Tech phone elegance

[alden]

Gents,

I have to change from a retro-cellphone to modern technology. Iphone or Blackberry, your experienced views are..?

Cheers

Michael

[jefferyd]

It all depends how you will use it. Blackberry is king for power-emailers and as a serious business tool. I know a few people who had a hard time twisting their brains around it and the OS at first. It is not a pretty phone, and if you want to use it as an MP3 player you will need to get an additional memory card. It has quad-band roaming.

Not only is the iphone more intuitive, the web-browsing experience is much better than the Blackberry. It doubles as an Ipod but the navigation is not as good as the 5-gen ipod so I carry both. Tri-band roaming. It has great word-recognition when typing so you don't have to be very precise, and switching between languages in super easy which may be a plus for you, since you don't have to worry about accents and cédilles and stuff- it does it for you. Then there is the app store, which is a whole other story........

[whyescalar]

If your needs are more business-oriented, go bberry. I started with the e-mail pager in 2000. The blackberry keyboard has tons of shortcuts and special accents when writing in different languages. The system is intiuitive. Many of my friends who opted for the Iphone after having blackberries have switched back. Oh boy, this thread will be as contentious as blondes or brunettes.

[sartorius]

On the contrary, I agree with both the previous posts.

The BB is really aimed at business users whereas the iPhone is for music, games and net surfing. If you're a heavy email user or will want to browse documents in Word or Excel on the move, the BB is easily the best option. The iPhone is basically just a toy. A bloody marvellous toy, but a toy nonetheless.

[shredder]

So, is crackberry the brunette and the iphone the blonde?

[whyescalar]

Yes, smart leggy brunettes that put out.

[shredder]

Well, in which case mine would have to be the Scandinavian redhead -- Nokia E61.

On a more serious note, I think that Michael might consider his list of priorities and then try to find the phone that matches it most closely.

In my instance, my choice was driven by:
1) Easy to perform its most fundamental function, make calls. This sounds like a joke but it isn't.
2) No preset limit on the number of address book entries.
3) Ability to sync address book, calendar, tasks and notes with Outlook.
4) Enough email functionality to send / receive emails but not necessarily view or manipulate all kinds of attachments.
5) Compatibility with both POP3 and MS Exchange email servers without necessarily having "push" email.
6) Basic web browser, nothing fancy.
7) 3G, so it can still be used as a phone when in Japan.
No camera.
9) Some basic media functionality, namely viewing image files, but not cluttered with a plethora of toys.
10) Reasonably slim and not terribly ugly.

That said, the redhead is not perfect either...

[DinosaurTT]

I have switched to the Crackberry Curve recently and am generally pleased apart from the battery life. This is generally not a major issue as I am frequently in the office to recharge. If the battery life gets worse I may have to consider an early parting of the ways though. I do not have experience of the iPhone battery life, but can anyone confirm if it is any better

[Costi]

I use an iphone. The only thing I miss is the copy / paste function, but otherwise all essential business / entertainment functions are present and nicely integrated in an elegant and easy to use object. I would not trade it for a phone with 50 buttons that looks like the command pannel of a space shuttle (those with large hands beware of cluttered keyboards with tiny buttons!) A "best of both" of design and functionality.

[rjman]

I note that iPhones seem to burn through their batteries much quicker.

Also that it seems to be easier to get international coverage with a Blackberry.

Even though I hate my Blackberry it seems much better for business.

The iPhone is much more fun to use.

[Hartline]

Alden, you know I'm never far from my BlackBerry because of the tons of email and sms messages I receive. My BB works -- all the time. It has to. My iPhone on the other hand is just fun. It manages fun things like music, photos, Google Maps, etc., and it is very well designed for a gadget. It is slimmer and fits in my pockets without much bulk. But, I don't trust it work when absolutely necessry.

You're lucky to be in a place where the fight about which standard (GSM, CDMA, etc., etc.) has long been settled (albeit sadly by governmental fiat), so the quality of phones, apps, and network is outstanding.

[koolhistorian]

I am, like shredder, in the E61 legion. Compared to BB, which frankly I hate, has very good basic functions - phone, address book, calendar, etc - a great keyboard (which opened me towards SMS) and very good email and browser functions, keyboard is better and screen and screen fonts great. I use Gmail as portable e-mail, so no need for BB (E61 has also a pure BB function).
On the other hand Iphone has a lot of gizmos, great web-browser, photo functions, etc. I will probably switch to Iphone someday, but my E61 keeps me happy and in touch with anyone!

[JDelage]

If you do a lot of walking in various cities, the iPhone's mapping & GPS functionalities are very worthwhile and useful. I use them all the time in Paris, even though I'm from there.

The iPhone is probably better for any web-based application, e.g., webmail, reading the LL or the WSJ, etc. I suspect their data plans not to be as friendly to frequent travellers.

[pvpatty]

You might also consider the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

http://www.sonyericsson.com/x1/

[shredder]

What I hear often from BB users is that it is not particularly good at maintaining call connection when you are close to national boundaries where the connection is about to be handed over by one network to another network serving the adjacent country, ie, the call gets dropped. This can happen quite frequently if one operates in Europe and tend to move around reasonably often. To get around this issue, these people carry a separate, small phone for receiving and making calls while using the BB strictly for data. However, I do not know if the same weakness exists in the most recent models.