Replying to my last post about the new Blackberry 8830, Jim Courtney of Skype Journal left a comment clueing me into one minor little detail about the 8830’s GSM support – it only works outside of North America!

Indeed, the GSM side of the 8830 operates at 900 and 1800 MHz which are used for GSM throughout the rest of the world, but it does not work at 850 and 1900 MHz, which are the frequencies used by GSM in North America.  The disappointment for me is that when I drive to Ottawa, there are patches of road in Ontario where there just isn’t all that great CDMA… and it would be great if the 8830 would flip over to GSM to get the stronger signal.  However, that doesn’t look like it will happen.

One wonders why not.  When RIM was creating the 8830, why didn’t they include support for all 4 bands?  Is it perhaps because Verizon and other North American CDMA carriers want to keep people on CDMA in North America?  (You could see the case where in a particular NA city the GSM signal might be stronger in an area.  If the phone switches to that stronger…

Today I received my new Blackberry “8830 World Edition” and I thought I’d record some initial reactions.  As past readers know, I live in Vermont where we don’t really have decent GSM coverage (and can’t get the iPhone) and are, in fact, likely to have even less GSM coverage now that Verizon will be purchasing GSM provider Unicel and, per Engadget and others, will be converting all GSM users over to CDMA.

This is obviously not a good thing for those of us who need to travel outside of North America. 

My previous CDMA-only Blackberry 7290 became essentially an extremely expensive paperweight the moment I left these shores.  Because I do travel, I have had a “backup phone” that is a Cingular GSM phone (with a New York number) that I used when outside of NA.  However, it’s rather a pain because: 1) it’s a different phone interface than I’m used to; 2) it’s a different number than people know and I have to get into forwarding; 3) it doesn’t always seem to work abroad; 4) Mitel has been paying two separate monthly fees for me;  and perhaps most importantly to me 5) I don’t get my email…

Interesting post yesterday at ZDNet, “Apple seems to have forgotten the phone in the iPhone“, where blogger Matthew Miller writes about his disappointment after 10 days of iPhone usage. Since I can’t get an iPhone because of where I live, I’ve only very peripherally been following iPhone news (figuring that when I can eventually get one it will be improved by then).  Of course, you could not have missed the predictably huge initial reactions about the device being “magic”, but now we are starting to see real and more honest appraisals as people actually get to work with the devices.  In Matthew Miller’s case, here is his list of what the iPhone is missing related to telephony:

• Low volume speakerphone (basically useless at max volume through mono speaker)
• Mid volume speaker
• Tough to speed dial (at least 5 presses/slides to call one of your )
• No smart dial (filtering of contacts as you enter letters or numbers)
• Reception issues (full signal to no signal in same area)
• No instant messaging application
• Non-removable battery that cost $86 to replace from Apple
• Weak Bluetooth radio (profiles and reception with headset)
• No DUN (Bluetooth or cabled)
• No custom ringtones
• No MMS functionality…

In the end, it all comes down to *#$%#$?@ batteries!  I was greatly amused to read today David Berlind’s ZDNet Blog post, “iPhone redux: Is it time for the battery life equivalent of a ‘nutrition label’ (see example)“.

His statements are entirely true.  We as an industry do need some kind of “truth in labeling” decree about battery life.  I loved his diagram that he came up with (shown on right). 

This point was vividly driven home to me a few years back when for about a year or so I was the product manager for Mitel’s wireless portfolio and was involved with the rollout of Mitel’s IP-DECT solution in Europe.  Never in my life did I expect that so much of my time in the product launch would be consumed in dealing with issues around batteries! Being a “software guy”, I really had very little understanding of the nuances of power consumption and their impact on battery life. It was definitely a great learning experience! As David Berlind says:

Not only was plenty written about the iPhone’s potential battery life issues, the truth of the matter is that there’s only so much you can ask a battery to do.

Batteries…

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past six months, you would know that today is the day that the Apple iPhone becomes available.  Actually, it is not until 6pm local time today, which seems a bit odd but it does provide a way to hype things all day as there will undoubtedly be endless news reports about the people standing in line to get an iPhone.  The hype is almost endless, it would seem.  Quite frankly, I don’t see how the iPhone will even remotely live up to all the expectations that have been placed on it.  It slices. It dices.  It solves world hunger and cures cancer!  Well, okay, maybe not… but the hype would almost bring it to that level.  I have to expect that over the next few days the blog posts will naturally turn to peoples’ reviews of the product and the inevitable let-downs.

I, of course, won’t have a chance to experience an iPhone anytime soon.  As I wrote previously, those of us who live in states without AT&T coverage are just out-of-luck. (Also noted by a local Apple retailer.)  I guess the good news is that by the time…