So after 10+ years of being a devoted Nokia fanboi the day finally arrived that I, well, sold my soul to the devil - Blackberry.

The beauty of switching between phones from the same manufacturer is that you never have an issue with transferring your data between them. My current handset is Nokia's E71 and it has served me well over the last 2 years much in the same way my previous Nokia phones have.

Enter the contender. Blackberry's Bold 9700.

First issue - how the heck do I transfer all my contacts? There are a few options but the best and easiest that I found is Google Sync. Pretty simple. Connected the E71 to my Gmail account and uploaded all contact data. Then downloaded the sync app for Blackberry, connected to Gmail and imported all my contacts. Yeah, it really was as easy as that. Note, I used Mail for Exchange to connect to Gmail from the Nokia.

Battery life. The Bold is clearly not a Nokia. Battery lasted just over 24 hours. This is going to be problematic. To try and reduce power consumption I have resorted to turning the screen brightness down to 30%. Have also switched off Wi-Fi. I've turned off the vibrate option for incoming BBM's..

Oh yes, that's pretty much why I have turned - Blackberry Messenger. It seems that everyone and their mother are on BBM. Can't say I blame them. It's awesome. Oh and a flat rate for unlimited on-device browsing - well that's awesome too.

So that's the observations from day 1. Will report back as I travel through these uncharted Blackberry waters.