Help! Mainly to do with Blackberries, duty free and travel!

[curiouswombat]

This is a request for help from Daughter-dear. She is planning on buying a smart-phone and has decided that she would really like a Blackberry. She had thought it would make sense to get a contract with one of our two local phone suppliers (Sure and Manx Telecom - we don't have things like T-Mobile here) and then get one cheaply. But to get a free one she would have to take on a 2 year contract at about £40 a month - and still pay extra for the global roaming for her upcoming holiday.

Otherwise, using local Pay as You Go, it is no cheaper than Amazon.

So - the questions are;

1. Anyone have any reasons why a Blackberry is not a good idea and she should go for a different one?

2. If you've travelled through Heathrow Terminal 5 recently, are the prices in the Duty Free there (in for example the Dixons) much cheaper? And if she bought one there would there be any problem bringing it back into the UK later?

3. Would it be cheaper to buy one in Australia? Or even Thailand? Would she have to pay duty on her way back into the UK if she did?

Comments

[miso-no-tsuki.livejournal.com]

Umm, only comment here is on the non-advisability of Blackberries. Or as known in this house "Raspberries".
Col K had a Company one for work and it was no end of trouble, particularly it's habit of dropping out in the middle of calls. One of my nephews bought one and within three weeks it died on him. When he took it back they said "Oh, didn't you have it in a protective slip case? Not covered under warranty then ...!"
Sorry!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

That is exactly the sort of thing she wanted to know - I will pass it along. She said she knew some of my LJ people would 'up on these things'!

[http://users.livejournal.com/woman_of_/]

It's not a problem for me, but have heard may roports that conectivity is poor in many places.

Having said that, I love my Blackberry.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I am going to pass all the comments on to her. I am not sure whether she will regard the possible connectivity problems as important enough to persuade her to get something different - or whether your Blackberry love will add to that of her friends that have them and persuade her...

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

Personally, I madly love my iPhone, but the Resident Geek has an Android phone and loves that. One way around contracts is to buy phones second-hand, if you can find a reliable source (the RG found my iPhone on Ebay) - if they are out of contract/unlocked you can then use whatever supplier you like. We're with giffgaff (http://giffgaff.com/), who are a low-cost no-frills provider who run on O2's network - but I think DD would only be able to go with them if you get O2 on Man...

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Sadly we only have Manx Telecom and Sure (which is Cable & Wireless). Like most of her friends, she has two SIM cards - a home one and an away one, but once she is home to live she will only use the Tesco one when on holiday and the local one will become her main one.

Not sure she'd be swayed by your love of your iPhone - she doesn't like anything Apple - considering them to be in a bigger monopoly situation when it comes to software than Microsoft ever were and wonders how come they don't get their fingers rapped like Microsoft do... She is very much the baby corporate lawyer!

I am going to gather all the replies up and e-mail them to her tomorrow - second-hand might well be worth considering.

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

The Resident Geek feels exactly the same way about Apple, hence he's firmly in the Android camp! (He's currently got a Nexus One, which is basically an HTC Desire re-branded for Google)

[empresspatti.livejournal.com]

Research in Motion - the parent company of Blackberries, is getting slammed by the iPhone market. They might not be around in a few years.

Android phones, if anything Apple is verboten.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I'm going to pass all the replies on to her. The info about Research in Motion is very useful - if she went contract it wouldn't matter much as you get a new free, or very cheap, phone when the contract is renewed anyway - but if she is going PAYG then this new purchase is going to have to last a long time.

[cbtreks.livejournal.com]

I don't have a Blackberry so don't know too much about them personally, however since my best friend replaced her previous phone with a Blackberry, I've never had a really good connection when speaking with her - lots of cutting out and dropping calls. (On the other hand, I had a friend in Las Vegas several years ago who loved hers. The bad connection S. has might not be her Blackberry. Funny coincidence if it's not, though!)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Thank you. A few people have mentioned the connectivity - I think she might find this something of a decider.

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

Both son and daughter have 'Droids and love them. They do everything except the dishes!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Thanks - there seems to be a feeling that they might be the way to go.

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

I just asked my son why he loved his 'Droid, and he said that you have access to Google applications, which he loves, plus a number of free applications.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

I heart my iphone. But I know several people who have blackberries and love them; I suspect it's a personal preference. I do know that those people have to use a lot of proprietary software for stuff I do on my phone, and there aren't nearly as many aps as for iphone or android.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

She tends to object on principle to Apple as they have an enormous soft-ware monopoly and yet seem to get away with it - she thinks, as a baby corporate lawyer, that it is all wrong. Very useful to know there are more aps free for androids than blackberries!

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

Mr Cee has blackberries as company phones and they are notorious for breaking down at inopportune moments. So much so that they have a pool running! They also call them crack-berries!

If she is anti iPhone, the HTC phones are fairly reliable or any other Android phone.

I use CNET to read reviews of new tech or she can type "HTC Desire review" (or whatever) into Google and get unbiased reviews of phones which helps with deciding. Youngest Cee has an HTC and loves the Apps.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Thanks K. I am about to gather all this up and e-mail it to her - and the reliability issues seem to be widespread. She was right when she said my LJ people 'would be up on these things'!

[mylescorcoran]

I (for my sins) am the Blackberry administrator for my workplace. I've used an iPhone and a couple of Android devices too and would have to say I still find the Blackberry (the ones with a physical keyboard) to be superior for the writing, reading and general management of email. For everything else (web browsing, apps, looking cool or like a twonk on the tube) the iPhone or a high end Android phone is a better choice. Blackberry have definitely fallen behind in the smartphone market too, so investing now might also be a gamble.

I've not really had problems with the reliability of Blackberries. A couple of users have managed to smash up their handsets, but we get roughly the same rate of failures with iPhones.

I suppose the bottom line is, if I didn't have to have a BB as part of my work, I'd go with a Samsung or HTC Android phone. sammywol has a Samsung Galaxy S running Android 2.2 and is mostly pleased with it. She does swear at it a lot, but probably only about as often as she swore at her old dumb Nokia phone.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Ah - thank you - I'll just pass that on in its entirety to her!

[deird1]

...does that mean she's coming to Australia?

:D

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It does indeed. This is her last 'long summer' before she starts work proper, and she is spending it travelling.

After 2 weeks with a school-friend in Argentina she has a few days visiting a friend she met in Italy last year in Sydney - then an organised 18 day trip up the east coast to Cairns, flight from there down to Perth to spend about 8 or 9 days with her aunt and grandparents, then home via a 2 week holiday in Thailand.

[deird1]

Ohhh... she should come to Melbourne for a day or two! *pines*