Switch from Blackberry or no??

[penleydr]

I'm a Verizon customer, along with my wife and son, we're all on the same plan. Wife and I both have Curve and are both eligible for upgrade. Friday night after work we met at the Verizon store with the full intent being to take advantage of the bogo deals, either for the Storm2 or an Android model. Interestingly enough, we were both really turned off by the Storm2, so that was quickly thrown out as an option. Also of some interest, we both preferred the Eris to the Moto Droid.

At the end of our time there, we decided against getting anything right now. the reasons are as follows...

1. Blackberry Messenger - we both use it a lot. I mostly only use it with her, but a few of my friends also use Blackberry so it does come in handy. She uses it with a couple friends pretty frequently. If there was a free (non-SMS) IM that integrated with Blackberry somehow, I think I would get the Eris - she wants to stick with the Curve for now

2. IPhone - in case Verizon does get the IPhone sometime in 2010, we'd definitely consider going that route. We don't care to leave Verizon just for the IPhone though. This is more my wife's sentiment than mine, I would be fine with Eris.

3. Enterprise messaging support - I currently pay for the enterprise data plan and have my phone hooked up to my company's BES server. With the Exchange Support onthe Eris I'm pretty certain that I would still be able to sync all my email, calenday and contacts but I am not familiar with the interface so I'm a little hesitant. Also, until 2.0 comes out for the Eris, there's no unified messaging inbox, which I really like on the Curve. I suppose I could just wait it out, but I'd be a little disappointed if 2.0 didn't come out for the Eris until the summer or later.

Today, I received a sign...en email from Best Buy saying the Eris is $29.99 for Silver Reward Zone members (who are eligible for upgrades through Verizon), which I happen to be, thanks to us upgrading our appliances recently. They're actually free for new customers, but $30 is still better than $99. This is a great deal because the wife is set on keeping her Curve so I don't feel like I'm wasting a bogo opportunity by purchasing one for myself.

What I really need to know is if there is an IM/chat app that works well on both the Curve and the Eris so that the wife and I can still chat without using SMS (we don't have an SMS package, just on my son't line). I would like to to save the money I would normally be spending on the enterprise data plan on my Blackberry instead of paying for the unlimited SMS txt package from Verizon.

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated!!!

 

[Nonie3234]

Try Google Talk?

The Eris comes with Google Talk, and my husband and I have tried it an liked it, although we normally use our gmail accounts instead.

We both have the Eris and we LOVE THEM! I came from BB Storm, he came from a plain ole "dumb" phone.

What I really need to know is if there is an IM/chat app that works well on both the Curve and the Eris so that the wife and I can still chat without using SMS (we don't have an SMS package, just on my son't line)

 

[mhotovec]

What I really need to know is if there is an IM/chat app that works well on both the Curve and the Eris so that the wife and I can still chat without using SMS (we don't have an SMS package, just on my son't line)

The Eris comes with Google Talk, and my husband and I have tried it an liked it, although we normally use our gmail accounts instead.

We both have the Eris and we LOVE THEM! I came from BB Storm, he came from a plain ole "dumb" phone.

My wife and I use our GMail accounts when we want to 'text' each other also. Generally though we usually (gasp) call each other and actually talk about whatever it is...
I know, we're freaks.

 

[Nonie3234]

Hilarious!

I was showing somebody all the cool things the Eris can do, and they interrupted me to ask about the call quality.

[blink] "Calls? Um...I don't know!"

LOL!

Generally though we usually (gasp) call each other and actually talk about whatever it is...
I know, we're freaks.

 

[rcklss1]

There are apps such as palringo and nimbuzz and ebuddy all apps I'm fairly certain on bb (gave up on bb along time ago) they use only the data package no sms

 

[CircusRock]

Hilarious!

I was showing somebody all the cool things the Eris can do, and they interrupted me to ask about the call quality.

[blink] "Calls? Um...I don't know!"

LOL!

I just went through the same thing. I was trying to figure out how to do 3way calls for about a half hour, lol.

 

[penleydr]

I ended up going with the Eris and now my wife is leaning towards getting one as well. For $30, it's hard to pass up. We'll figure out something for "chat" as I'm certain there's something out there that will work for us, probably Google. Our schedules are such that it's just easier to send little messages sometimes because we never know when the other will be busy or not.

My biggest problem right now is with the Exchange ActiveSync. It's only updating a few of my contacts and keeps coming up with an error message that no one seems to know how to deal with. I even removed the account and added it back in. I'm actually the Exchange administrator for my company and I don't even know where to go from here. So far there's no common denominator to the contacts that do show up so it's kind of like finding a needle in a haystack right now. If I can't get it to work, it's almost a deal breaker and I might take it back. I would hate to do that, but I really do need that functionality and it's advertised as supporting it, that's a big reason why I even looked at it.