Tag Archives: Technology

Personal, Technology

Spring Break Already Off to a Bad Start…

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Well… The Blackberry Pearl Flip I had was a bit short lived by a sad and unfortunate nightmare. It’s a nightmare many mobile electronics fans fear, the 3-foot drop. If you had to put it into RPG terms, I fumbled my phone and the saving throw failed for the chance of me catching it. The result, the phone had bounced off of gravel on the upper half of the clamshell. For some reason, the phone just wouldn’t turn back on…

I did an OS reload… No dice…

The folks on PinStack guesstimate that on that short 3 foot fall… it may have broke a connector.

I figured, “Well, no big deal… I can just watch a dismantling guide and just try servicing the phone myself.” No such luck, cause the Pearl Flip is the unpopular child and no one has such instructions… So I have a paperweight at the moment and I am rather pissed. However, I am thankful that I still have my Blackberry Curve 8310.

In an ironic way… Maybe is a divine comedian going “You really didn’t want the Pearl Flip, but you should get the Curve 8900”

Personal, Rant, Technology

Ode to the Blackberry!

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A few days ago… I managed to snag a new Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220 as a very belated “Congrats for a GREAT Fall 2008” and a Chinese New Years present for myself. However… I was looking at my Blackberry Curve 8310 and going “Hell, transplanting ALL of my contacts is gonna be a mother bitch… FML!” However… I had heard that Blackberry was one of the few mobile phone brands where the desktop/computer manager allows you to back up your information and then syphon it right over to your new phone.

I’d open the Blackberry Desktop Manager and there was a big icon that said “Device Switch Wizard” and the detail message of “Switch from a Blackberry device or other device to a Blackberry device.” With how many phones I have changed from… I have always hated re-entering or resyncing contacts. However… I figured cause I was going from a full keyboard to a compacted device, I should give the device change application a shot.

I was rather glad I did, to be honest. The process took about 20 – 30 minutes… The first portion is the old phone’s data being extracted, then the later portion is the applications and other things being ported over and installed. The end result was my 8220 not only had my entire phone book… It also had all compatible programs installed on it, my Blackberry Messenger list transplanted, and even my ringtone preferences! I dare say that switching phones has never been this easy in all of my life!

It’s just simple details like these that remind me how much I love Blackberry and how I don’t mind recommending them to friends and family who want a great smartphone that’s stable & stylish to boot. Blackberry has reminded me the most focal point of a smartphone isn’t all about “shiny apps” or “douchenozzle” factor… it’s more about being a great phone FIRST and a great data device as well!

Addendum – I will be working on a Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220 review after I get decent time to completely evaluate my experience.

Personal, Technology

Minor Set-Back… No 8900 for me, yet!

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So, I decided to plan a pre-emptive attack and ask some T-Mobile stores if they had any Blackberry Curve 8900’s in stock. Reason being is that Engadget has reported most stores only got 5 in stock… To my dismay, most of the Dallas stores in the metro-mess have sold out of them. So as much as I wanted to get one close to release, I’ll have to hold off on that thought.

I will say that it may not be a bad thing to wait on getting it anyhow… I got a rather large blessing for my IRS tax refund and maybe by then T-Mobile may be blowing out deep discounts much like how they were with their last Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220…

For now… I need to see if there may be something fun I can spend my “li xi” (lucky money) from the lunar new year to facilitate good luck. The question now is what should I do with that cash.

Personal, Rant, Technology

New Article at BerryTastic is Up!”What to do, What to do?”

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The article is up for everyone’s enjoyment, if you want to see it… it’s here at this link: “What to do, What to do?”

For those of you who are a bit lazy at link jumping… click the “Read On” link here to check it out!
Continue reading New Article at BerryTastic is Up!”What to do, What to do?” →

Personal, Technology

Bravo T-Mobile and Hooray for Me!

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Almost a year ago… family had asked me to switch from at&t Wireless (formerly Cingular) to T-Mobile so they wouldn’t have to waste minutes on calling me. When I tried to do the switch, my credit was simply not good enough to snag my own line without a ridiculously huge deposit. I was devastated and at&t hiking rates on me was making me rather sick. It didn’t help that I was also recovering out of debt so my dinged up credit record wasn’t helping at all. So family stuck in and had said “Use one of our names and get your own line.” Which I did and I joined their ranks with T-Mobile…

However… This past December, family had said “You need to get your own line with T-Mobile, if you can’t… have fun losing your phone number”. That was something I couldn’t have happen as my phone is now my second life line other than the web. I had to get T-Mobile to do a “change of responsibility” to my account under my family’s name and see if I could get one in mine. They informed me that my account under their name had a full discount upgrade available and that by transferring responsibility to me, I would more than likely lose that and have to wait 30 days for a “partial upgrade discount”. I just decided to bite the bullet and see if my credit was able to pass me. Fortunate for me… My credit seems to have healed enough to qualify me for my own line. I decided to do the change of responsibility to ease my family’s burden of supporting me and I just went with knowing that I probably lost my upgrade.

However… Today, on trying to pay my dissapearing final bill over the phone with T-Mobile… I found an interesting revelation from my dialogue with the representative:

Zero: I wanted to know how long before my account is able to do a full discount upgrade? I had heard from a few reps in-store and over the phone that I would more than likely lose it and start from square one.

Rep: Actually Zero, your account seems to have gotten that upgrade discount transferred! Did you have a question over that?

Zero: Is it a full discount? The reason I ask is because I am rather excited for the Blackberry Curve 8900 coming to T-Mobile on 2/11/09.

Rep: I am showing it is a full device discount should you decide to do a 2 year agreement. I will say that I am glad you’re excited about the Curve 8900 coming to T-Mobile and I hope that we hear from you again when the time comes for you when you do choose to get the new 8900!

I will say that the outstanding customer service that T-Mobile has is the reason I don’t want to change providers. The “Death Star” had failed to even answer simple questions with the amount of zeal that T-Mobile has. I am glad that my upgrade didn’t vanish and it just shows how much I am glad to be with T-Mobile.

Personal, Rant, Technology

A Phone Hacker’s Memories Revisited…

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A while ago, I had posted an entry on ZeroXR about needing advice on a new phone. In the post I detailed about my previous history with phones and my time with them. What I didn’t get a chance to do was to really get into the nit-picky details of why I loved and/or hated each one. There’s the old saying that “Every rose has its thorns” and I am one who believes that even applies to technology. Especially since the “Jesus Phone Part Deux” came out, everyone wants the “hottest” phone or the cutest looking ones. I present to you my “memoirs” of hacking phones up until this present day. Click the jump to read this opus of my memories!

Continue reading A Phone Hacker’s Memories Revisited… →

Personal, Site News, Technology

Zero’s Feature Article Coming Soon to BerryTastic!

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Since my Blackberry romance… It’s opened some doors for checking things out and learning a lot about one of the industries best devices. I ended up putting myself available to contact directly via Blackberry Messenger and that turned an interesting curve (no pun intended – Zero). I ended up talking with Jess from BerryTastic and she just had asked me if I could write a Blackberry lifestyle article. I would gladly oblige to sharing my talent and passion.

After a tiresome day, I managed to punch one out and got it submitted. It just now is pending some final details and soon it should be gracing their pages! Stay tuned here and once the the article goes live… I’ll post a link to it!

Much love,
zeroxr_sig

Site News, Technology

ZeroXR 13mg is now MOBILE PHONE compatible!

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I decided to install Alex King’s WordPress Mobile Edition plug-in to the site after viewing a post over at PinStack and the site shows up very nicely via my Blackberry! This plug-in should also be compatible in the most minimalistic phones like Motorola RAZR2’s to even Windows Mobile phones. I hope this will allow users who don’t have a laptops/desktops/iPhones to view my site the ability to have entertaining reading on the road.

Let me know how some of you all like it!
-Zero

Personal, Technology

Ode to Blackberry

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Research in Motion, who’d have thought I misunderstood your devices… The most time initially I had ever spent on a Blackberry device was, at most, 20 minutes. After spending almost 48 hours with my own Blackberry Curve 8310, I now understand why the corporate types love them. They are rock solid. They are logical and tactile. They are very work/business focused. It’s no wonder that people go absolutely love them after the slight learning curve. I mean to have a device and not have it crash when it’s your alarm clock is absolutely beautiful.

For those wondering what I got… It’s a Blackberry Curve 8310 (GPS model) and I just got the USB sync/charger cable and the sleeve for it.

Sure, the caveats are things like you have to get a Blackberry Internet Service plan to really enjoy things like mobile web, Blackberry Messenger, Facebook Mobile, AES encrypted e-mail transactions, etc. Even minor things like for MMS, you need net plan too. However, for the majority of things the device offers… I could tolerate looking into a Blackberry net plan. Hell, I may consider it highly considering how much I am now tied down to my e-mail with either light fan e-mail or some insider news.

I will end this post with my humorous “remix” to the “club tune” of yesteryear, Crime Mob’s song “White Tee”

“Fuck an iPhone, I look clean with my Blackberry” – Zero

Technology

Rumor Mill – The BlackBerry Blitz May Be Coming to T-Mobile…

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So… With RIM making an aggressive attack and failing badly cause 2 mobile phone companies somewhat screamed at them to get the BlackBerry Storm out to market… (ahemVodafoneGlobalVerizonbastardsahem) This has caused RIM to have a bit of an issue of creating a negative image for the Storm. However… some have made mention that with the new firmware upgrade that was officially available from Verizon and Vodafone, it seemed to clear some issue up. However, there is the issue reported on various users on the web saying that some of the hardware buttons have fallen off! If you want to see some of the bad press generated… Check out Wired’s Blog from their Gadget Labs here.

However… Lucky for RIM, their BlackBerry Bold has gotten them quite good praise. To have wifi, GPS, and 3G while being as stable as it’s predecessor the 8800 series… RIM has hit the person who wants a powerhouse corporate communicator. It both has corporate beauty as well as casual beauty. There’s also the matter of the BlackBerry Javelin (or it’s other name, the 8900 series Curve 2) pending its release soon to the US. So far, Rogers Telecom Canada has it, but rumors shroud its US release. The Javelin is one of the devices that follows more the principles of the 8300 series Curve, it’s not quite as hardcore as its cousin the Bold.

I was reading this post over at TmoNews and some of the users mentioned corporate tidbits that February 2009 may be the month of the BlackBerry for T-mobile. The reasons for that being…

  1. Verizon didn’t pay big money for a 6 month exclusivity for the BlackBerry Storm 9530 in America… They only paid enough cash to get 90 day exclusivity. So for the GSM release, it was a bidding war between AT&T vs T-Mobile and T-Mobile won the battle. The day that Verizon’s 90 day exclusivity ends would (in theory) end 2/21/2009. Three months would be plenty of time to let RIM perfect the Storm as well as engineer one for the GSM/3G bands for T-Mobile. I would make an assumption that for T-Mobile, based from the forum posts and things around the web (like other users) that T-Mobile’s version may be called the BlackBerry Storm 9520 with stuff like myFaves, HotSpot@home, wi-fi and possibly GPS on the phone. I just hope the GPS is REAL GPS and not that sorry excuse of GPS found on the BlackBerry Pearl Flip.
  2. The speculated release date of T-Mobile’s BlackBerry Bold has been speculated from first quarter to even second quarter of 2009. The only thing is… November was when AT&T got the Bold 9000. It seems AT&T fell into the same trap as Verizon with not fronting enough cash to get a 6 month exclusivity period, but managed to get just 90 days. I don’t remember the exact release date for the AT&T BlackBerry Bold, but I would assume it’d be close to 2/21/2009 that the Bold’s exclusivity to AT&T wears out. Should this be true… T-Mobile’s Bold may be called the BlackBerry Bold 9020 but just bundle a few additional features like HotSpot@home and myFaves; while hopefully leaving alone the fact that it has true GPS on it.
  3. Floating rumors say that because T-Mobile Germany has the BlackBerry Javelin, that it is destined for T-Mobile USA. There was also some rumors that another BlackBerry was supposed to come out end of the year for T-Mobile in conjunction to the BlackBerry Pearl Flip. However, it doesn’t look like the Javelin is coming out this Christmas. Naturally, I could see it coincide with the February blitz of BlackBerries and possibly some promo around then too like a possible rescaling of BlackBerry net plans.

Should the speculation and rumors be true… I may just hold on to my phone until February and wait for the BlackBerry Blitz. That would give me much more equal footing to things like giving BlackBerry devices equal footing to the G1. oi vay… Decisions, decisions…