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I got tired of waiting for the Bold and upgraded to the Iphone 3G in August. I liked the phone pretty well but the one thing that kept coming up was the poor battery life. Email works well but only one email is push and the rest are fetch. It is definitely a multi media phone.
I sold my iphone to a friend that did not want a berry because of pocket mac. I got the bold and love it! I was meeting a friend for lunch in Dallas this week and if you are not familiar with downtown it can be confusing. While I was there, she was lost. I used the Bold GPS to find my position and emailed her the map location to her curve. She arrived in minutes. Just an example of the real life apps that are helpful.
If you are near a power source daily you should be okay witht the iphone. If not, it will drive you nuts!
12-12-08 07:34 AM - If you don't like the bold form factor and keyboard, you're ruling out every bb - seriously, the differences are small, and the bold has one of the best bb keyboards ever. It's like saying you don't want a ferrarri as it's not quite the right shade of red...
Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com12-12-08 09:37 AM - Whether you should get a BB or an iPhone depends a lot on your lifestyle. If you find yourself carrying a cell phone and an iPod with you all the time, then iPhone is definitely the way to go. If you like to browse the net regularly on your phone, then again, iPhone is definately better. On the other hand, if BES services, video recording, IM, and MMS are important to you, then a Bold would be better.
For a non-BES user, I think an iPhone is a better choice as long as you're not a heavy MMS user. Once you learn to type on the iPhone, and there's definitely a learning curve, it's not a big deal. You have to put a bit of faith in the auto-correction, but I find I type about as fast on the iPhone as I used to on a Curve. I actually prefer to type in portrait mode. I think because I used to have a BB, my thumbs generally know where the keys should be in portrait. In landscape, I find myself looking at the keyboard. If you prefer landscape though, there are multiple apps available in the app store which will allow you to send email in landscape mode.
If not on BES or Exchange, email on iPhone and BB both have pluses and minuses. BB has push email with Gmail, Yahoo, and you can set a regular account to forward to the BB email address. iPhone offers push email with Yahoo only unless you get their Mobileme service, otherwise it fetches every 15 minutes at the fastest setting. If you don't mind waiting 15 minutes for your email, this is obviously a non-issue. BB has a unified mailbox which is convenient if you have multiple email accounts. iPhone syncs better with IMAP accounts. HTML mail is rendered pretty good in the recent BBs, but because there's no auto-download setting for pictures, it can get annoying if you frequently get HTML formatted email with pictures. On the other hand, iPhone automatically downloads ALL pictures, which could potentially lead to getting more spam. Both should have a setting for auto downloading of safe senders.
Although iPhone doesn't have MMS, SMS on iPhone is in a class by itself. I haven't seen anything like it in Blackberry or anything else for that matter. In iPhone, SMS is all threaded, so it's almost like IM. If you do a lot of texting to lots of people, this is almost a killer app because it allows you to keep all the individual conversations together. It's such a simple yet brilliant idea, I find it shocking that other people haven't implemented it yet.
In general, I'm happy with my iPhone and I wouldn't trade it for any of the current model BBs. There's a lifestyle choice involved in picking an iPhone over a BB. Basically, if you see your mobile device as nothing more than a communication tool and those features are of the utmost importance, then there's no question a BB on Verizon is the right choice. If being 15 minutes late with an email reply will get you fired or could potentially cost you money, then you shouldn't think twice. If missing a phone call or dropping a call could potentially have the same effects, I wouldn't settle for any other carrier than Verizon.
On the other hand, if email is more of a "I'll get to it when I get to it" kind of thing for you and you don't mind a dropped call once or twice a week, then iPhone is probably more your style. Besides the basic smartphone stuff you can listen to music, watch videos, play some games, browse the net, SMS a couple buddies, practice yoga, learn a foreign language. Sure you can do those on a BB too, but honestly, it's not as good and somethings... it's no where near as good. I once saw a review about the iPhone browser saying that a BB browser was better because you could use the trackball to highlight links. I saw that and I said to myself "man, this dude is really REALLY searching hard for a reason to hate the iPhone." There are a lot of reasons to hate the iPhone and a lot of reasons to love it. Whether you hate or love it is going basically come down to your lifestyle, what matters to you, and what you want to do. Since I don't have a Bold, I can't really comment too much about it, but here are 10 reasons to hate the iPhone (I won't comment on stuff like copy/paste, bluetooth stereo, etc., etc., that's been said ad nauseum):
1. It's a fingerprint magnet and there's really no getting around it. Get a white one, it shows less than the black.
2. Battery life is sad.... really.
3. Have to tap a lot to go back and forth between multiple email accounts.
4. Glass is kind of fragile. If you drop it on cement, expect the glass to crack.
5. No background running of 3rd party apps. That basically means that IM apps will log you out when the phone goes into stand-by mode.
6. No turn by turn directions yet for GPS apps and don't know if it will ever be available. I say this even though I would NEVER do that Telenav thing AT&T has.
7. Calendar doesn't have a "week" view.
8. Too much tapping involved to turn off things like WiFi and 3G, they should have a shortcut on the desktop.
9. Music doesn't play in stereo through the speaker. I don't know why this bothers me, but it does.
10. Needs a compass like G1.
Now here's 10 reasons to love the iPhone, and again, I'll stay away from the obvious thinks like... great browser, great music player.
1. Mobileme and Box.net. Lets me store files and retrieve them whenever I want from my iPhone. I do have some sensitive documents and I store them there instead of directly on the phone. It's not really about saving space, most of the files I store there are usually under 1M which would mean I could stick thousands on my phone. I put them there so I can have access to them wherever I am on any computer with a browser.
2. Widgets. Nobody really mentions this enough. There are apps for everything. Don't like the default weather widget? Get another one from Weather Channel or Weatherbug. Want IM? There's a dozen of 'em available. Something to update Facebook and Twitter at the same time? Shozu will do that. Want to use Skype? If you're on WiFi, Fring will do that. Sports scores? Get Sportacular. Want a map of the Seoul subway system? No problem. Translator program? Which one do you want? Control iTunes? Get Remote. Wanna use phone cards to make international calls? Smart Caller makes it easy. Wanna catch up your Shakespeare? They got that too. Wiki stuff often? There's a half dozen of 'em, pick the one that suits you best... There's thousands of things like these. I've got like 100+ apps installed on my phone. I don't use them all on a daily basis, but it's good to know that if I want it, it's there. You'll hear lots of guys saying stuff like, "most of the stuff on the app store is crap." To a certain extent, that's true. There IS a lot of crap. There's is however, a lot of useful and entertaining stuff. You ever hear a song on the radio and want to know it's title so you can get it later on iTunes? Sure it's not an "important" app, but I like it and it entertains me, and in the end, that's what matters to me. The App Store really is a game changer.
3. Easy to use UI. Once you get the hang of touching the screen, it's really intuitive. After an hour, I was better with the iPhone than I was with BB.
4. No battery pulling, ****, you can't, even if you wanted to .... regular BB users know what I'm talking about.
5. Custom fields in Contacts List. The BB has this too, but it's not as good as iPhone.
6. Build quality. Pull out the battery cover of a Curve and look at it. Pretty cheesy. I scratched mine bad and got an "OEM" replacement on eBay for $9 which included a spare battery. The replacement was perfect and I had to wonder how much the thing really cost if he could throw in a spare battery, charge $9 with free shipping, and still make money. The fake rubber coating on the top of the Curve also rubbed off after a couple months. the iPhone may be just as cheesy, but at least you don't see it.
7. The glass screen, Sure it's fragile, but it doesn't scratch like plastic either. What phone makers should do is use polycarbonate lenses with a scratch proof coating.
8. Sync with iTunes is sooooooooooo easy. Updating firmware. also easy. Loading music, videos, pictures, podcasts, all easy. I hate iTunes because it's so bloated and it's intrusive as ****, but I gotta give credit where credit is due, I didn't have to google info on updating firmware, like I had to for BB. It just does it all for you.
9. Coverflow. Yeah some dude wrote an app that acts like coverflow for BBs, but take my word for it, it's much better on iPhone.
10. The number one reason to get iPhone. Best portable pron machine EVER!!!
Dam... this is a lot longer than I had planned to write... I guess I kinda got carried away....12-16-08 02:14 AM - There is of course.... the Storm....If you don't like the bold form factor and keyboard, you're ruling out every bb - seriously, the differences are small, and the bold has one of the best bb keyboards ever. It's like saying you don't want a ferrarri as it's not quite the right shade of red...
Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com12-16-08 02:30 AM - I have a close friend with an iphone and the problems seem to outweigh the benefits. I know I wouldn't want to pay extra money for an iphone and have to deal with them. I mean, my wife just got the Curve 8330 for free(with 2 year etc)! I haven't seen any iphone deals that can touch that. Then you are locked in to only 1 carrier(AT&T) and their coverage and rates. And if you are a heavy user of SMS(texting) you will get snookered into even higher service costs. My friend falls into that category, so in 12 months he will pay an extra $240 for the privilege of having his iphone, on top of much higher purchase costs. Sure there are ways around it(AIM etc) but they are clunky and defeat the convenience aspect.
Memory/storage capacity is in favor of a BB, imo. Iphone is either 8 or 16gb...forever. BB's can increase their capacity to match that and beyond. And since its removable you can carry multiple cards. Online storage seems clunky to me. What do you do when you don't have service? And you have to download it each time you need it. So much for time savings.
The iphone has a bigger and better screen than my curve. But bigger is not always better. I want my phone to fit comfortably in my pocket. And the iphone is on the heavy side too. All that screen real estate comes at a cost...power consumption(as mentioned). I mean honestly, if it doesn't have power to perform anything, its useless(paper weight). And if its forcing you to adjust your life just to keep it fed, its a hindrance. What's the point of calling/texting someone who's phone is dead half the time? Annoying for contactee and contator.
Browser, hands down iphone wins. Period.
As a communications device, the iphone is pretty poor. BB on the other hand is stellar. I have nearly every mode and app of communication on mine, half are connected all the time and my battery can last for days. And BB messenger is amazing.
As a pda I think the BB is well ahead also. Both have apps but the text capability limitations(no copy/paste) of the iphone hurt you in so many areas its a major strike. And the BB way of doing things is sooo intuitive it can be ridiculously easy at times. It was made/born for texting and multitasking.
As far as media player status goes, the iphone IS better...BUT, I have to say I am very impressed with my Curve's stock abilities as well. I really am not missing out on much, imo. Not to mention the fact that I am not locked into drm music and itunes. You like a song of mine? I can give it to you over bluetooth...IF you have a Blackberry! lol No can do with itunes media. Plus, apple has strict control over the apps whereas BB has more open licensing. Some can argue its safer to have control, but all you need for your BB is available from trusted sources so its hardly an issue, imo. And why would you want apple controlling what you can and can't do/have?
And my appeal to authority: there is a reason why the Bolds and Curves of the world regularly outscore the iphone on review sites.
Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com12-27-08 02:00 AM - I keep reading threads that say with an iphone you are linked to AT&T? Why are you? Just buy an unlocked iphone off ebay or direct from Orange in France and put in any sim card you like. I got an unlocked one for my girlfriend and she is thrilled. Setting up her iphone was a breeze. With all the Wifi problems the Bold has I am at my witts end. Getting really sick of it. Seriously considering an iphone as unlike my Bold it actually does what it says on the tin. This is my first Blackberry, I am massively disappointed. It seems it is designed for people with a PHD in IT. Others need not apply
12-30-08 12:34 PM
