samer
Alfa is now offering
unlimited BIS to its postpaid
classic subscribers.
A fair usage policy (surprise, surprise!) applies, so you're limited to 500mb per month, which is not that bad.
It costs $
40/month, which I think most businessmen can afford. I hope they make something more affordable for students, perhaps a 100mb package for 20$.
More information:
http://www.alfa.com.lb/bb/default.aspx
elchebib
500 MB are quite good actually. But what about their connection speed? I think they're still using GPRS, which has a connection speed of about 56 kbps if I'm not wrong.
Quota size= decent
Connection speed= bad
And why do they say its unlimited. 500 MB per month is not unlimited....
Unlimited is, well, unlimited......
Lebanon and the whole fair usage policy..... When will they learn......
battikh
any one knows how's the coverage? and is it 3g? hsrp? edge?
and do they charge more for tethering? or is it allowed to use the phone as a modem and actually use the bandwidth on your pc at no extra charge?
J4D
im not connecting my BB to the network until we have 3G .
elchebib
battikh wroteany one knows how's the coverage? and is it 3g? hsrp? edge?
and do they charge more for tethering? or is it allowed to use the phone as a modem and actually use the bandwidth on your pc at no extra charge?
I guess they're still using GPRS as their method of connection. I read a while ago that Alfa are planning on getting up HSPA or something similar for their internet connection. I'm not sure when will this happen but a GPRS connection with a 500 MB limit is not enough for me.
Can anyone on an Alfa line confirm? Do they see an E somewhere in the standby screen?
battikh
^^ 500MB on a cellphone if tethering is not allowed is much more than enough.
crazy
Well I have a 3gs iphone with 3g plan in france, internet is unlimited but speed is reduced if you go over 1gb. So 500mb for an Edge connection if more than enough. I never get to the 1gb limit on my iphone, I use it a lot for youtube, gps, news, mails, instant messaging, internet app... And by FYP, they mean your speed is reduced, not stopped, I guess.
The only thing that is good with bb, is email everywhere. I can't spend a day without checking my mail 100 times a day, if not more. Having it on me all the time is great, could improve the enterprise in leb a bit :) (even though MTC has it already, but still make it national (alfa and MTC) is better )
Raficoo
haha at first when i saw the AD on the Road.. i was like "Wtf.. Unlimited".. i saw the * next to it and i said "ahh i know it..." lol funny how they call it Unlimited when it's 500MB...
still funny how MTC gets a new Service.. then Alfa Follows..
same Services.. same Prices... *sigh*
feels like the duopoly game will never end
elchebib
battikh wrote^^ 500MB on a cellphone if tethering is not allowed is much more than enough.
I meant the speed of the connection is not enough for me if they rely on GPRS. The qouta is decent but the speed is bad.......
J4D
yesterday we had a seminar about radio frequency and it was given by an ALFA engineer , when he finished his lecture , i took him aside and asked him about the new blackberry service and especially asked him about the speed , he said its confidential information , but assured me that its not rational to subscribe to it :P and referred to it as DALA3 because the only emails your getting will be from facebook :P . he told me as well that soon we will have 3G in a couple of years and the service will start in cities then expand to other base stations.
battikh
if HE has no one sending him emails but alerts from facebook, it doesn't mean that it applies on everyone.
for people with a job and who have to follow up on things all the time, it's far from being dala3.
plus, it makes you much more productive. usually when you're waiting for an important email, you just leave everything and just sit home in front of your pc refreshing your mail waiting for it to come, while you could be out doing something more useful than just waiting. blackberry solves this problem. since i'm on bb, i spend much less time in front of my pc doing nothing but refreshing my mail.
and even for none work related things. how many times did u stay home in front of you pc just because you wanted to chat with someone? could be family living abroad, a gf, a friend you haven't seen since a long time, or anyone.
also, no need to be stuck home doing nothing much but chatting anymore.
bb lets you multitask in a much better way and lets you be much more productive, it's not dala3...
as for 3G coming in couple of years... sweden and norway have just installed their first 4G antennas (even though there are still no phones that support 4G, but they'll be using dongles on PCs for now).
duckster
battikh,
i still don't fully get it. If one has a smart phone other than a BB, and is connected via a 3G or GPRS data network, then he/she can have email applications running in the background and constantly checking for new messages and notifying him/her when one is found.
As for chatting, there are many IM clients for smart phones, in addition to other VoIP applications.
I know in Lebanon we only have GPRS for now, but still, I don't get the fuss about blackberry.
Same for people outside Lebanon. I mean, they got 3G networks that can be used to do all what a blackberry device does, as far as I understand.
Someone enlighten me please:)
crazy
Other than being online all the time, professional use it to be always in contact with each other with BBM- Blackberry Messenger. It is like msn, gtalk etc. but only for blackberry users. And it is on all the time. On the iphone you cannot have an application on all the time in the background.
And security wise, I guess blackberry os is better than all other os.. but i'm not sure about that, you'll have to google it ;)
BB may have other features too, but these two are one of the most important for professionals, which is be always connected.
duckster
and yes ... that BB chat client drives me nuts with all these people advertising their PINs.
seriously, what the heck! as if it's a technology breakthrough!
you can very well use any IM network and any IM client and create an account for use with selected people only.
I just need someone to give me one 'valid' reason that is not something he came up with to be able to convince himself that he should get a BB like everyone else:
- email on the go
- 'push' technology (please! drop that argument already :) )
- message reaches its intended destination/device only (even alfa is advertising this. seriously, in which world can someone consider a message reaching its correct destination, something extraordinary and deserving of credit?)
- BB chat client connecting BB users only (yes, lebanese are in need of one more thing to show off)
J4D
battikh , you got me wrong :) the dala3 is bb network in the shitty status here not the 3G network !
battikh
BB is not about the general features, it's about the details, the small things that look stupid and obvious but that actually make your life much easier. True, all decent phones have the same general features. What phone can't do multitasking for example? (oh wait, yes, the losers phones)
1st, from a security point of view, BB is one of the bests. From the OS security to data encryption out of the box. But true, that something that only some corporate users need, not the mass. But still, you can have encryption without overloading your device and slowing it down. It was designed having encryption enabled in mind.
Then, one of the major advantages is the 3rd party app integration with the OS. There is no other OS that have such a good integration of 3rd party apps. The closest to it is the android, but still not as good. Just to give a stupid example. Lets say you have someone in your contact list, you have the facebook app installed, twitter client, MSN, and you have him on BB messenger. You go to his contact entry, press on send a message. You get in the options a choice, if in the contact there his his email and phone number, in the options you will have as options to send an email or an sms. that's ok, all decent phones do that. But then, if you have him as a friend on facebook app, it also has the send a PM on facebook option. If you have him on twitter, sending him a PM on twitter also appears in the options. If you have him as a contact in BB messenger, sending him a message on BBM also appears in the options. And this workd for apps developped by RIM as well as 3rd party apps. Yes, it seems stupid and bleh and all, but it does make your life MUCH easier.
Also for the 3rd party apps, integration of alerts with the OS native alerts is just great. The only phone that does the same with alerts is Android, no other OS i have used does it as well as these 2.
For BBM, yeah, it's just an IM and you could install msn or yahoo or whatever. But can you share files with msn and yahoo? yes, you can send through emails, but we come back to productivity and ease of use. So much easier while chatting to directly send the file rather than going to your email, cretaing a new mail, attaching and sending and waiting for confirmation from the other person that he received the attachment. from BBM you simply see the progress bar.
Then also for BBM and IMs, how easy is it to send voice message through msn or yahoo messenger? can you even do it? you want to send it by email? record your message, then attach it, then the other guy has to receive it go to his mailbox, download the attachment and open it (hoping that his phone supports the format). So much easier in BB.
Then again, about the ease of use and integration with native and 3rd party apps. You take a pic, you want to send it. menu --> send. then again, the options depend on what you have installed. send by email, by BBM, upload to facebook, upload to flickr, ...
Same for voice, you recored something, menu --> send, send as BBM? ...
and all this, all these "extra" features, multitasking, native apps in the background, ... comes at no additional cost on the battery life (3rd party apps might depending on how badly coded they are) or bandwidth utulization.
now, if you want to do the same on another phone (other than the IPhone, coz the iphone is uber crap, it can in no way compete with a BB, from hardware to software. how can a phone in the 21st century not be able to do multitasking? and worst, who buys it?!!!). what will happen?
you'll buy a phone that is probably more expensive than a BB (the curve is what? 300$? that's cheaper than any winmo or android phone and the curve is one great phone and nothing beats a hard keyboard). then you'll subscribe to gprs. how much is that? 20$ for 100MB? so you buy a more expensive phone than the BB, and pay for gprs, while for BB the phone is cheaper (and damn good heavy duty, you'll spend much less on repairs) and you pay 40$ for 500MB which is actually better... so BB is cheaper in all ways.
Then, lets say you will be using internet on your phone, automatically checking your mail every 10minutes, having msn loaded all the time in the background, a twitter app and a facebook app to be able to get the notification as soon as they come (stupid example, but just a normal behavior of people out there).
1- how much useless bandwidth you will be spending just on checking if there is sometihng new or not because you dont have push?
2- how much will your battery last?
with BB you have BB messenger loaded all the time, your mail, facebook, ... and it can last between 2 and 3 days without a recharge. The new bold 9700 can stay 3 days with multitasking and music on all the time. just give me 1 phone that can do that.
and 1 more feature, which i dont think is still available in lebanon. i pay for my bb subscription, i can make it international and use my internet on my phone anywhere in the world without having to pay for roaming. can you do that with your 3g subsription on another phone? yes, this is relevant only to people who travel a lot.
you will say that it's stupid and that i'm just creating excuses to justify myself, but i used to say the same when i was on winmo and dual booting android. used to say that BB users are stupid and missing all the fun, all the stupid useless apps, ... until i started using one myself...
and again, coz bb messenger seems to make you a headack, bbm is not JUST an im like the others. with other you can't that easily share files or send voice messages and make use of offline messages.
the only bad thing about BBM is that it's a damn stalking tool. no way to flee. on msn, you put urself as away and if you dont want to reply to someone you just say you were not on your pc. but with bbm, no way to say that your phone was not with you and it rebooted and you lost the message. no way to flee from annoying people.
What gives an edge to BB is these small things that make things easier and faster to do. BB is all about productivity and ease of use, and no one does it better than them until now. and i have used winmo, android, iphone (just tried it when around someone who actually owns 1) and symbian os. none compares in term of productivity, multitasking (specially without making the phone slow) and ease of use. and i'm talking here just about the software side, not about the hardware which is also great on BB.
The only thing that i envy from android users is their widgets. widgets on android and customized multiple desktops own. and with HTC's sense ui on top of it, having pre-configured profiles for multiple desktops (home, work, fun, ...) is great.
Did i really type all that just to defend BBs? damn BBs!!!! what happened to me!!!!! i need medical help!!! i doubt that anyone will actually read it :P what a waste of time :P
battikh
for the ones who wont read the whole crap o wrote earlier :P
BB:
1- cheaper phones
2- cheaper service
3- better integration of 3rd party apps with the os and the native notifications
4- better performance
5- better battery life even when using online apps and services (there's a guy who actually tried keeping his bold 9700 24/7 streaming music from the internet without charging it, it stayed on for 2 full days with no recharge, beat that).
6- better productivity and ease of use
7- multitasking works like a charm
8- bb service can work internationally without having to sell a kidney to pay for the roaming charges
9- stable and fast os
10- BBM is not JUST an IM like on other phones
11- it's the small features and details that make BB software special
12- and well, for me, it's the only phone that syncs natively with lotus notes :P
in my opinion, best os for customization --> winmo
best for productivity --> BB
compromize between the 2 --> android
duckster
I actually read your whole post :) thank you for taking time to write it.
I have a question though: I was testing a friend's curve, and it seemed that when i had a few apps running in the background, menu navigation started stalling (so it would freeze for a second then apply whatever i pressed later). Does that happen with you? I think not since you mentioned that everything can run smooth in the background with no performance deterioration.
Is there a difference between the basic $300 BB curve and let's say the bold one? (sorry I'm not familiar with the model numbers)
battikh
there are few differences, specially with the new curve (8520) which they stripped down to make it cheaper and make an actual difference between the bold and the curve feature wise (they used to be very close).
the main differences between the curve and the bold are that the curve doesn't have 3G (no need for that in lebanon), slower processor and fewer RAM, the cam is 2megapixel instead of 3 on the bold, and i think it doesnt have GPS (old curve used to have it).
The os also makes a different, which version is he running? if he's not on 5.0 yet, he should. plenty of leaked version are out there. some hybrid OS (combination of multiple OS versions) also make a difference performance wise. let me know which curve he has and i'll link you (the one with a ball as a trackball or the one with a squared black sensor?).
some older versions of the OS had some memory leaks problems, so whenever you keep the phone for a long time without rebooting (removing the battery), it used to slow down. with newer versions and hybrids, this is solved. let him go to options --> memory and see how much free memory he has under "application memory". if it drops too much between when he first boots and after a day or 2, he has memory leaks problems and should upgrade the os.
personally i'm neither on the curve nor the bold, i'm on the storm (the touchscreen one), i often have 3/4 apps in the background and never felt any performance issues.
battikh
and btw, for the thing about the correct person will receive the things, i think thet mean it that way. for example:
my brother is always on the move between dubai, qatar, saudi arabia and lebanon. I never know where he is. but wherever he is, whatever sim card he has in his phone, i always know how i can reach him, and i know i WILL reach him, wherever he is, without having to wait till he comes online or ask him for confirmation that he got my message. and that is what i think they mean buy it will reach the person.
on non bb phones, if you send someone an sms, you don't know if he'll receive it at all, if his phone is closed for too long, if he's abroad and romaing ain't working, ... same for email, maybe he doesn't have internet access, ... while with bb, you know that whatever sim he has, wherever he is, online, offline, in the plane, in the desert, ... he WILL be reached, and he WILL receive what you sent.
