It was a dream for a while, and now it's reality. I am sitting in the Lufthansa plane, on an 11 or so hours flight back to San Francisco, and connected wirelessly to the Interent through the Boeing wirless service (see picture on the left). When you're on a flight that lasts more than a few hours, something happens to time after the 5th hour. It slows down considerably. For those who haven't mastered a meditational practice (or sleeping on the plane, or watching entertainment programs), the wireless Internet came to the rescue. Not only I got to read and answer e-mail, but access several useful web services, and enter today's observations in the 81-day-experiment blog you're looking at right now!
So how did the devices do during my trip?
I am almost back in San Francisco about two weeks of travel. The T-Mobile MDA and the BlackBerry 8700 kept me well connected during this trip. The T-Mobile network was reliable, the EDGE speed made browsing the internet reasonable, and the T-Mobile technical support was easily available even in remote places. If you want to read the summary of my experience with the T-Mobile MDA smartphone, you can refer to Day #45 of the experiment, and to learn more about my experience with the BlackBerry 8700, you can refer to Day #54 of the experience.
Tomorrow I will be using a new device
I have used and reported on 6 devices so far and there are 3 more devices to go before the 81-day-experiment is over, and before I publish my findings and observations.
Do you want to take a guess at what will the next device be? Do you want to put your vote for which device(s) should be considered? Feel free to e-mail me your input ([email protected]).
For now, here are some final thoughts on the BlackBerry 8700.
Update on the BlackBerry 8700 battery life
This is the 4th day that I did NOT charge the BlackBerry 8700, and it is still going. The battery indicator is at 25% now, which could be yet another day of having power without recharging. In my experience with handheld devices, and specifically the ones I used so far in the 81-day-experiment (Treo 700p, Treo 700w, Motorola Q, BlackBerry Pearl, T-Mobile MDA), this is a record in battery life and something to write home about (or in this case “blog” about).
BlackBerry 8700 service providers
Even though I have used the BlackBerry 8700g which is T-Mobile’s version, the same device is offered by a number of service providers including Cingular (8700c) and Verizon (8703e) and many others.
The BlackBerry 8700 models offered by these service providers are very similar in form and in functionality. The main differences relate to the network and the plans. I will be commenting more about the various networks later in the experiment.
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