My BlackBerry Ran Out Of Memory Again…

GBVZ
#1. April 4th, 2008, at 12:13 PM.

I sync with Outlook as I’m sure many people do… If I want to keep a contact but don’t need it to take up space on my BB… I’ll just create a new contact list in Outlook titled “Not Used Much”… then just don’t sync with that contact list! You’ll still have the contacts in case you ever need them but they they won’t be taking up space on your BB!

Just an idea…

Paul
#2. April 4th, 2008, at 12:21 PM.

I agree. Were are the developers to fix these things!

bluehorseshoe
#3. April 4th, 2008, at 12:43 PM.

In a previous article it was one of my top items listed that I’d like to see added/fixed on the BB. Didn’t see anyone else list it. For this very reason, along with my calendar, I need more internal memory. How many times do I have to pull the battery or remove an application? The memory issue is a big one. As for not being able to place the contacts on memory cards, I guess it comes down to security. If you fire someone in sales, you’d be able to wipe the device clean before they know…but if you have the capability to save contacts on an external card, then they can walk away with the pot of gold. Can’t wipe an external card remotely…at least to my knowledge, and if you can, you can only hope it wasn’t removed from the device prior to the attempt of wiping it out.

AF
#4. April 4th, 2008, at 12:44 PM.

Unless your name is George Bush or Jay-Z, you can’t possibly need to keep that many addresses.

nick
#6. April 4th, 2008, at 2:20 PM.

I have people in the bank with over 1200 contacts on their BB. So other people can have a lot of contacts. its not that hard to rack em up.

AF
#7. April 4th, 2008, at 2:43 PM.

It was sarcasm. I have 356 contacts that I sync to Lotus Notes. Plus I have like 23 apps that I have installed on an 8100 outside what comes on a new device. I use maybe 40 of these contacts TOPS, and maybe 20 on a regular basis.

Kells
#8. April 4th, 2008, at 3:50 PM.

Do you think that a service pack or something could allow you to be able to store contacts on your memory card? It does seem kind of silly to be able to only use that space for media files.

gameboy213
#9. April 4th, 2008, at 3:56 PM.

We need more memory more than anything. No contacts on a card due to security for me.
But I pull the battery almost every day now. Hate it.

gquaglia
#10. April 4th, 2008, at 3:56 PM.

RIM is going to be the next Palm if they don’t get their act together. I’ve seen the specs for the 9000 and it doesn’t look like there is much difference.

Amazed
#11. April 4th, 2008, at 6:09 PM.

It is amazing how stingy RIM is with memory. Apple puts 4, 8, 16 GB on an iphone. RIM places 64MB standard on some of their phones. I had an Apple IIe back in the 80s that had more memory.

Obviously, corporate greed is involved here. They limit contacts, truncate emails, truncate memos, strip graphics from emails, truncate attachments and a variety of other practices to get around the memory limitation problem.

I don’t think memory is that expensive on a $400 phone. I have a $32 Mp3 player with 4 GB.

I will not be buying an BB as my next upgrade because of all the problems with memory and software.

Eshwar S
#12. April 5th, 2008, at 3:59 PM.

@gquaglia & @Amazed

You must be kidding me in saying the new specs for 9000 released by Boy Genius and Engadget is simply not an improvement. I think improvements to the processor (624 MHz ARM core) and 3G capabilities (HSPA) and higher resolution screen are by itself huge improvements.

You must also understand that the trajectory from which different phone manufacturers come from. RIM has primarily come from a e-mail/messaging enterprise background while Apple has come from a music/multimedia consumer background. Since a typical user for RIM comes from the enterprise the primary requirement for on-board flash (basically serving as hard-drive) has been to store messages / apps and the smaller 32 Mb or so SDRAM is for execution memory…

I agree that the 64 Mb right now is getting smaller even for message/apps storage… I am not sure what the specs are for 9000… But I would say 512 Mb would be sufficient going forward… As always you have the opportunity to use an external SD card for storage of multimedia… I hope RIM will keep these two separate.. No business user (strictly) would require 8 Gb of memory… Again this is just my opinion…

Amazed
#13. April 5th, 2008, at 6:19 PM.

Another problem with the BB is that memory is used both for code execution and file storage. One software company cripples their software for the BB because of the lack of memory. Their software runs better on other phones and PDAs. They have to reduce the file sizes and feature sets of their software because their software will overload the BB’s memory.

The other problem is the add-on memory cards. Memory cards are similar to adding a hard drive to a computer. They are not RAM used by the processor. So you can add 2 GB to a BB and none of that 2 GB can be used by the processor for code.

512 MB is too small for applications. Apple has the right idea.

So why does RIM do this? Obviously, they have smart people working at RIM who understand this. Just my opinion, if they add just enough memory to run their softare, they can keep their customers buying more and more BBs. Also since many BBs are purchased as part of cellular service, it keeps customers renewing their contracts for newer BBs.

In marketing, this is called planned obsolescence.

It wastes the customer’s time and resources by giving them less than what technology is capable of producing. Inside of producing the best phone on the market. They produce BBs with just enough features to get the customer to buy, but not enough features to preclude a customer upgrade in the future.

Eshwar S
#14. April 5th, 2008, at 7:05 PM.

@Amazed

I have to disagree. You are wrong completely on the technical aspect of things. Code execution is done using SDRAM. Storage of apps and files are done on on-board flash/SD card. NAND flash while faster than hard drive is too slow for code execution (primarily because of larger write times). So code execution is done on the SDRAM. External SD card memory basically supplements on-board flash. 512 Mb should be more than enough for storing applications for blackberry. Each generation of blackberry has been adding more memory/processor speed/screen resolutions. Its just that we are probably towards the end of a particular generation and we are hitting limits and obviously the next release will improve upon these things. RIM is trying to offer backwards portability of many of the newer features unlike Apple ever does. So obviously you might have performance hits in some of these features.

New BB User
#15. April 6th, 2008, at 3:26 AM.

I also think BB should allow to run any apps from memory card as well. The SM card should be easy to access from external and act like internal memory. Piece of crap design. If security is an issue, encrypt it just like the internal memory. Nothing is impossible. No excuse.

Roger Prokic
#16. April 6th, 2008, at 2:01 PM.

The blackberry needs to be able to store third party apps (with data) on the memory cards, as well as giving users the ability to backup their PIM data to the memory card. This is something that the palm does very well, and I miss it terribly. It should not be that hard for a person to write this software. But my guess is that RIM will need to support it in an OS upgrade.

matthew
#17. April 6th, 2008, at 8:18 PM.

The president of my company has 2411 contacts (as of Friday), corporate email for 2 companies, and he has room on his 8820. I can see both arguments (who knows that many people(believe me, he knows them and calls most of them often)) and the “how can you not have room” arguement.

Ari Wiel
#18. April 9th, 2008, at 4:47 PM.

I just picked up on this new application over on BerryReview that might help you with your memory issues.

http://www.berryreview.com/2008/04/09/can-this-be-true-installing-applications-to-your-sd-card/

Eric
#19. April 10th, 2008, at 1:59 PM.

Hey Amazed (#11), the max onboard RAM for an Apple IIe was 64K, not 64MB. Not try!

You could expand it all the way to 128K though! haha.

Eric

Torrieny
#20. June 6th, 2008, at 8:46 PM.

I have the same exact problem!
Now that they are coming out with a new BB - will it have more ram? I have seen the basic specs on it, but it says nothing about the ram? Anyone know? I’m ready to switch back to my Palm just for this reason. Believe me, that’s not a happy decision on my part! I love my BB!!!

Man
#21. August 18th, 2008, at 7:57 PM.

I just got a blackberry pearl (8120) because everybody said they loved it. Well, I too get the truncated emails, and trying to view a pdf is a joke! The Blackberry server sends you a fuzzy, watered down version. Sure, you can zoom in and enhance it (read: you wait for it to download more data - then it gets clearer), but then you can’t scroll around. It only enhances that portion of your screen you zoomed into. Then you have to zoom out, scroll, zoom in, enhance, etc. etc. I have a multi GB card in my BB. Just download the full pdf please! Stingy corporate greed! This is a joke for businesspeople! I won’t be buying another Blackberry.

Torrieny
#22. August 25th, 2008, at 1:33 PM.

Hey there Man,
I had a pearl. I complained to my carrier about the memory, etc., and they said it is a known issue that will hopefully be corrected with these new BBs coming out. Until then, they let me switch to the Curve. I have to say, since I switched to the curve I haven’t had any of those problems I had with memory loss, etc., when I had the pearl. I am happy with the curve, and I’m back to loving my BB. Although, they have a long way to go (in my book) if they want to keep up with my palm zire!! If that had a phone in it, I would never have switched to BB. If they will let you switch to the curve, try it. It’s worth it. Check it out. Good luck!