Are Blueberry handhelds available in the US yet?
March 3, 2004 7:58 AM Subscribe
Does anyone know if Blueberrys (the handheld pagers, not the berries) are available in the US yet? I've googled and found Blackberrys galore, but it looks like Blueberrys are only in the UK for now. My boss is itching for one. Thanks for your help!
(Only if you were on a per-character plan. The Cingular Mobitex data network, which underlies Blackberry, offers flat rate plans, but they're not cheap.)
As far as I know, there's no way to get or use a "Blueberry" in the US.
posted by majick at 10:40 AM on March 3, 2004
As far as I know, there's no way to get or use a "Blueberry" in the US.
posted by majick at 10:40 AM on March 3, 2004
There are blue Blackberry's, though - the 'new' blackberry, with the phone. What's the difference?
posted by drobot at 12:31 PM on March 3, 2004
posted by drobot at 12:31 PM on March 3, 2004
what's the difference between a blackberry and a blueberry?
posted by rorycberger at 1:24 PM on March 3, 2004
posted by rorycberger at 1:24 PM on March 3, 2004
Response by poster: Well, I just found out the Blueberry is just... a blue Blackberry! Duh. So now I'm looking for the 7290 model w/AT&T for the global plan. If anyone has any recommendations re where to buy in the US, I'd appreciate it. This is for the head honcho and money is not an issue.
posted by widdershins at 1:43 PM on March 3, 2004
posted by widdershins at 1:43 PM on March 3, 2004
"If anyone has any recommendations re where to buy in the US, I'd appreciate it."
Cingular/AT&T -- same thing -- offer it directly, as does T-Mobile. There are any number of resellers out there, but most or all of them can't cut you a substantially better deal.
"So now I'm looking for the 7290 model..."
I don't mean to derail the thread, but you might want to call your service provider and see if the boss can try one out on a trial basis before you commit to buying the rather expensive hardware. The telcos love to do this because it might mean selling a whole bunch more.
I tested these (and the non-blue slightly earlier version) when a certain telco was trying to get us to change data carriers (from the old Mobitex stuff) and I really, really hated it.
The form factor is neither Blackberry-ish nor phone-like, the UI and button placement is awkward, audio quality isn't too hot, paging (a core Mobitex/old-Blackberry feature) is limited to SMS, the headset that ships with it is pretty cheesy, and you need to know secret codes (browbeating a sales engineer is a good tactic to get them) to make the built in browser work with anything but stupid WAP sites. On the other hand, it had a pretty decent feature set. As a golly-gee gadget for the boss to impress his golf buddies, it's just about right I wouldn't want to use one every day, though.
posted by majick at 2:19 PM on March 3, 2004
Cingular/AT&T -- same thing -- offer it directly, as does T-Mobile. There are any number of resellers out there, but most or all of them can't cut you a substantially better deal.
"So now I'm looking for the 7290 model..."
I don't mean to derail the thread, but you might want to call your service provider and see if the boss can try one out on a trial basis before you commit to buying the rather expensive hardware. The telcos love to do this because it might mean selling a whole bunch more.
I tested these (and the non-blue slightly earlier version) when a certain telco was trying to get us to change data carriers (from the old Mobitex stuff) and I really, really hated it.
The form factor is neither Blackberry-ish nor phone-like, the UI and button placement is awkward, audio quality isn't too hot, paging (a core Mobitex/old-Blackberry feature) is limited to SMS, the headset that ships with it is pretty cheesy, and you need to know secret codes (browbeating a sales engineer is a good tactic to get them) to make the built in browser work with anything but stupid WAP sites. On the other hand, it had a pretty decent feature set. As a golly-gee gadget for the boss to impress his golf buddies, it's just about right I wouldn't want to use one every day, though.
posted by majick at 2:19 PM on March 3, 2004
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by shepd at 8:06 AM on March 3, 2004