Berry thoughts after 2 days w/ the EVO 4G (Long)
I’m not a fanboy by any means. If anything I’m the exact opposite. The minute any new phone comes out I want it. I almost got a flip dumbphone the other day because I wanted to see what it was like to use one again for awhile. I’ve had an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a Droid, a G1, many Windows Mobile phones, and many dumbphones. They all had there good and bad things. I bought the EVO yesterday and here’s the bottom line….
Blackberry FTW
I’ve had the EVO for 2 days now and am frustrated beyond belief. The 4.3 inch screen is AWESOME..browsing the web is great, pictures look great, etc. But it is too big for EVERYDAY use in my humble opinion. And by everyday use I mean kicking back a few beers with the boys, going to the gym (I use my phone as my mp3 player and gym log), going fishing, etc etc. I need a way smaller form factor and something that I’m not deathly afraid to drop in order to consider it as an everyday functioning phone. The EVO is not this. The Blackberry is.
Apps. There’s an app for this there’s an app for that. Apps do not make my life easier. They make mecrazy. On my Blackberry, I used a few apps that really, truly helped me manage my life . A checkbook app, a gym app, a streaming music app, the calendar, memopad, and my password manager. Those are my most used apps on my Berry. On my EVO (and with my brief 3 month stint with the iPhone) I was constantly searching for an app to manage EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of my life. Calculate my mpg, wake me up at the exact moment I come out of REM sleep, tell me how many cigarettes I haven’t smoked the list goes on and on. My phone is now micromanaging my life. And games too. I have Nintendo on my EVO and it sucks the battery like nobody’s business. If I want to play a game, I’ll whip out my DS or if I need something to do for 10 minutes I’ll play Brickbreaker.
Internet. Blackberry sucks. Deal with it. It will get better when the Webkit browser is released sometime this year. It probably still won’t be as good as Android or Iphone browers. This is the one thing that I wish Blackberry did better. But I usually check the same websites everyday and most of them are news/tech sites. And the RSS reader on the Blackberry (Viigo I think) does a great job of relaying the information I want to read. So I can deal with the fact that my Berry’s browser sucks for now. I wish it was better but it’s a small price to pay.
Keyboard. I hate texting on anything other than a physical keyboard. On my EVO I put **** and it puts duck. I type yo it puts to. You get the point. Maybe I suck at virtual keyboards. But based on the texts I get from my friends who use them I don’t think I do. I think everyone does. This brings me to my next point which is I primarily use my phone to text , email, and talk with the occasional browsing session. And I use the apps that I mentioned before. That’s all I need. Everything else is just a “wow” factor that eventually wears off. I had a video chat on my EVO. Very cool. I’ll probably never do it again. I had to put the thing on its kickstand for Christ’s sake. I can’t think of a time that having video chat on my phone will ever come in handy. It’s a toy.
Stability. Android freezes and lags (even on the EVO). Blackberry freezes and lags. Android freezing and lagging pisses me off because it’s not supposed to happen with the EVO’s 1GHZ processor and all the improvements they’ve made. It’s been happening to Blackberry since I’ve had one (the 7130, 8130, 8330, 9630, 9530, 8530 have all had freezes/hiccups/lag at some point). But in either case, the freezing/lagging is not that bad on either phones but it’s there so it’s not a dealbreaker that the Blackberry has it anymore. I’ve also had to reboot my EVO 2x now because something (most likely a 3rd party app) ... it up.
Misc. I feel like I have to baby an EVO or an iPhone or any of these other fancy devices. I throw my Blackberry around all the time. It’s a tank (8530 currently). It gets scratched up and I don’t really care. I can bring it out to a bar or when I fish and not worry. That’s what I need in a phone.
So anyway, I’m going back to my Blackberry tomorrow. These are just the opinions of someone who primarily talks, texts, and uses a few apps to manage his life. The concept of using an Android/iPhone device is cool as ****. But the reality is much much different (at least for me).
Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com