Installing applications

Ok, so you got a good feeling of the features the phone has, now you want more. You want to add some functionality provided by a third party application? No problem here is how.
There are several methods to install applications on the BlackBerry depending on how the application is distributed and also if it is a BB specific application or a regular J2ME app.
If what you have is a BlackBerry specific application, chances are that you have a .cod file and a .alx file in a directory or zip file.
The .cod file is the actual app, and the .alx is a descriptor of the app.
Method 1:
- Open Desktop Manager
- Connect your BB using the USB cable or bluetooth
- Click Application Loader
- Click Next
- Click Add
- Browse to the directory where you have your .alx and .cod files.
- Select the .alx file and click open
- Click Next
- Click Finish
Your application has been installed.
If you get an error message saying "There are no applications for your device" I suggest upgrading Desktop Manager to version 4.3. That solved the problem for me.
Method 2:
If you have a .jar file and no .jad you need to copy the file to the memory card just like you copy an mp3 or a jpg.
- Then on the phone go to Media
- Click the Menu key (yeah the one with the BlackBerry logo)
- Select Explore
- Browse the Memory Card to the place you stored the .jar file
- Click on it and the berry will prompt you to "Download" the app to the phone
- Just click Download, and follow the on-screen prompts.
Method 3:
Over The Air (OTA) installation
It basically involves using the Internet or Wap Browser to navigate to an online site which offers you to download an application, in this case they will send you the .jad file and the phone will use it to reach the URL where the .jar file is available for download.
Once you follow the link to the .jad file the procedure is the same as Method 2, the phone prompts you if you want to download the app (but this time it really is a download :-))

"Smart Dialing" or How to make your phone show the caller's name for all of your contacts.

The other day I realized that my phone showed up the name and picture from the address book for some of the callers and not for others even when all of them were present as Contacts.
So I started investigating, trying to find something in common between the callers.
I found out that all the people calling from mobile phones was identified correctly but the ones calling from land lines were not. Odd ...
Next step I searched my Curve settings looking for the place where you typically tell the phone what your area code is. [ Go to the Call Log application, hit Menu /Options /Smart Dialing ]
There you will find something like this

Country Code: +54
Area Code: 911
National Number Length: 10

We are interested in the first three rows.
The configuration showed above is the correct one for Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Of course the phone did not came correctly configured)
I will explain a little for you to configure it for your location.
1. First Country Code, you just pick it up from a list, no much to say about it, you just need to know what your country code is. +54 is Argentina, +1 is US. Checkout this country code list.
2. Then Area Code, well it is different in every country, it can be 1, 2, 3 digits or more. You don't need to include the long distance prefix here. For instance Buenos Aires' area code is 11. But if you are calling to Buenos Aires from any other city in Argentina you typically dial "0 11". Zero being the domestic long distance prefix. That should not be included in the Area Code, as it is not part of the telephone number.
If you are wondering why I put "911" I will explain below.
3. And last National Number Length, that means the number of digits used for telephone numbers in your city INCLUDING the area code. For instance if in your area local numbers have 8 digits and your area code is 2 digits, you need to set it to 10.
As long as things are standardized along your country you will be good with this settings.

Notes: A couple of extra tips and details.
In Argentina when you need to dial a mobile phone from a regular number you need to add 15 at the beginning. That is NOT part of the number it is just you acknowledging to pay a little extra because your are calling a cell phone (it is a consequence of CPP Calling Party Pays).
Given the fact that we are configuring a cell phone, and when you are calling from a cell phone you are aware that you will be paying the call at a mobile rate, it is unnecessary to dial 15.
Now that 15 story only applies if you are inside the country and is of no interest for this article.
But, there is always a but ..., a fully qualified cell phone number in Buenos Aires, Argentina for instance looks like this +54 9 11 xxxx-xxxx. What in heaven is that 9 ? Well it actually means you are dialing a cell phone in Argentina and not a land line ..., but nothing else. It has the same meaning of the 15, not that you care much if you are calling overseas ... but it is mandatory to reach an Argentine cell phone from ANY phone in the world.
And that is the reason why I tell my BlackBerry that my area code is 911 instead of 11. This way the phone correctly identifies cellphones calling me (my carrier send a fully qualified caller id for cellphones), and it also correctly identifies land lines, which my carrier sends as national numbers(i.e.: 11 xxxx-xxxx)

First thing I tried: GPS

The included Maps application isn't very useful in Argentina as there are no maps available. It only shows a couple of landmarks. Enters Google Maps, just to confirm my data connection was in place I opened the Internet Browser and downloaded Google Maps OTA (Over The Air). It arrived quiet fast, installed and run flawlessly. It requested permission to use the GPS, that I granted and immediately showed the usual satellite images.
If you press 0 it triangulates your position using the information obtained from cell towers nearby and does a pretty fast and good job typically missing by about 3 blocks, but wait while it positioned and downloaded the maps for the area it also was trying to acquire any available GPS satellite signal and in a moment it will accurately pin point you with a precision of 3 meters.
The GPS itself doesn't seam to put a heavy strain on the battery but keep in mind that you will be typically receiving the GPS signal, downloading the corresponding map and keeping the screen on. All that together will impact how much your battery lasts. Anyway battery is not an issue for the Curves.
Update: I am away from Buenos Aires this weekend and I had the chance to try the GPS on the road and in a small beach village called Cariló. It looks like Google Maps is not able to triangulate your position based on the cellular antennas when you have only "edge" (lowercase) connectivity. Otherwise it was very accurate (within 3 meters) and helped us through and out of the wood's dirty roads. Also when you are not getting a GPS signal the precission of the cellular antenna's method varies in rural areas as there are less towers and they cover larger distances.

Another 24 hours

It is Monday now, still no data connection... I call the company at the blackberry support line, They are very kind by the way. This time the lady concludes the same thing my line hasn't been provisioned yet and she decides to take action. She sends commands to the network and tells me she will call me back in 20 min and she does !! She haves me reset my berry and boila, the ServiceBooks with all the configuration arrives. Since that precise moment my device changed, it got a life of its own. Icons for Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Internet Browser, and email configuration showed up. I fired up the browser and went for google.com ... 2 seconds later ... It worked !!!! I'm happy now. My life has just begun.

24 hours later

Time went by ... Sunday morning. I pull my Curve out of its swivel, it unlocks automatically ;-) ain't that nice?, I check again my mobile network data connectivity (alias EDGE) ... same problem. I start changing settings here and there ... no luck.
Sunday afternoon ... I call my mobile operator Claro Argentina again. I finally reached someone with a very good knowledge on berries, she drives me through a reset procedure, checks my line, checks my services, and after asking for my PIN she finds out my line has not been correctly provisioned for a BlackBerry service ... (no kidding), so she tells me I will need to wait until the next day for it to work ... another 24 hours ...
I spent rest of the day playing with the BlackBerry Desktop software, and trying to import my Contacts list.
There are a couple of options available, like Backup/Restore, Import from a previous Berry, and a little hidden there are general import options to Synchronize with Outlook, "ASCI files" (which includes .csv files) and a few others.
Initially I wanted to send my Contacts over Bluetooth straight from my Samsung D600 to the Curve, but my Samsung's Bluetooth radio seems to be miss-behaving lately (I checked it against other devices than de Curve and it consistently failed). So that was not an option to me. Anyway I later discovered that the Curve has no "Receive Contact via bluetooth" option :-S

No internet access ... calling tech support ... waiting

After trying to connect with the Wap browser (the only browser I had available) and realizing there was a problem with data communications (Voice and SMS worked just fine) I decided to call customer service. I called a couple of times and got different answers, "please call this other number for mobile internet support", "wait 24 hours for the network to be configured for your device". I decided to wait and played with the rest of the phone features the rest of the day. (Still Saturday).
I paired the phone to my girl friend's Motorola H500 bluetooth headset and it worked wonderful, even better than the Samsungs. Having the Voice Dialing is great when you are driving. You can also check some phone status via voice commands, like battery charge , signal strength, etc.
Then after proving it was strong on the bluetooth side, I brought my Motorola HT-820 Bluetooth Stereo Headset and loaded some music from the computer using the USB MassStorage support. They paired pretty fast and then from the media player I started playing same tunes. The headset also supports AVRP and works perfectly to remotely control the music playback (Volume up, down, next track, prev track, play & pause)
So far so good ! :-)
It played alright all of my mp3, mp4 and 3gp files I copied over form my former Samsung phone.
Music can by left playing in background with no noticeable delay on the OS responsiveness.
I even tried and succeeded at setting a custom ringtone for a contact while listening to the music. That's right, it mixed both mp3 through the bt headset. :-)

Great day, excitment, ... cell phone company

After asking in a couple of Claro offices downtown I had to call customer support to find out where I could get a hold of an 8310. It happened to be available in the office nearest home so I headed towards the store first time on Saturday morning. After making me wait for 30-40 minutes a sales clerk did her stuff (or so I thought at the moment) and off I went with my new phone. It took the network about 15 minutes to allow my new device to connect. At that point I started playing with my new toy. As a phone it is great, the best I ever had I would say. It is about 450 US dollars including a carrier discount. I also had to subscribe to the mandatory flat EDGE data service for 16 dollars per month. I have to mention the phone interface is great, the options are countless (speakerphone, smart dialing - i.e: really smart like searching everywhere in your addressbook for the few letters( or numbers) you are typing- , speaker is loud and clear, signal y typically stronger than in my previous Samsung D600, speaker independent voice dialing is awesome too, and many more).
So far so good. Then I tried the Maps application, which takes a significant amount of time to get a fix from the satellites. The funny thing was when It did it said "You are here" with a pin on a non-existent map ..., at that point I started to realize that the data network was unavailable. I checked the signal an I had 4 bars and a big EDGE sign on the top right corner of the screen ... How come ? (short answer: The company forgot to provision something on the network.)