Maybe Blackberry’s aren’t all that bad after all

After a sour and disappointing relationship with my Nextel Blackberry 7520, I had all but given up on RIM devices, even though entrenched in a company overrun by “crack-berry” counter-culture. They were, after all, the opposite of cool… poor performance, a lacking UI, no SMS, no camera-phone, bulky, and most important, no Flash Lite! But I had another go at RIM with my latest handset, and after a few days I am very pleased thus far.

Much to my suprise, my new Blackberry 7130c with Intel inside from Cingular is quite a treat. The ui is so much more pleasant and the screen is big, bright, and beautiful, it supports SMS, it’s light as a feather, has better coverage, and piggy backs on Cingulars Media Net GSM/EDGE service which is rich, and getting richer by the moment. When you combine that with Bluetooth to PC synch capability, it’s everything my old clunker Nextel Blackberry was not. Even though I’m still getting the hang of it’s non QWERTY input method, I really am still impressed. Best part, I can always pop that sim in my Nokia N70 for Flash Lite development.

So if you were on the fence with RIM devices like I was, give them a little more time. While they still have a ways to go untill they catchup to that Symbian-zen UI experience Nokia has going on, they are closing the gap quickly especially when you consider their offerings from just a year ago.

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The Plot Thickens: Adobe Flash Lite 2.1 for Windows Mobile 5.0

After suffering with outdated for years Flash for Pocket PC, Adobe seems to have finally caught on that with the advent of all these Windows Mobile based Smart Phones kicking the pants off the once king of the hill Palm Treo devices, the going is good to define where Flash for mobile devices is really going. Thus arrives the tardy but welcomed: Adobe Flash Lite 2.1 for Windows Mobile 5.0

This will be really interesting to see where it goes. Of course with Flash for Pocket PC, the bar was set a little higher, since mobile devices even 5 years ago were reasonably beefy in terms of memory and CPU. Of course Flash Lite 1.0 was developed toward a more lowest common denomiator bench mark for compatibility and usablity reasons for use in low powered handsets, which is why I had to dig around for Flash 4/5 books when I first was learning it (which was hell since I only dipped my feet in at Flash MX 2004). But any convergence at this point is a good thing. The less fragmentation and learning curve for developers and content aggregators, the better. Hey it’s just Labs so far people, but I like where it’s going.

One note: In the Newton and Palm Pilot days, we didn’t call it Wince (Windows CE) for nothing.