Playing cards

First in a series of articles about how to use the Blackjack

If any of you know me from my forays in various internet forums (most frequently at Applenova as torifile), you’ll know that I’m something of a tech dilettante. But I’m not a very good one. I get frustrated really easily when things don’t work like they should. That’s not to say that I just give up on the product, but the luster just wears off. But when I first get something, I spend hours with it, learning the ins and outs of it. Trying new software, etc.

My most recent tech toy is the Blackjack (I’m working on a hands-on review of it but in the meantime you can read about it on Engadget). It’s one of the only 3G phones available in the US market.

Technorati Tags: Blackjack, Cingular

As with any device with an OS made by Microsoft, there have been a few head-scratchers when trying learn how to use it. For this post, though, I’m going to focus on getting a couple of really great mobile apps from Google working on the phone. Specifically, I’m talking about the GMail and Google Maps applications that Google’s put out. If you’ve not tried these apps on your phone, you’re missing out. (The only reason I’m even considering paying for a data plan (MediaMax) is because Google Maps is so spectacularly helpful. Cingular should be paying Google a percentage but I digress…)

These are 2 data intensive applications, as you can imagine. Get the unlimited¹ data plan if you’re thinking about using them. For some strange reason, each and every time the apps need to connect to the net, they ask for permission. That’s every single time. And you’re given 3 choices about the permissions:

1. Allow this one time
2. Deny this one time
3. Deny permanently

Notice anything missing from those choices? That’s right, “Allow every time” isn’t there!?!?!! It’d be like your firewall asking you if you want to allow your web browser to connect for every image it had to load. Needless to say, it’d be tedious and worthy of a few rants. Undeterred, I used my google-fu to start my search. I found a newsgroup posting directing to this thread.

The gist of the fix is that the Blackjack needs a non-crippled Java Virtual Machine. I don’t know who’s responsible for the excessively restrictive JVM - I think Cingular asked Samsung to put a crippled JVM in². (Download the IBM J9 environment and the midlets.)

Install the JVM and run the midlets and you’re golden. Then complain to Cingular for this ridiculous practice.

1. You don’t need the expensive PDA Connect plan, despite what the Cingular reps would have you believe. MediaMax Unlimited for $19.99 is sufficient and works perfectly well. ↩

2. I’m not the only one. See here, here, and here for examples.↩