BlackBerry vs. iPhone

The “smart phone” wars are upon us. Having been an early adopter with a BlackBerry back in 2004, I thought I’d write a quick post and share my experiences.

The BlackBerry has come a long way. Back then, it had a black and white screen, and the phone was a clear after thought. It really was more of an e-mail pager with a phone tacked onto it. They really hit their stride with the BlackBerry 8700, but while it was a great phone and e-mail device, it still had very limited mobile web browsing.

Then Apple came out with the iPhone. A beautiful, elegant and simple device. The coolest iPod ever. And fantastic web browsing anywhere you go. It looked incredible, so I switched.

I had the iPhone for exactly a year, and then switched to the brand-new BlackBerry Bold (3G speed, wi-fi, and a beautiful high-resolution screen). My wife now has the iPhone, and we both love the phones we have.

Here’s my take on the iPhone: it really is a wonderful smart phone, and has a solid chance of being the best choice for anyone who doesn’t send a lot of e-mail from their phone.

The iPhone gets an A- for web browsing, an A+ for the iPod and an A+ for the phone. (Comparatively speaking, the BlackBerry Bold gets a B- for web browsing, a C+ for the media player (although the video camera is a really cool feature and works well in good lighting), and an A- for the phone.)

But for me, the biggest thing I use a smart phone for is e-mail. I get 300-400 e-mail messages a day. A big chunk of those are very important, timely and need a swift response.

The iPhone and the BlackBerry are like night and day when it comes to e-mail, and the BlackBerry is an order of magnitude better than the iPhone in that respect.

Here’s why.

• iPhone Mail is the equivalent of an e-mail program like Outlook running on a phone. This has serious implications. Every message must fully download before it can be viewed. If you need to forward attachments, they have to fully download before you can start transmitting them back out.
• Up through version 2.0 of the software, iPhone Mail had two very annoying tendencies. One was that it would give up on downloading certain messages and say “the message could not be retrieved” in some cases. Another was that it could fail to send a message out and would just be lost in the ether — no error message or bounce that reminded you.
• iPhone Mail is clearly one of many programs on the phone. There is nothing central about the e-mail program. So if you want to send a message, it would take 12-15 seconds to get a new message started.
• Finally, the lack of a physical keyboard is a big impediment here. I got pretty darned good typing on the iPhone, and I still estimate that I am no less than 14 times faster typing on the BlackBerry than I was on the iPhone.

I’d give the iPhone a D+ at best when it came to e-mail. The BlackBerry world, having originally been an e-mail pager, gets an A+ on e-mail. Here’s why.

• The BlackBerry has server-based e-mail infrastructure. This means that the first few paragraphs of each e-mail are seamlessly “pushed” to the BlackBerry without a download process. So when I receive an e-mail, it takes no more than 2 seconds flat for me to be reading it.
• If I forward a message with attachments, the BlackBerry just sends a command to the server to forward the message for me. No need for me to download those attachments over a slow connection and then transmit them back out again.
• When messages are sent, they appear in the message list while they transmit, so I know for sure whether a message went, or whether it is stalled because of a network problem.
• Years of history have the BlackBerry optimized for speedy e-mail. I can be sending a message in 2 seconds flat. When reading an e-mail, I simply press “R” to reply, and immediately start tapping out a reply, which I can send with a couple of clicks.
• The shortcuts go even further. If I type “ttys” on the BlackBerry, it inserts “Talk to you soon!” in my e-mail message. If I type “dont”, it replaces it with “don’t”. If I press the space bar twice, it inserts a period at the end of the last word and starts a new sentence.

So on the basis of e-mail, I’m a “CrackBerry addict” and I can’t imagine ever switching away from the BlackBerry again.

I have to add one other awesome BlackBerry feature: exceptions to your ring profile. The BlackBerry has almost an extreme level of customization on the tones that play when different events occur (like e-mails, important e-mails, phone calls, calendar alerts, etc.), and the ability to create exceptions for specific people.

So for example, I have an exception set up for Cacey. When I’m traveling and I turn the phone on silent while I’m sleeping, it will still ring, but only if she is the person calling me. I can sleep well knowing that she can reach me if she needs me.

So that’s my take. To summarize, if you rarely send e-mail on a smart phone, the iPhone could well be the perfect device for you. But if you want fast and quick e-mail on the go, the BlackBerry is simply unbeatable.

Do you agree? Have you found any other reasons why one is better than the other?