[General] PlatinumKuwait.com » Blog Archive » BlackBerry Price Comparison in Kuwait

[Burhan Khalid]

W'assalam:

They forgot to mention something very important, which is that Zain is
offering a great discount on the blackberry device if you sign up for
a year contract, for example the Javelin (ie, Curve) is only 99KD with
a one year contract. The other providers don't have such promotions.

Also worth noting that Viva is the only company that's offering
unlimited calling and unlimited Internet/Blackberry usage plan. All
others are restrictive on their bandwidth.

Practically speaking, no one will ever hit the limit of 5GB straight
downloading from the Internet via Blackberry because the device itself
is very difficult to tether as a modem; so the limit is only whatever
you can download onto your device's memory card.

Some more interesting facts about the blackberry platform:

1. It works by optimizing the email messages before sending them to
your device, to save bandwidth and ensure that messages are delivered
properly. This is different than ActiveSync Push, which is more like a
relay.

2. There are two kinds of "blackberry service". One is called BES
(Blackberry Enterprise Server) -- this is what you need if you want to
link Blackberry with your existing Exchange/Notes platform, and its
run on a server that connects to your email server directly, providing
advanced features such as VPN access, consolidating mailboxes,
encrypted communications (also available in BIS), contact/address book
sync, etc. The other is BIS (Blackberry Internet Service), which is
what is being sold by Zain, Wataniya and Viva to the general public.
This allows you access to all blackberry services (like blackberry
messenger, blackberry maps, etc.); allows you to add upto 10 email
accounts that are pushed to your device for free, and gives you access
to the Internet via your device. It does not do contact sync. or other
advanced services.

3. The blackberry device has very nice, customizable FONT settings,
something that I never thought I would need but once I have used it,
its amazing how much it improves readability/usability of the device.
The devices come with a large variety of built-in fonts that are very
clear and sharp. Definitely trumps anything from
Symbian/Android/iphone. Also, the notification options are very
detailed and fine grained, and third party apps (like say Gmail or
Google Maps) are very well integrated into the entire system -- for
example, you go to the main device settings menu to set all the
application preferences, and you manage all the application alerts
from the same, global alert settings page. Quite a departure from
Symbian, and a refreshing way to do things.  As you would expect, the
device offers some very strict security profiles for each applications
-- allowing you to control exactly what feature on the device the app
can access (again, all controlled centrally).

4. For security reasons, you can only install applications on the
blackberry device's internal memory. You cannot install, run, or even
download apps to the secondary memory. This is an important
consideration when picking which device you want to purchase.

5. The key map cannot be changed on the device. Why is this an issue?
Simply because there are a lot of European devices being sold here,
which have the QWERTZ keymap (the y and z keys are swapped). Even if
you install a QWERTY keyboard on the device, the keymap will remain
the same. So, when purchasing a device, make sure you pay attention to
the keyboard layout. For most touch typists its not an issue, but
worth mentioning here.

6. As mentioned earlier, you can setup upto 10 different accounts that
are sync'd for free to your device. To set this up, visit any of the
following sites, depending on your provider:

  zainkw.blackberry.com
  viva.blackberry.com
  wataniya.blackberry.com

  You'll need your device's PIN and IMEI number to sign up, then you
simply add your accounts and they will appear on your device. This
works surprisingly well, I have my office Exchange account linked and
it works quite quickly. Its not as instantaneous as say a BES service
would be -- mainly because you cannot control the polling intervals --
but its great when you need your emails on the go.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,
--
Burhan Khalid
On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 1:07 AM, Bashar
Al-Abdulhadi<bashar at kuwaitnet.net> wrote:
> Salaam all,
>
> small comparison http://platinumkuwait.com/?p=102
>
>
> your opinions ?
>
>
> -B
>
>
>
>
>
>
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