iPhone to BB - My Review and Feature Comparison
I recently switched from an iPhone 3G to a Blackberry Bold 9700. Shortly after buying my iPhone I saw an ad for the Bold 9000 and fell in love with it. In fact, I even tried to convince a friend of mine to go out and buy one, right after I got my iPhone. Don't get me wrong, I loved my iPhone and am an avid Apple fan, but something about the Bold just struck a chord in my heart.
Anyways, after about 6 months the novelty of the iPhone wore off on me and I rarely found myself downloading apps or even taking it out of my pocket. I took a lot of pictures with it, browsed the net, and pretty much only used one app that didn't come preloaded, and that was a game called doodlejump, and I grew tired of that after about a month. The iPhone just wasn't everything I thought it would be.
A year down the line my iPhone developed a little crack and became quite scratched. As soon as I realized I could sell it for around $300 regardless, I started looking into selling it and getting myself a Blackberry. After a few days of browsing these forums and watching comparison videos on the web, my mind was made up. I sold the iPhone for $300 and used my upgrade to get a Bold 9700 for $100.
I have had my Bold for almost a month now, and although there are a few features from my iPhone that I miss, I don't see myself going back any time soon. A month in and I am still finding new goodies on this phone, whereas I had the entire iPhone figured out after a few days.
While some of these may specific to my model, here are the many features of the BB that have won me over, and a few that I miss from the iPhone.
Things that my Blackberry can do that my iPhone couldn't
- The resolution of my screen is stunning. Supposedly the best resolution of any smartphone.
- The full qwerty keyboard is great! The beveled keys make typing a dream. Also, the keyboard being physical and constantly present gives the ability to set up tons of keyboard shortcuts, I can access many important features and applications on my phone without ever navigating the interface.
- The camera is remarkable. 3.2 megapixel, auto focus, flash, and 2x zoom make for some great pictures. I also love that I can take a picture, and right after the snap send it to email, twitter, myspace, facebook etc with the click of a button.
- Profiles! Profiles give you the ability to set different sets of rings/vibrates/lights for every alert that your phone gives you. Once you have created a profile you can quickly access it from a small icon on your home screen.
- I can set one of my MP3's as my ringtone! Finally!
- The battery is a champ! I can go for several days listening to music, browsing and downloading without a charge.
- I can set up my wi-fi so that it automatically connections and transitions without even prompting me.
- Multi-tasking applications. This is huge. I can open/log in to any application and swith to any other app with the click of a button, while staying logged into the previous application. Also, I can open ANYTHING in my phone while having a phone conversation. Email, games, myspace, you name it.
- Instant push on all applications. This is great too. Example: I don't have to log into twitter to get updates, my phone fetches them for me.
- Application syncing. One of the first things that I noticed is that my contacts were automatically updated with all of my friends pictures, job descriptions, and sometimes emails from my facebook. Also, I can update anything in my gmal calendar or contacts and it is automatically updated on my phone without ever connecting, and vice versa.
- Facebook sends all of my friends birthdays and events to my BB calendar without promting me, and sends me alerts several hours before they happen (you can set how early you want to recieve alerts)
- Blackberry messenger. Most people know what this is, and honestly, with the 5.0 OS offering threaded text, I don't find myself using BBM that much, BUT one thing I love about it is the ability to send voice notes back and forth to people.
- The ability to customize my entire interface is a breath of fresh air. Everything on the iPhone is set in stone, no personalization at all. With my BB I can hide the icons that have to be on the phone. I can download hundreds of themes for the phone as well.
- FOLDERS! YES! You can create folders and put any file/app/whatever into them. I love this especially when it comes to pictures. On my iPhone I had a few hundred pictures but would have to scroll through so many to find a certain one. I love having them all organized into different categories. Also, there is a search bar to quickly find any one of your pictures (assuming you have named them, or for some reason memorized the long, random, default code name).
- Google maps on BB is amazing, way better than the iPhone. When you search something and click on it, the little box that comes up has TONS of info about the store (hours, things they sell, reviews, email, phone number, address, cost, ratings etc). One of the coolest features is you can view the map in layers, such as traffic, walking, driving, public transit, and WIKIPEDIA! Thats right, click on the wiki sign and the area you are looking at pops up with W's all around it representing points of interest that are on wikipedia, click it and view the wiki page.
- Office to go. I have access to word, excel, and powerpoint, although limited. This is great for me because I can edit essays or study guides on the way to class. Also, my boss emails me the weekly schedule, which I can download (yeah, you can download attachments) and open in excel right from my phone!
- The faux leather back is very pretty, and the quck launch buttons integrated into the side of the phone are great, as I can set them to do any single function in my phone.
- The browser, while not as nice as the iPhones is full HTML and can render just about anything that the iPhone can. I do miss being able to pinch zoom on the iphone, but you can zoom on the BB. Also, there are several different browsers to choose from on BB, all with different functions and specialization's, leaving it up to the user to choose which is best. Also, flash will be coming to the BB soon. iPhone will not be receiving flash, at least not as soon as BB and not from Adobe.
- Bedside Mode clock is awesome. I plug my phone in at night on my nightstand next to my bed. The clock shows up very large on the screen, and when I click bedside mode, all of the lights on the phone (keyboard, home keys etc) that would normally be lit up in the dark, fade off and the clock dims JUST a little bit. A great feature on the clock is the ability to choose how many minutes your snooze button is set for.
- Love having a video camera, although the 3Gs now has this as well.
- Very minimal lag, my iPhone always hitched, especially when loading pictures and switching apps.
- Your contact list is now more than a name and phone number. In a BB contact you can enter the persons: Title, First, Last, Nickname, Picture, Company, Job Title, email 1 and 2, work 1 and 2, home 1 and 2, mobile 1 and 2, Pager, Work Fax, Home Fax,
AIM, Work address 1 and 2, Home address 1 and 2, Birthday, Anniversary, Web page, and enter notes about the person.
- Not device related, but the blackberry community is amazing, especially on this site! With my iPhone I never felt like I was a part of the community because, well, everybody has one now and things that are completely common place don't tend to gather much in the eway of tight knit community. A lot of people who use iPhones don't even know what it is fully capable of, nor do they have any experience with other smart phones and quickly dismiss any notion of trialing another device.
And honestly the list goes and on and with many more small yet delightful features that I am forgetting at the moment, but I will update this list as they come to me.
Features that I sometimes miss on my iPhone
- Having 16 gigs of memory right out of the box was very nice. Although this is easily fixed by purchasing a 16gb SD card for your Blackberry. This is a nice feature because you can have mutliple cards full of apps, files, songs, videos, and pics and swap them whenever you please. Blackberry will soon support 32gig SD cards as well.
- The onboard speakers were very nice, although the Bold 9000 speakers are certainly on par.
- The ability to pinch zoom on the browser.
- Large screen.
- Better image rendering in emails.
- The magnitude of apps for the iphone, even though I found most of them useless. It seems that most of the apps on the BB are somewhat useful. Although it was nice just knowing that they were out there if I wanted them on the iphone.
I hope that this helps you decide whether or not a BB is for you if you are on the fence and coming from an iPhone. I know that there are probably many features on the iPhone side that are left out, it just means that they weren't features I was aware of or used, this is just a look back at my iPhone experience moving to the BB so It will be biased. Do keep in mind, though, that the features on the blackberry list are features that are Blackberry specific, things that iPhone does not do, and it is large heh. While I think the iPhone is a groundbreaking device in many ways, I simply find the BB to be so much more versatile, productive and resourceful. In the end some people may prefer a large screen, touch screen typing, and a seemingly endless amount of apps, and that of course is fine!
Here are a few random images of both devices mentioned above:
Blackberry Bold
iPhone 3G
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