What at one point appeared to be another frustrating BlackBerry weekend turned into a pleasant surprise. After upgrading the BlackBerry WordPress app, I rebooted my Curve, as required. The next time I checked it, it was frozen. I rebooted again, but soon found myself in the same situation as a few weeks ago, when my Curve died. This time I took it to the Verizon store, knowing that even if I fixed it again, I’d get the same problem again eventually. The rep was receptive to my plight, and offered to exchange my Curve for a Tour. I couldn’t say no. Immediately after booting up and activating, I noticed an issue with the font. I’m a pretty big BlackBerry Gmail user, and it appears that the font issue has something to do with that. While email appears normal on some emails, on others it’s gigantic. This might be a benefit for some, and I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer a smaller font, especially with the high-res screen. But going to Options – Screen/Keyboard and changing the font to the lowest setting, 7, still didn’t accomplish anything. I was still getting large font emails from some users. Unfortunately, it appears that this occurs between Gmail users. This is a problem, because some of the people I contact most frequently use Gmail. A user on BlackBerry Forums, ran through the technical part of the issue, but that doesn’t really help. I want to read emails from my Gmail contacts the same way I do everyone else. The only solution I can find is to hit Menu and select Get Plain Text. That takes off all HTML coding, but that’s not a big issue from my Gmail contacts. It’s a slight nuisance to do this for every Gmail message of more than a sentence or two, but it’s better than constantly scrolling through a 500-word email. Anyone else have a way of solving this, other than using the Gmail app?
6 comments… read them below or add one
I long term trialed a Tour for my company using one of our BES servers. In that trial, we did not see the same thing for the GMAIL as you described above(using Google’s software); however, we saw this on the internal company email using the Blackbery supplied email tool.
The only setting that was capable of rendering the correct font was to select ‘Get Plain Text’ as you described above. This has been reported to VZW and RIM. Both have stated they are aware of the issue but have not committed on a fix timeline. Currently, there is no recommended setting that overcomes the issue other than the one pointed out above. We have cautioned our users about this nuisance if they choose to acquire one.
FYI, I reported this exact issue to RIM back in early Sepetmber. They told me this bug was fixed previously and didn’t know (until I called) that it showed back up. I was told that its “going to be fixed in the next major release of handheld software”. Your guess is as good as mine as to when that will be.
- Doug
d_fisher, I think that the software upgrade they’re referring to is OS 5.0. That can’t be too far away.
Tried that, David, but once I turn off HTML email, it doesn’t give me an option to turn it on for individual messages.
Turn off HTML for that address in Email Settings. Then just Get HTML (the way you are getting Plain Text now) when you DO want the HTML.
@Joe:
Hmmmm…that sucks. I hate it too, but it’s not just Gmail. I get the occasional Yahoo and USA.NET and COMCAST.NET email with the same issue.
My problem right now is that in OS 5.0, URL’s in an email are no longer “clickable”. So when someone emails an address to my Yahoo email I have to do a cut and paste into browser, which seriously sucks on the Storm. I have that Yahoo email address going to both my OS 5.0.0.328 Storm and my 4.7.1.57 Tour, and links can be launched from the same email on the Tour that won’t let me launch them from that email on the Storm. Not for sure if it’s OS 5.0 definitively or something to do with Yahoo, but I suspect it’s OS 5.0. Both of these devices are connecting to the same Verizon BIS servers so OS 4.7.1 versus OS 5.0 is the only delta in the setup.
So, when you say they exchanged your Curve for a Tour, they did an even up swap? Or you had to pay for an upgrade and sign a contract extension?