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6:44 am
March 2, 2012
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I figured I should share my experience seeing as I spent far too much time in a persistent battle to enable Browsing with my Petro Canada Anytime plan on my BlackBerry 9700 running OS 6.
Please don't expect me to support this, and if you blow up your phone or waste $10, don't blame me! You proceed at your own risk.
When I first signed up for the Unlimited Browsing, the customer service person said it flat out would not work on BlackBerry. That was my initial experience too, everything would just time out or error out immediately.
The problem is, and what they don't explain to you anywhere (on the phone, their website) is that everything except WAP browsing is now blocked. And if you're missing the WAP Service books that properly specify the Speakout/Rogers WAP gateway, you're not even going to be able to browse.
I don't know if it's just OS6 ot Blackberry in general, but no service books were getting pushed to my device. So I took some service books I found for China Mobile and modified them with a little app called MagicBerry. I put them here if you'd like to try yourself:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ms61.....dhfsi2afnx
Go ahead and download MagicBerry to verify there's no funny business in there before pushing them to your phone.
Go to Options->Device->Advanced System Settings->Service Book
Hold down ALT and type SBEB
Your BlackBerry should say "Legacy SB Restore Enabled".
Use the BlackBerry Desktop Manager to restore the service books in the file above.
Go to Options->Device->Advanced System Settings->TCP IP
APN Settings Enabled (check)
APN: goam.com
APN Authentication Enabled (check)
Username for APN: wapuser1
Password for APN: wap
For those that have looked at this as long as I have, you may be thinking, "Nope, that's not going to work, there's no where to put the WAP Gateway IP and it's not going to work without it." The WAP Gateway IP is in the Service Book entry in the file above. I'm not even sure it matters what you put on this TCP IP screen when it comes to WAP.
Before you start, Go to Mobile Network Options (hit menu key)->Tools->Ping. Check that you have something other than 0.0.0.0 in Device IP. If you don't, the Unlimited Browsing has not been set up properly at Speakout's end. You may need to call them. Of course, try waiting 30 minutes and reboot your device if you just had it added.
The built in web browser should then work once you follow these steps. It appears the Opera is not WAP compliant so it does not work. No other apps will work!! All you get for the $10/month is the built in web browser.
Well, there is one more thing that can work - kind of. I figured out how to redirect InstaMapper (www.instamapper.com) via Wifix sufficient for updates to flow through. The BlackBerry instamapper client reports a network error, but it does update the map. Probably because the connection goes through, the client just doesn't understand the WAP response. I'll post those instructions on the instamapper.com forum soon; if you're interested, go there.
I hope someone finds this useful... Good luck to you!
12:51 am
December 6, 2010
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Good information!
I messed around with an older Blackberry and UMB for a while. I think it was an 8320. I finally got sick of messing around and got an iPhone. It works so well that I wonder why I ever wasted my time with a Blackberry.
If it's a good texting device you are after, then Blackberries are okay. (Actually, I have now realized that I can now type on the virtual keyboard on the iPhone much faster than I ever could on the Blackberry's full QWERTY keyboard). But I have concluded that without a proper Blackberry data plan, they are virtually useless.
10:34 am
December 30, 2010
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agree that blackberry without a BBM plan is a useless device.
but phyical keyboard is still 10x faster than even iphone's virtual keyboard IMO.
I believe the usage is different. i have a few friends working in the typical corporate environment where they are basically meeting animals and blackberry proves to be miles ahead iPhone as it allows them to do blind typing which no virtual keyboard can compete, when they are in meetings.
11:07 am
December 6, 2010
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chimpanzee said:
agree that blackberry without a BBM plan is a useless device.
And if you look at the various Blackberry plans out there, they are useless until you spend a lot of money on a plan. I have been doing a LOT of research ever since our UMB went back to normal.
Typical example: Fido prepaid Blackberry add-ons
1) $20/mo for unlimited email & unlimited IM
OR
2) $20/mo for unlimited social apps & unlimited IM.
These include NOTHING else as far as data usage goes. You cannot browse, check the weather, use Whatapp messenger, check Facebook on option 1, etc.
If you use a 100MB ($10/mo)/500MB ($25/mo) generic data plan, you can browse and use a few apps, but you won't get push email and you can't use BBM. Sure, you can use the browser to check your email, but you can do that with a $40 craigslist Nokia C3 and $10 SO UMB just as well.
The only way to get proper Blackberry service is with a Blackberry data plan, not available on prepaid anywhere. So you are looking at $65/mo if you include call display and voice mail - the things that are normally not included in monthly plans. Too expensive for the average Joe who doesn't need it, which is why I think the Android/Apple way is the way to go. The $10/mo generic 10MB data plan will make everything work on one of these phones. And Apple's iMessenger and Android's Gtalk/Facebook Messenger integration is nearly as good as BBM with the added bonus of being completely cross-platform.
If a QWERTY keyboard is what you are after, there are a few Android phones with slide out keyboards. Me? I can type pretty decently with my iPhone. And I like Apple. But that's me.
11:51 am
December 30, 2010
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blackberry is really for corporation and nothing more. BBM integrate nicely with a corporate email system which iMessenger/gtalk etc. can't compete.
But beyond that, i just wonder why one would pay for a blackberry. For a typical consumer, the alternatives are way better(let's put aside the sturdiness/physical keyboard things), iPhone/Android at similar price point are much more useful, even with the crippled UMB. messaging may be a soft spot but ebuddy/nimbuzz and the like or plain simple yahoo/gmail/hotmail push notification is still pretty usable.
I also thing iPhone(4 in my case) is still the overall champ in smart phone, just that my usage experience with the C3 still said real keyboard beats virtual one.
But one thing i like about virtual keyboard is while it is slower, it allows comfortable single hand operation which i find not possible using C3.
7:03 am
March 19, 2012
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timekiller said:
I figured I should share my experience seeing as I spent far too much time in a persistent battle to enable Browsing with my Petro Canada Anytime plan on my BlackBerry 9700 running OS 6.
Disregard.... I am not persuing the 9700 anymore. Instead I am going the android route, getting my wife a Galaxy 551. She needs a keypad and that seamed like the cheapest alternative. I was successful in connecting our new playbook to my Galaxy Gio using it as a wifi hotspot.
Thanks,
Ash
