Monday, July 13, 2009

New BlackBerry Tour minimal turnout - many prefer it over touchscreen devices


One users said the excitement of a new RIM device is diminished by growing monthly fees

Fifteen people waited outside a suburban Boston Verizon Wireless for up to two hours early Sunday morning to buy a new BlackBerry Tour smartphone.
Several of those waiting for the 10 a.m. opening said the Tour model is attractive because it has a physical QWERTY keyboard, and is made by a well-known company -- Research in Motion Ltd.

The Tour, considered by many to be a slight upgrade from the RIM's BlackBerry Curve or the Bold models, went on sale for $200 with a two-year agreement from Verizon or Sprint Nextel Inc. and a rebate.

At the Verizon Wireless store, Al Ferrer proudly showed his new Tour side-by-side with an older BlackBerry Bold, which he uses with AT&T's network. "The Tour is a little smaller, see? It's little. Cute, eh?"

Ferrer, a nuclear and mechanical engineer, qualifies as a power user of smartphones, and demonstrated that he is familiar with many of them. A Wellesley, Mass., resident, he travels often all over the globe for work, and considers his smartphone use "critical" to his day-to-day chores of making calls and monitoring e-mail.

The heavy number crunching and PowerPoint and Excel tasks he must do are almost all handled on a Dell laptop, which Ferrer said he still needs on longer trips. But he is looking to reduce the number of handheld devices he has to carry.

Ferrer's Tour will replace an older Motorola Razr. He will keep his Bold smartphone, which uses the AT&T network, to make sure he doesn't miss out on a call or a data connection. "With both, I'm pretty sure not to miss anything," he said.

Ferrer and his son, Andrew Ferrer, who also purchased a new Tours yesterday, smirked at the idea of buying a BlackBerry Storm or Apple Inc. iPhone, which have touchscreens. "A touchscreen phone is a nice idea, but they haven't perfected it," Al Ferrer said. "I have small hands and big fingers, and it's hard to use it for typing."

Andrew Ferrer, an attorney, added, "Getting a physical keyboard was critical for me."
Both men also own the Apple iPod Touch, but don't like how it responds to their touch, they said.
Several other customers agreed with the Ferrers' sentiment about the touch sreen.

Lacey Cumming, a student at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass., who was one of the first to arrive at the store to make sure she could get a new Tour to replace her Curve. She said she had tried a Storm for two weeks and returned it.

"I didn't like the Storm," Cumming said. "It was too slow and didn't react to my touch well." Cumming has had eight different phones in her 19 years, she said, but still relies on an HP laptop required by her school for most of her intense browsing and school chores, she said. The Tour will be a convenient way to text friends and do casual browsing, she added.

She showed off her accessories, including a screen protector and a bright pink protective skin that was the only color that would do compared to the only other choices -- blue and clear.
If anything, the Sunday customers at the Verizon store showed how intensely personal a smartphone can be, right up there with precious jewelry.

David Peters, also of Wellesley, said he bought the Tour to support his marketing and sales job as he travels globally. He was a former Curve customer on the T-Mobile USA network, and first got on T-Mobile because its network reach had been so good in other countries. "But I am transferring to Verizon because T-Mobile service sucks here," he said. T-Mobile USA's parent is Deutsche Telekom AG, which explains its reliability abroad, he reasoned.

Peters also avoided the Storm "because my colleagues said it was hard to use the touchscreen and difficult to use the buttons."

Sharon Decker, manager of the Verizon store in Natick, Mass., said while the early turnout of 15 people for the Tour was robust, it was about one-fourth the number that showed up in November for the BlackBerry Storm debut at a nearby Verizon store where she managed at the time. And hundreds of people at lined up outside the downtown Boston Apple store for the debuts of each of the last two iPhone models, showing there are obviously still many touchscreen enthusiasts.

For the Ferrers, the purchase of two Tours was a chance to reflect on the future cost of monthly cellular services. Today, Al Ferrer said he puts himself and three other family members on the same Verizon account for about $350 a month for the phones and AT&T's service. He is reimbursed his business costs of about $150 a month, he said.

But down the road, he hopes to contain his costs and said he is in the process of eliminating the land line phone at his home to help out. He is a realist, though, and recognizes that subscription fees will keep going up.

"I could handle some increases in monthly charges, but $500 would be too much," he said. Maybe the carriers could find a way to offer free tethering of his smartphone to his laptop so he could eliminate the cost of a broadband laptop card, which can be more than $60 a month. "Something has to give," he said.