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Blackberry Bold 9700 to HTC Aria?

SysAdmNj

Android Enthusiast
Jun 3, 2010
290
7
North NJ
I was originally thinking of leaving AT&T for Verizon to get the upcoming Droid X but not so sure I want to lose the grandfathered unlimited data plan I have and I also got to admit I like the voice/data simultaneous ability of AT&T's 3G network. With that being said, how bad am I going to miss push email, led/custom notifications? How easy is it to root aria and load whatever I want onto it? How do I transfer contacts? Can I still use my sd card with the photos and videos it currently has on them. Anyone made a similar transition?
 
Why would you lose push email? Is your mail server Exchange? If so the Aria will connect to it via ActiveSync(I do this). Contacts should transfer with your sim.

I do not use server exchange. I'm not sure how fast you get your emails on the android as compared to the way blackberry handles them with the BIS servers.

not sure about push email but i thought that was a feature of android
led notifications... idk how important is it to you?
as for the pics they should transfer fine.
I got my phone from best buy and they transfered contacts as part of their service.

Led was always useful especially customizations for certain contacts etc. I know I'll miss that.
 
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I went from a Blackberry Bold 9700 to the Aria. BIS polls every 15 minutes to push email. You can choose how often your phone will poll for messages. You can set it from 'As Messages Arrive' to '4 Hours' if you choose. You can also import your contacts directly from your SD card. The Aria will search your SD card for music, videos and pictures. They will all be accessible immediately without changing the folder structure.
 
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I went from a Blackberry Bold 9700 to the Aria. BIS polls every 15 minutes to push email. You can choose how often your phone will poll for messages. You can set it from 'As Messages Arrive' to '4 Hours' if you choose. You can also import your contacts directly from your SD card. The Aria will search your SD card for music, videos and pictures. They will all be accessible immediately without changing the folder structure.

So you didnt think of going from your Bold to the Aria as a step back?
 
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So you didnt think of going from your Bold to the Aria as a step back?

From a business perspective, I would call it a step back. But I found more and more that I wasn't using the blackberry to its full functionality. I'm a techie toy geek. Love new stuff. I'm sure that I'll get something different 6 months from now, but I'm able to accomplish what I need to with the Aria.

And its just plain more fun than the Bold.
 
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From a business perspective, I would call it a step back. But I found more and more that I wasn't using the blackberry to its full functionality. I'm a techie toy geek. Love new stuff. I'm sure that I'll get something different 6 months from now, but I'm able to accomplish what I need to with the Aria.

And its just plain more fun than the Bold.


How is battery life compared to the 9700?
 
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The battery life is terrible compared to the 9700. I could get 2 days of use before recharging the 9700. I get maybe 12 hours before needing to recharge the Aria. I might get a little better if I maintained a 3G connection all day, but my signal bounces all over the place which eats up quite a bit of battery. Recharging each night doesn't bother me though. I may pick up a spare battery to have charged as a standby.
 
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If you really need it for work/business Blackberry is still pretty strong in that area.

I would, however, not discount Windows Mobile 7 for business. It will have seamless exchange integration and push mail and many other features on that front.

The Aria works flawlessly with ActiveSync/Exchange. I'm actually really enjoying the e-mail client/widget.

The Push from my server is just that push, when I get an e-mail it's on my phone the second it's in my mail client on my computer. No delay what-so-ever.

SysAdmNj said:
How is battery life compared to the 9700?

I'm not a Crackberry user nor have I ever been but my battery life is great. When I went to bed last night I had about 30% battery left. I didn't browse the web a ton but I did a lot of e-mail and texts and played Robo Defense for about an hour and a half. I woke up and pulled the phone off the charger at 7 AM and had 30% left at 11PM. I have the full Google Sync on, I have the Engadget widget on, FriendStream is on as well. Also I had IM going with eBuddy. I'd say the battery life is great.

As for how it compares to a BB from a business perspective I'd say it's just as good with the exception of the physical keyboard. I can't pretend to know all the functions in the BB that you love so I can't ease your troubles by telling you the equivalent but I think you wouldn't be disappointed.

I haven't researched but I do believe that the Aria is capable of remote wipes.
 
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It has Flash Lite which is limited in it's capabilities but works ok. 10.1(the latest version) I can't say much about. I had read that it would require an ARMv7 based processor but that might have just been a recommendation based on people not thinking powerful ARMv6 processors were going to be made. Only time will tell.

HTC has promised that 2.2 will come to all phones released this year so we should get 2.2 even if it is slightly delayed by AT&T.

However on a final note, don't buy a phone cause it sounds cool. Honestly step back and be objective. I think most everyone that has an Aria loves it but that doesn't necessarily mean it fits your needs. I'm very happy to promote this phone as I love it but my wants/needs don't apply to everyone.

With that being said I really hope you enjoy the phone and end up getting it :)
 
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My wants and needs? Pull up a chair.....but seriously if I was buying a phone because it sounds cool then I dont think I'd still be looking at the Aria :D

Not knocking the Aria for being a mid range device compared to the upcoming latest and greatest. But I do think it will be enough for my needs and as a first android device to get my feet wet. There is also something about the HTC Sense UI that I like compared to say Samsung's UI or Motorola's UI.

Honestly, my emails arent that urgent for me to receive instantaneously as I do with the blackberry. I mostly use an all-in-one beejive messenger and google voice for texts every day. I use my blackberry browser but not a good experience. I'm hoping to improve my browsing and google voice experience for one, and hopefully there are decent all-in-one messengers for the Android. Really just dive into this open linux based OS and learn as much as I can. I work with Unix/Linux daily at work so I'm hoping the transition will be smooth. Streaming also is something I hope I can do, so hoping the ustream app works ok on this device.

So yea, I dont feel I need to switch carriers to just get the latest and greatest Android device. I figure if I hang around AT&T they are bound to get nicer Android devices soon. Also now that the iphone marriage is coming to an end, this could be a win for Android.
 
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My wants and needs? Pull up a chair.....but seriously if I was buying a phone because it sounds cool then I dont think I'd still be looking at the Aria :D

Not knocking the Aria for being a mid range device compared to the upcoming latest and greatest. But I do think it will be enough for my needs and as a first android device to get my feet wet. There is also something about the HTC Sense UI that I like compared to say Samsung's UI or Motorola's UI.

Honestly, my emails arent that urgent for me to receive instantaneously as I do with the blackberry. I mostly use an all-in-one beejive messenger and google voice for texts every day. I use my blackberry browser but not a good experience. I'm hoping to improve my browsing and google voice experience for one, and hopefully there are decent all-in-one messengers for the Android. Really just dive into this open linux based OS and learn as much as I can. I work with Unix/Linux daily at work so I'm hoping the transition will be smooth. Streaming also is something I hope I can do, so hoping the ustream app works ok on this device.

So yea, I dont feel I need to switch carriers to just get the latest and greatest Android device. I figure if I hang around AT&T they are bound to get nicer Android devices soon. Also now that the iphone marriage is coming to an end, this could be a win for Android.

Let me just say this. If the Captivate was released tomorrow and I had the option of returning my phone and getting the Captivate at no extra charge I wouldn't. I like the Aria that much.

For the all in one messaging app there's eBuddy and Meebo. I use eBuddy and it works well. For social networking(if you do it at all) I've found FriendStream to work well for me. It can only update every hour but for me that's fine as I'm not a huge social networking guy.

The web browsing experience has been fantastic for me thus far. The only place I've noticed a problem was actually when responding to posts on this forum with it. When I was here for some reason things were a bit sluggish. Other than that it's been extremely fast and the pinch to zoom thing has been very smooth. I'd post pictures I've taken with the camera but I highly doubt anyone wants to see them(they're just of a wound my cat has).

I've been playing with the screens/widgets quite a bit today to decide how I like it set up. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing it all day today and maybe even tomorrow :D

However, keep us posted and let us know what you think even if you hate it. Hope you stick around even if you don't get one :)
 
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Well what can I say. Let me start with the negatives so far
1. battery was done for me in about 7-8 hours, but I kept playing with it for that long. Task killing here and there, wifi and bluetooth were on.
2. Screen is kinda on the small side and somethings arent the easiest to view. Like the twitter stream for example. I think it looked bigger on my smaller blackberry bold screen
3. The only other thing which has been mentioned in a couple of threads here is future proof, but honestly by that time, I"m just picking up another device with an early upgrade if I do indeed stay with the Aria. With that said, future proof, specs wise, I'm noticing some video play back to be choppy like ustream viewer for example and some flash video on sites like espn. I'm not sure if thats because of a slower processor or what. My 3G connection is strong. Will Froyo fix this?
4. In my gmail account, when there are supposed to be embedded pics, not all of them are showing up even when I click show. Some do some dont. It seems buggy, not sure if its the HTC sense interfering? How do you disable HTC sense btw, just for testing purposes.


And now the good:
1. I'm addicted already lol. I dont even miss my instant emails delivery I was getting with the blackberry.
2. The size isnt bad I actually like it, but the screen being bigger than my bold, I'm not sure why some things look smaller. Must be the resolution but even then when I zoom in, the pages dont look all that sharp. Over all, that droid x is lookin more and more like a tablet.
3. Messengers are a little quirky, I'm tesing ebuddy and meebo out. They seem to work ok. I just read Beejive for Android is beta testing now, so you guys might want to join up.
4. Google voice is working great.
5. Browsing using native browser and skyfire is like years ahead of blackberry's browser. Some flash stuff works as it should where it wouldnt work at all on the blackberry browser.
6. Getting around 3rd party installations is pretty simple and having fun getting apps.
7. You can root this, not sure I need to yet but this is a plus. I'm hearing it will be almost impossible with the droid x. I have zero experience with custom roms but if it would better the experience I'll hurry into it.
8. I still have 30 days to return this, but something tells me I will end up keeping this. The negatives I mentioned hopefully will iron themselves out or at least not worsen :/


Not regretting the switch, and I've tried to leave blackberry a few times and kept going back. Not this time :D
 
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well your flash issues are probably related to it being a lite version (something they just hashed together so they could say it had flash) not full 10.1 so yea froyo should fix that.

I dont think you can fully disable sense without installing another rom/rooting... they dig sense into the base code a bit from what i have read(could be wrong though). someone is working on a vanila rom over at xda atm.
 
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