More proof the knives are out for RIM: New BlackBerrys getting unfair reviews

Reg­u­lar read­ers may remem­ber that back in June, I wrote a post tak­ing the pompous “tech press” to task for char­ac­ter­iz­ing the mak­er of the Black­Ber­ry as head­ed for extinc­tion (Earth to the tech pun­di­toc­ra­cy: Research in Motion is still very much alive). That post end­ed up being very well-received. Though The Advo­cate is not a busi­ness blog, the post got a men­tion from Forbes and was cir­cu­lat­ed by investors on mes­sage boards, which gave it a wide audience.

Sev­er­al months have elapsed since that post was pub­lished, and as I and many oth­er defend­ers of RIM had hoped, the com­pa­ny has final­ly suc­ceed­ed in push­ing out its new line of smart­phones to mar­ket, in part­ner­ship with its many car­ri­er part­ners in the Unit­ed States and Canada.

In my view and that of oth­er Black­Ber­ry users, these new devices more than live up to their expec­ta­tions. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some tech writ­ers are unfair­ly giv­ing them lack­lus­ter reviews. Rachel Metz of The Asso­ci­at­ed Press decid­ed to try out three of the new Black­Ber­rys at about the same time. Rather than offer­ing an unbi­ased dis­cus­sion of strengths and weak­ness­es, her review con­sist­ed of a series of ran­dom obser­va­tions and impres­sions — most­ly negative.

Take this tid­bit, which was not only neg­a­tive but uninformed:

I did notice, though, that at least with The New York Times’ web­site, the old­er Torch [last year’s mod­el] would load entire arti­cles on a sin­gle page while the new­er phone [the just-released Torch 9810] only gave me the first chunk and forced me to click for the rest.

Metz implies that this is RIM’s fault. But that’s not the case.

The New York Times Com­pa­ny has opt­ed to forcibly redi­rect Black­Ber­ry users who type in nytimes.com in their browser’s address bar to the New York Times mobile site (prob­a­bly using user-agent sniff­ing). And bizarrely, they don’t pro­vide a link on their mobile site to switch to their full site — as many oth­er web­sites do.

The full New York Times site does load by default on the Black­Ber­ry PlayBook.

Metz also did­n’t like the voice search on the Black­Ber­ry — and devot­ed three para­graphs to cri­tiquing it. Her prin­ci­pal com­plaint is that voice search isn’t a hands-free expe­ri­ence. Admit­ted­ly, this func­tion­al­i­ty could be improved (and it sure­ly will be). But most peo­ple don’t buy a smart­phone expect­ing to get an auto­mat­ed dic­ta­tion assis­tant. Voice search is a nice-to-have fea­ture, but it’s not some­thing that will make or break a smart­phone for most users.

Per­haps the most aggra­vat­ing part of Met­z’s review, though, was this:

Anoth­er prob­lem is the lack of apps. The Black­Ber­ry App World includes more than 40,000 apps — a smidgen of the more than 250,000 apps avail­able in Google’s Android Mar­ket and 425,000 apps avail­able from Apple’s App Store. And many of those 40,000 have yet to be updat­ed for Black­Ber­ry 7 phones. I could­n’t get one for the review site Yelp when I checked the oth­er day.

As far as appli­ca­tions go, qual­i­ty is more impor­tant than quan­ti­ty.  I and many oth­er users have no use for a hun­dred thou­sand appli­ca­tions, let alone the avail­able mem­o­ry to store and run them all. I’m sick of read­ing review after review that obsess­es over com­par­ing the grand total of appli­ca­tions that are avail­able for one plat­form with those avail­able for anoth­er … as if that were all that mattered.

I get the impres­sion that Ms. Metz does­n’t use a Black­Ber­ry as her pri­ma­ry phone. I do, and I dis­agree with her con­tention that there are a dearth of appli­ca­tions for Black­Ber­ry. I’m quite hap­py with the exist­ing appli­ca­tion selec­tion (though I would­n’t mind see­ing more improvement).

Sev­er­al of my favorite appli­ca­tions are actu­al­ly made by Research in Motion, which does­n’t seem to get any cred­it for step­ping up to the plate to sup­port its own plat­form with a line of well-designed Black­Ber­ry apps.

For instance, nowhere in her review does Ms. Metz say any­thing about Black­Ber­ry Trav­el, which can auto­mat­i­cal­ly scan emailed trav­el itin­er­aries, assist users in book­ing hotels or car rentals, con­vert cur­ren­cy, and track flights, among oth­er func­tions. Of inter­est to Ms. Metz, it also includes Yelp search func­tion­al­i­ty built-in.

Also unmen­tioned by Ms. Metz is Black­Ber­ry Traf­fic, which works with Black­Ber­ry Maps to help users find the smoothest com­mute to and from work (or some oth­er des­ti­na­tion). All it needs is an address to start cal­cu­lat­ing the best route, iden­ti­fy alter­na­tives, and pro­vide ETAs for every option.

It’s an extreme­ly use­ful appli­ca­tion. And, like Black­Ber­ry Trav­el, it’s free… a gift from Research in Motion to its users.

Then there’s Black­Ber­ry Mobile Con­fer­enc­ing. This appli­ca­tion — anoth­er good­ie from RIM — makes par­tic­i­pat­ing in con­fer­ence calls easy. It allows users to auto­mat­i­cal­ly join calls with­out dial­ing any tele­phone num­bers or punch­ing in access codes. Users can also recon­nect with one click or tap if they’re dropped from a call. Recur­ring calls can be saved to a pro­file on the phone for easy access.

In addi­tion, RIM dis­trib­utes apps for Twit­ter, Face­book, Win­dows Live Mes­sen­ger, and Yahoo Mes­sen­ger, besides BBM, its own stel­lar instant-mes­sag­ing solution.

Some of the best appli­ca­tions made by oth­er devel­op­ers include Bing Maps and Bing Search (from Microsoft), Score­Mo­bile (handy for check­ing stand­ings, scores, or upcom­ing games), Nobex Radio (for stream­ing), Word­Press (for blog­ging), Poynt (for find­ing restau­rants, ser­vice sta­tions, and movie times), and The Weath­er Chan­nel (for perus­ing fore­casts and check­ing cur­rent conditions).

There are a hand­ful of nifty tools that are avail­able for the iPhone that I wish would be made avail­able for Black­Ber­ry (Card­Munch comes to mind, though a Black­Ber­ry ver­sion is forth­com­ing), but I get by quite well even with­out those.

The end­ing of Met­z’s review is actu­al­ly pret­ty funny.

It’s evi­dent to me that she went out of her way to find some­thing wrong with each of RIM’s new Black­Ber­rys. The Bold ⁹⁹⁰⁰⁄₉₉₃₀ “is so expen­sive”, she says. The Torch 9850 “seemed to lag behind”. And the Torch 9810 “looks tired”.

I find these crit­i­cisms to be unwar­rant­ed. If the Bold (RIM’s flag­ship phone, priced at $250) is expen­sive, then so is Apple’s iPhone 4, which costs $200 if you get the 16 GB ver­sion and $300 if you get the 32 GB ver­sion. The Bold actu­al­ly will cost Ver­i­zon cus­tomers who have a New Every Two upgrade left to use only $200.

Three of the four nation­wide car­ri­ers have now released the Bold (Ver­i­zon, T‑Mobile, and Sprint), and sales appear to have been extreme­ly brisk, with T‑Mobile and Sprint sell­ing out their stock.

Only AT&T has held back from releas­ing the new Bold, prompt­ing the cre­ation of an online peti­tion that already has more than a thou­sand sig­na­to­ries.

The new Bold is per­haps the best Black­Ber­ry RIM has ever made. I got it as soon as it became avail­able, and it’s just amaz­ing. It’s fast, respon­sive, and jam-packed with use­ful fea­tures that were miss­ing from my pre­vi­ous Black­Ber­ry. It also pairs well with the Black­Ber­ry Play­Book, RIM’s ground­break­ing tablet.

RIM has real­ly hit a home run with this phone.

I have not had a chance to play with either of the new Torch­es (one is a slid­er, the oth­er is touch­screen-only), but I’ve heard good things about those phones, too, which sug­gest Met­z’s crit­i­cism is off-base.

Like the Bold, they have sol­id specs and run the Black­Ber­ry 7 OS.

One of the best things about Black­Ber­ry OS 7 is the improved web brows­er. It sup­ports tabbed brows­ing (unlike Apple’s mobile ver­sion of Safari, which won’t get that func­tion­al­i­ty till iOS 5 is released) and is capa­ble of faith­ful­ly ren­der­ing web pages very quick­ly. The book­mark­ing inter­face is also smoother.

In just a few days, the lat­est incar­na­tion of RIM’s Black­Ber­ry Curve will go on sale, also sport­ing the Black­Ber­ry 7 OS. Sprint will sup­pos­ed­ly begin sell­ing the Curve 9350 this Fri­day for only $80 after rebate. The Torch 9810 (the slid­er ver­sion) is arguably a bet­ter deal since AT&T is let­ting it go for only $50, though.

The sud­den avail­abil­i­ty of all these new Black­Ber­rys is great news for Black­Ber­ry enthu­si­asts and any­body who has ever wished that RIM’s devices offered more than just excep­tion­al mes­sag­ing capabilities.

It’s too bad these phones are being unfair­ly knocked by review­ers who seem to think Apple and Google’s offer­ings are all that mat­ters. RIM has a future, and ana­lysts or review­ers who sug­gest oth­er­wise should­n’t be tak­en seriously.