W took delivery of her first “smartphone” earlier today - a Blackberry 8520 “Curve”. To say she is happy is something of an understatement; she’s been living with my old Nokia K800 for the last few months - putting up with it’s crashing, dropping of calls, and general crankiness.
I’ve been helping her figure out how the Blackberry works this evening - which in reality meant getting other things working - Facebook, and Twitter SMS. Seeing her face light up when a message arrived from Facebook was great.
Having now used the iPhone and the Curve, I am glad I have the iPhone, but the Curve works great too. It doesn’t have some of the nicer functionality, like CalDAV synchronisation (meaning no Google Calendar sync), but it will at least sync with the Mac via bluetooth with a little help from TheMissingSync.
I’ve ordered an 8Gb microSD card for the Blackberry. I can’t imagine what W will fill it with, but I’m sure she will. I’ve seen how many applications she runs at once on her poor Macbook.
We just have to wait now for Orange to download updated settings when the account updates (on the 10th apparently), which should give her instant messaging, a browser that works, and push email. You may not think these things are important, but when you’re ferrying three kids between schools, arranging playdates, organising parent teacher meetings, brownies, and all manner of other craziness, a smartphone is a pretty essential thing to have in your pocket…