BlackBerrry Bold 9700 Once T-Mobile turned on 3G in this area, I had to have a 3G BlackBerry. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one available for a while – that is, until mid November. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 was released by T-Mobile to the masses on November 16. I waited a day before buying one 😉 The device itself is very similar in size to the BlackBerry Curve 8900 that I bought last May but with some nice additions under the hood. The processor is now a zippy 624 MHz, and the device has 256MB of Flash memory. T-Mobile included a 2 GB microSD card with the unit. (AT&T is the only other carrier to have the 9700 at this time.)
I still use WiFi for calling inside my house (not available for the AT&T model) but having 3G when I’m out and about is really the icing on the cake. I think I may have found my perfect device – at least until the next best thing comes along 😉
Recycle those gadgets! I recycle my gadgets by passing them on to my partner. However, we always end up with extra gear. One option is eBay, but I rarely sell anything there. Sometimes, things just end up sitting around collecting dust. (I did take advantage of a BlackBerry trade-up offer and sent in an old Motorola phone I had.) But there are a couple of sites that you can sell your gadgets to. Check out Gazelle and YouRenew. Both of them will buy your old gear. My old BlackBerry Pearl, for example, will garner me $21 at Gazelle or $27 at YouRenew. (By comparison, they are selling for about $65 on eBay.) Not a lot of money, but then again, the device is old by technology standards.
Updated UberTwitter It’s hard to believe how far this software has come since I first reviewed it last August. Although still in beta, the latest version was officially released yesterday. I’ve been fortunate enough to be among the beta test group and I can tell you: this software rocks! My favorite improvement is the friend picker which, when you type @, pops up a list of your friends. No more mistyping of a username. If you have a BlackBerry and aren’t using UberTwitter, you don’t know what you’re missing 😉
Not convinced about Twitter? I tried to convey the usefulness of Twitter a while ago. But someone with much better writing skills than I has captured exactly what I think about this latest addition to social media. David Carr of The New York Times has done a fine job in explaining why Twitter, unlike some of the other social media, is here to stay.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Just realized that I forgot to mention that the 9700 has a trackpad, instead of the trackball that the 8900 has. The trackpad is really amazing – and much less prone to problems getting in it than the trackball was.
Was giving T-Mobile a second look (digging the Nexus One, and having my primary phone be GSM would be really really nice), but I see that they’re shutting down roaming agreements with AT&T, resulting in a noticeable loss of coverage, according to many accounts I’ve seen. Not cool.
Alas and alack, I remain with my Treo 755p, hoping something better will come along . . .
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The trick to getting some value out of your old gadgets is to sell them as soon as you’re done. Not keep saying “yeah, I’ll do it soon”. Or else you’ll end up like me, wondering what to do with my Sony Vaio NV505 . . .
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Finally, in the same vein as the Twitter piece, I recommend http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/05/social-media-cory-doctorow
You know, I’ve only been roaming on AT&T once. The rest of the time, no matter where I go, I’m on TMobile’s network. So I’ve been pretty happy. Given how much you travel, GSM just makes sense. And TMob even more sense. With a WiFi-enabled TMobile phone, you can make calls in Europe, for example, and not be charged any roaming fees at all.
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Agreed on not holding on to the devices too long. That’s why you have to upgrade regularly 🙂 Get rid of that Treo already :p
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Good article in the Guardian.