Blackberry Storm & Geocaching

[+Inkahoots]

I went to upgrade to a Blackberry Storm this morning because it claimed to have full access to the internet. I wanted to use it in the field to look up caches and post my fiinds in real time. I know they released an application for the iphone but I dont want to switch carriers. My biggest gripe is when you pull up a cache description page it blacks out the 1st half of the page. You cannot get any info on it. I called verizon's tech dept. and they said that Groundspeak has an agreement with Apple and that I would not have access to the information I'm looking for. As soon as I relaized I could not do anything on the web site from this phone I returned it. The sales person was shocked because he said I was the only one to return the phone because they sold out of them so quick. I told him that since I cannot use it for geocacing I wasn't interested in it. Let me know if anyone else has this problem and if so how I would be able to work around it.

 

Actually, I would like to know if Verizon offers a program now similar to the iphone that brings up the caches pages without the hassle of signing in which is a pain!!!................Hoots!

[+mtn-man]

I use a Blackberry (Not the Storm) on T-Mobile...works just fine for me...I too would like to get that phone...but until it is offered on other providers...Verizon doesn't like 3rd Party Software using "their" phones' features...stuff like Geocache Navigator...

I read somewhere that the GPS ships unlocked with the Storm so applications should work with it, but many will need to be rewritten to be Storm specific for whatever reason.

 

I got a verizon Blackberry Storm the day it came out. I can pull up the geocaching.com site with the included browser no problem. I would recommend the wap.geocaching.com as it's easier to read and faster. I also have been able to pull up gps and navigate to a cache with my Storm using Blackberry Maps. You just have to format a link and send it to your phone. Then copy it and pin it to yourself. If you don't send it in a pin it won't give you the "view map" option for some reason. I may write a tutorial for storm users, but I'm still playing with it to see if it's accurate enough for geocaching.

 

pastorhudson

Inkahoots, I think this is the best series of posts to answer your question. The iPhone manufacturer (Apple) and the provider (AT&T) are very open and encourage people to write applications for the iPhone. On the other hand, I don't think that Verizon and Blackberry allow that as much. All GC.com had to do was create the application and submit it for approval. Once approved, you could buy it and use it. This isn't the case with Verizon. I am in the same boat since my company paid phone and my wife's personal phone is a Verizon phone, but I will still probably get a Storm in a few months anyway. Free calls between the two of us is a pretty valuable thing at this point, and not worth getting an iPhone for.

[+toothpaste4breakfast]

Iv got a Blackberry storm on Vodafone and have attempted to download the geocache navigator for it and as normal it asks for the mobile phone number linked to the phone and every time i put this in a message comes up saying no valid handmark licence for this phone number. As you can imagin this is extreamly infuriating seen as iv paid for a yearly subscription. Anyhow the support team have been extreamly prompt with their correspondance in trying to sort this out but still to no avail, its been 3 days now and still no joy. Has anyone else had the same problem? iv adjusted all the settings to allow everything but still no geocaching..... Odd thing is i have two other bits of gps software that works fine so im inclined to think that this is a problem on handmark/trimble side as opposed to mine. Any help or advice offered would be greatly appriciated as i seem to be clutching at straws now

[rwold]

Iv got a Blackberry storm on Vodafone and have attempted to download the geocache navigator for it and as normal it asks for the mobile phone number linked to the phone and every time i put this in a message comes up saying no valid handmark licence for this phone number. As you can imagin this is extreamly infuriating seen as iv paid for a yearly subscription. Anyhow the support team have been extreamly prompt with their correspondance in trying to sort this out but still to no avail, its been 3 days now and still no joy. Has anyone else had the same problem? iv adjusted all the settings to allow everything but still no geocaching..... Odd thing is i have two other bits of gps software that works fine so im inclined to think that this is a problem on handmark/trimble side as opposed to mine. Any help or advice offered would be greatly appriciated as i seem to be clutching at straws now

 

Toothpaste4breakfast:

 

You should post your questions about Geocache Navigator on the forums at GeocacheNavigator.com. That site is there to help with questions on that program. Though Groundspeak provides all the data for that app, Trimble writes and maintains it.

 

With your particular question though, I will answer it here also ;-)

 

The Applications distributed on Handmark have code integrated into the application that talks to Handmarks servers to verify that you have paid for the application, but it appears that Handmark's servers are malfunctioning. Trimble's cutstomer support team is trying to figure out a pattern of what is failing, and is working with Handmark to resolve it, but the issue has been intermittent for a few weeks now.

 

I would suggest directly contacting handmark's customer support. If enough people make noise they will fix it ;-)

 

Good luck!

[+dhyde79]

I'm not sure what kind of setup you're fighting but I'm posting this from my storm, and I have zero problems accessii the site, there are 3 different options for getting the sites to load, go in and change it to firefox or internet explorer and it should work fine, or get cacheberry and load your .loc or .gpx files and it'll handle it all fine...

[+hardlylooking]

I went to upgrade to a Blackberry Storm this morning because it claimed to have full access to the internet. I wanted to use it in the field to look up caches and post my fiinds in real time. I know they released an application for the iphone but I dont want to switch carriers. My biggest gripe is when you pull up a cache description page it blacks out the 1st half of the page. You cannot get any info on it. I called verizon's tech dept. and they said that Groundspeak has an agreement with Apple and that I would not have access to the information I'm looking for. As soon as I relaized I could not do anything on the web site from this phone I returned it. The sales person was shocked because he said I was the only one to return the phone because they sold out of them so quick. I told him that since I cannot use it for geocacing I wasn't interested in it. Let me know if anyone else has this problem and if so how I would be able to work around it.

 

i have a BB curve from nextel and i had the same problems. i figured out that the black block can be avoided if you click the browser "stop" command before the page fully loads. but i still can't press any buttons on the search pages. something to do with the browser.

[Thugboat]

I use a Storm to geocache all the time. The black box is just a temporary display error. Try zooming in and out or panning and it will go away.

 

Also, if you're geocaching with the Storm, there's a great free app called Black Star that, in conjunction with Google Maps, works very well.