’ on a BB does the job. I selected the same no alerts option on my Moto and holstered the phone. Midway through the speech of a certain Dr. Alexandre Durant, the Moto’s alarm started sounding loudly. Turns out that the alarms do not silence themselves even if the ringer is silenced. Now there are 2 things you should know about this tone. One, it’s a highly unprofessional tone. Two, this Moto does not ring incrementally. It goes ballistic all of a sudden. Imagine my plight when Mr. Alexandre actually stopped his speech and waited for me to silence my phone. And I fumbled with the buttons, trying the power/ volume buttons & finally realizing that you had to drag a bloody icon from one end to other just to silence the phone.
Incident 2: I told a friend (whom I didn't want to talk to at that moment) that I had internals & would not be able to chat with her that night. Now I have a cousin sis whom I chat with pretty late at night. The next day, I get a message from my friend, saying that I was active till 0300 and deliberately avoiding her. You see, Whatsapp displays the time and date when a user was last active. Sigh.
Also, Whatsapp does not give the luxury of D (Delivered) and R (read) signs. No, the ticks in Whatsapp don’t stand for D & R. 1 tick stands for ‘Message delivered to server’ and 2 ticks specify ‘message delivered to device’. So, if you've been upset with your boyfriend for not responding to your message despite the two ticks and you are assuming he has read it but is busy flirting with someone else, chances are he has not. While BBM can't tell you if he is indeed cheating on you, it can tell you with certainty that the message has been read and not just delivered. I tried installing BBM on my Moto but it’s too crude and buggy. I saw tick-marks signifying non-delivery even when the recipients confirmed that the message has been received.
Other issues: The fluidity of the BB OS is not present in an Android. To make a call, I would unlock my BB, directly type the name of the contact and press the Call button. With Android, I need to Unlock, open the dialer, tap the search bar, wait for the virtual keyboard to appear, type the name of the contact, and tap on the search result to make a call. Yes, this is how difficult it is.
All in all, not a good experience. Old habits die hard. Maybe I was better off with my BB.
But before we come to that, let me first list out some things which I absolutely loved on my BB: the red indicator light, the physical keyboard, BBM, its Email integration, BIS, security etc. Sadly, the LED has been replicated on most Android phones & does not remain an exclusivity. And my BBM contact list has come down to 3 or 4 people. Most of them have moved on to Whatsapp. The only thing that was keeping me from switching was the physical keyboard. While I could swear by the accuracy & speed of a physical keyboard over a touch-based one, shifting to touch wasn’t much of an issue since I had used a Galaxy Tab 2 for over 2 years. So, that left just the email, BIS and security. As far as security was concerned, android provided a basic level of encryption which was good enough for me. Also, I wouldn't be wrong if I said that Gmail™ has become the de-facto choice for mails today (not considering corporate accounts), and what better ecosystem to handle it than Android itself. And by overlooking these trivial issues, I was getting a great app eco-system (Play Store), an up-to-date OS and a modern looking device, albeit less professional. So, at the end of the day i thought that would be good tradeoff. But it turned out to be not so promising after all.
Incident 1: I was attending an admission tour conducted by Alliance Française de Bangalore on the 26th of October. I have a habit of switching to silent mode before entering gatherings such as this. Selecting ‘All Alerts off’ on a BB does the job. I selected the same no alerts option on my Moto and holstered the phone. Midway through the speech of a certain Dr. Alexandre Durant, the Moto’s alarm started sounding loudly. Turns out that the alarms do not silence themselves even if the ringer is silenced. Now there are 2 things you should know about this tone. One, it’s a highly unprofessional tone. Two, this Moto does not ring incrementally. It goes ballistic all of a sudden. Imagine my plight when Mr. Alexandre actually stopped his speech and waited for me to silence my phone. And I fumbled with the buttons, trying the power/ volume buttons & finally realizing that you had to drag a bloody icon from one end to other just to silence the phone.
Incident 2: I told a friend (whom I didn't want to talk to at that moment) that I had internals & would not be able to chat with her that night. Now I have a cousin sis whom I chat with pretty late at night. The next day, I get a message from my friend, saying that I was active till 0300 and deliberately avoiding her. You see, Whatsapp displays the time and date when a user was last active. Sigh.
Also, Whatsapp does not give the luxury of D (Delivered) and R (read) signs. No, the ticks in Whatsapp don’t stand for D & R. 1 tick stands for ‘Message delivered to server’ and 2 ticks specify ‘message delivered to device’. So, if you've been upset with your boyfriend for not responding to your message despite the two ticks and you are assuming he has read it but is busy flirting with someone else, chances are he has not. While BBM can't tell you if he is indeed cheating on you, it can tell you with certainty that the message has been read and not just delivered. I tried installing BBM on my Moto but it’s too crude and buggy. I saw tick-marks signifying non-delivery even when the recipients confirmed that the message has been received.
Other issues: The fluidity of the BB OS is not present in an Android. To make a call, I would unlock my BB, directly type the name of the contact and press the Call button. With Android, I need to Unlock, open the dialer, tap the search bar, wait for the virtual keyboard to appear, type the name of the contact, and tap on the search result to make a call. Yes, this is how difficult it is.
All in all, not a good experience. Old habits die hard. Maybe I was better off with my BB.
