By: www.mountainviewcellphones.com 5/29/2008
We have sold many BlueAnt Supertooth Light devices. It’s a great product. It has wonderful noise cancellation, great battery life, noise cancellation technology, clips on the car visor, and doesn’t go into the washing machine (I’ve washed two bluetooth headsets myself and I find this product a welcome relief to the pocket book).
The device has a great design. Turning on the device only requires popping out the microphone. Four simple buttons and allows you to use voice activated dialing if your phone has the capability (similar to any other bluetooth headset). What’s truly unique about this device is that it will keep you compliant with the law and you don’t have to stick or put something in your ear. It’s really easy to pair the device with the phone and it’s simple to operate by just having the microphone pop out. BlueAnt did their homework to see that this market was ripe for the picking.
We tested a device on the roadside. Read the rest of this entry »
By: www.mountainviewcellphones.com 5/22/08, updated 2/2/2009.
One of the common failure points of the new Blackberries are the track balls. If too much pressured is applied to them, they will break. There is an interesting system of sensors and rollers that keep the mouse moving (up, down, left, right) and when pressing the button, executes a command. If pressed to hard the ball will actually break the sensor under it and it will cease to operate. Barring this extreme damage, sticky or balls that roll only in one or two directions are generally caused by the rollers getting dirty and not rolling anymore.
I don’t know what people put on their thumbs or get on their thumbs and then transfer to their Blackberries, but we see this problem many times in our service center. For certain, how you fix this problem is to clean the rollers and the track ball.
Our fix is to disassemble the device carefully, clean the rollers with some rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs, and then waiting for the alcohol to dry before reassembly. This has worked many times and has been a great solution for a simple problem. The newer Blackberries have several different parts to disassemble so be patient not to break the pieces. Just ensure you get the screws out with torque screw drivers before prying the plastic apart with guitar picks or another plastic tool.
You can also pop the trackball out from the keyboard but be careful. The plastic prongs that hold the chrome bezel in place are fragile and if broken will render the trackball assembly useless.
Of course, you can always bring your Blackberry to our service center and we can do this for you. The charge is only $15.00 for the cleaning and you can leave it with us and go get lunch and then come back and get the phone when you are done. If there is damage to the trackball assembly, we can sell you a track ball for $15.99 or we can repair the whole thing for $35.00 (parts and labor). We can do this for most Blackberries (Curve, Pearl, World Edition, 8800s, 8100s, 8300s).
By: www.mountainviewcellphones.com 5/7/2008
Realtors are some of the heaviest wireless users. Not only are they constantly mobile, but they need information at the point of use. Many customers now have smartphones and can fine similar information that the realtor has for basic searches, but this means that customers expect to communicate with realtors using their smartphones. Communication for realtors is now expected to be instant or with very narrow delays.
There are several applications for Realtors that run predominantly on Palm OS or Windows OS environments. These allow for MLS listings and researching specific real estate information. These applications can also help with CRM functions by allowing you to save your contact information in an organized fashion on a database to track transactions.
The Palm TREOs and the ecosystem around this device has built up several unique traits that help realtors more than most professions.
1. GE Supra has introduced the best lock box system in the industry to help with key management and security for showing homes. This requires an infrared port on the devices that only Palm and Windows devices has. This is a great time saver for realtors and helps with key management (a big time suck).
2. MLS Listing applications are specific for every region. This is a critical piece of information for seeing what has been listed and is on the market. This helps with comps and allows realtors to show the most “recent” listings to customers before everyone else. Speed is key for many possibilities to help realtor clients get the best deals.
3. Treos and other devices have been cracked to do phone as a modem downloads without the use of a phone as a modem data plan. This can help save money and improve time savings for realtors with computers and having a wireless mobile device.
4. Cameras are critical to taking pictures and quickly sending them.
5. Voice recorder is a great application to help with many day to day recordings. This can help take notes and to personalize communications of realtors with their clients.
6. With Windows devices, GPS is a critical tool and built in function that will allow for turn by turn directions to different locations.
7. Touchscreens. Many realtors aren’t the most tech savvy buyers and don’t have time to learn all the nuances of a device. The touchscreen has been the most user friendly form factor for learning and working quickly. This is a great advantage of Palm and Windows devices for realtors.
Lastly, the plans with Sprint have never been more affordable. As most realtors are commission based, fixed costs are a definite concern. Now with the $99.99 plan for everything, this is definitely the best deal for getting the most done with the phones. This plan will allow for GPS navigation, texting, web, email, and TV/radio for one flat rate. It’s a sea change in the business and this will allow Sprint to service realtors better than other carriers.
