[apasehculun]

I have tried many phones before, Nokia (Symbian) = this is actually quite satisfying, better than Android, but lack of push email.

Windows Phone 6.5 (SE Xperia X2) = this also quite satisfying, but interface was outdated.

Then moved to Android (SE Xperia X10) = o, boy, laggy, laggy, hang, laggy, this app didn't work with mine, that worked, this not. Speaking of fragmentation.

And finally BB Storm = really cool, all in one place, my calendar, email, browser, chat (MSN, gtalk, YM), and of course BBM. I don't need more than one device to communicate.

(Just saying, if i have to choose a phone outside of BB, then I will choose anything but android. A feature phone is even better than Android!)

[plarusa]

I see thread after thread of those who are bailing for unknown territories based on the lore of greener pastures in the land of droid and apple. What I don't here as often online but am seeing w/in our own organization, are those who are coming back home to Blackberry and re-appreciating the no nonsense business ready solid platform that built the blackberry reputation.

I know your out there, it's ok, there's more of us than you think.

I never really left, but I do try other phones which seem interresting. My primary one isba BB, and here is how I got to using one,

My first smartphone was an iPhone, and I still have 2 of them (original iPhone 8G, and the following 16G version). They remain great phones, even today, but are no longer used, in a nutshell because the user experience is too tightly controlled by Apple. I would say that I dislike the very reasons for which these phones are so popular. Here are some examples of my issues,

- File system organization is hidden from the user.
- Not user expandable via SD cards, which is my biggest complaint. No, I don't think the cloud is the answer as long as network bandwith remains a premium.
- No Adobe Flash support
- Device file system not accessible via USB.
- Can not side load applications or anything else natively. Must use iTune.
- Must pay to become a developper.
- No multitasking. This may be fixed on the latest iPhones.
- No physical keyboard option. That one is big too.
- No programmable anything running on the phone.
- Mandatory application screening by Apple.

Then, I decided to try Android, and purchased a Motorola Droid. While this platform fixed several of the iPhone issues, it introduced several new ones,
- The physical keyboard is really lousy.
- The GPS and Google map crash often, which is render the technology unreliable.
- The platform, in general, comes accross as a cheaper and less polished imitation of the iPhone.

Then, I tried Windows Phone 7, an then Mango on a HTC Trophy. While the UI on this phone is unique, this platform borrows too many pages from the iPhone, so has many of the same limitations. Discovering this out was a huge let down because I am a big Windows fan.

I finally found peace with a BB 9930, which I think is a *great* phone. The PB looks good too, so I have one ordred. More to be discussed in another thread.

[plarusa]

I have tried many phones before, Nokia (Symbian) = this is actually quite satisfying, better than Android, but lack of push email.

Windows Phone 6.5 (SE Xperia X2) = this also quite satisfying, but interface was outdated.

Then moved to Android (SE Xperia X10) = o, boy, laggy, laggy, hang, laggy, this app didn't work with mine, that worked, this not. Speaking of fragmentation.

And finally BB Storm = really cool, all in one place, my calendar, email, browser, chat (MSN, gtalk, YM), and of course BBM. I don't need more than one device to communicate.

(Just saying, if i have to choose a phone outside of BB, then I will choose anything but android. A feature phone is even better than Android!)

Is there a spell checker I can use when posting from the phone?

[intellectronik]

Heeellloooooo again! Is that relief I hear? Lol! Heck, I'm getting closer myself. Just got home after being out for about 4 hours.....to find 7 new emails on my iPad that never made it to my phone ! I've had it! Gotta decide between the 9900 and 9810 now I guess.

Well, I absolutely love my 9900 (no doubt about it), however if I had ONE wish it would have been that they added the Auto-Focus feature (yeah, I know I'm beating a dead-horse but that is honestly my ONLY complaint.) Aside from that everything else is just AWESOME (for me.) The 9810 (keyboard) and form-factor is still an undesirable one in my case, and it truly boils down to personal preference (and your budget.) I hope you can make peace with whatever platform you finally decide to stick with...

All the best...!

[kcmo]

Well, I absolutely love my 9900 (no doubt about it), however if I had ONE wish it would have been that they added the Auto-Focus feature (yeah, I know I'm beating a dead-horse but that is honestly my ONLY complaint.) Aside from that everything else is just AWESOME (for me.) The 9810 (keyboard) and form-factor is still an undesirable one in my case, and it truly boils down to personal preference (and your budget.) I hope you can make peace with whatever platform you finally decide to stick with...

All the best...!

I'll definitely keep you posted...will have to go play with them at AT&T again.
Thanks!

[dwaynewilliams#WN]

Came back old-school with the Curve 8330. Picked up a brand new one for $50 off contract on eBay. It was my favorite BB. I am waiting for my black trackball and black trackball ring to offset the silver. Then my phone will be complete. I am actually really loving this phone. No complaints so far.

[dirt662]

Not really back but I went from a 9800(my first BB) to a 9860. Like the full touch and Os7,but I'm realizing I type more than I thought with responding to emails, SMS, bbm and work related business. I miss the keyboard but not the bulkiness of the 9800 I also like the screen on the 9860 but I find the keyboard better for short messages. So I'm thinking about the 9900/30 or should u wait for BB10....can somebody help

[byul]

It's up to you if you want to get yourself an 99XX or a BB10 device. The first BB10 devices are most likely full touchscreens though.
I got a 99XX already and so far i still love it, i will probaly jump over a to BB10 keyboard device if it comes available.
So it's up to you, so ask yourself the questions if you can manage a 9860 or want to get a 99XX or a BB10 later on.

[businessguy]

So after so many bb phones going way back to the mid 90's I slipped to the darkside. My family had me surrounded with iphones. So I purchased Samsung note. Wow from the little screen on the torch 9810 to a glorious 5.3 inch screen. As the day went on it was quickly becoming obvious that although it was fun, communicating with ms exchange along with functional calenders and contacts was not possible. The native exchange client didn't work so for eventually 20 bucks I would have to use a third party app called homerun. This eventually worked but the clunky interface was a disaster. So now I had my email working but what about the size of the phone. Into the suv I went for a meeting. The phone only barely fit in the extra large cup holder in my ford edge. But the first highway off ramp had the phone flip out and onto the floor. My meeting mates kinda snickered when i brought it out. One comment was if you were the size of shaq it might work. So the phone went back to the dealer for a galaxy nexus. I thought it still had a great screen at 4.65 and it had ICS so let's try this one. Guess what 5 hours hours later and I couldn't get the exchange client to work or any other 3 party app. So back it went and my 9810 lives for another day. I will now wait until bb10 show up. If they work like the playbook which I'm typing on now things will be great.

[phonejunky]

So after so many bb phones going way back to the mid 90's I slipped to the darkside. My family had me surrounded with iphones. So I purchased Samsung note. Wow from the little screen on the torch 9810 to a glorious 5.3 inch screen. As the day went on it was quickly becoming obvious that although it was fun, communicating with ms exchange along with functional calenders and contacts was not possible. The native exchange client didn't work so for eventually 20 bucks I would have to use a third party app called homerun. This eventually worked but the clunky interface was a disaster. So now I had my email working but what about the size of the phone. Into the suv I went for a meeting. The phone only barely fit in the extra large cup holder in my ford edge. But the first highway off ramp had the phone flip out and onto the floor. My meeting mates kinda snickered when i brought it out. One comment was if you were the size of shaq it might work. So the phone went back to the dealer for a galaxy nexus. I thought it still had a great screen at 4.65 and it had ICS so let's try this one. Guess what 5 hours hours later and I couldn't get the exchange client to work or any other 3 party app. So back it went and my 9810 lives for another day. I will now wait until bb10 show up. If they work like the playbook which I'm typing on now things will be great.

Why didn't you just get an iPhone?

[businessguy]

I wanted a bigger screen than the iphones. I did test out the exchange client on my families iphones and it did seem to work well. I also have an ipad with exchange working. But I wanted a bigger screen. Maybe the iphones 5 will have a bigger screen.

[aceejohson]

Thanks for an informative comment.

[rcklss1]

Hey all just wanted to say what's up... I've been on Android for a while because of work anyway I finally talked them into letting me come back to blackberry. Just got my 9900 in the mail today. Good to be back!

[Blackberry_Boy]

Welcome back to the fold!

[smileycamper]

I've ordered a 9790 and it should be here.

I've really tried to like the iPhone - partly peer pressure etc but I can't stay liking it for very long. Things annoy me. I miss my (real) push - like when a Twitter reply flashes up on screen I have to unlock, go to Twitter app and wait an age for the message to populate my inbox (surely it should just work?), my LED and keyboard shortcuts. Plus the battery life is shocking. I'm not a huge user of BBM (because I'm not 14) but iMessage simply doesn't come close. I'm not a massive user of apps either - to me it's been a sometimes fun, mostly frustrating experience. The Siri adverts just annoy me and have me shouting "look at your phone you lazy git!".

So pastures new indeed and I'm looking forward to it.

[sahirhussain]

i had never used a blackberry till about a week ago. i have tried all other platforms known to mankind but i must say that my new curve 9360 is really a nice piece of technology. so far i am very happy with it especially the BBM as almost all my law school mates are on it!!

[FernleyE]

This article: Why I Switched From Android To BlackBerry was something I stumbled on after my return to BB and is very much along my way of thinking.

As for my personal experience; I have recently returned from a 2 year foray into the world of Androids. I never chose the iPhone thing because of the parasitic nature of that system, specifically the iTunes leviathan.

During my time away from BB I had a DroidX (the first one) and a Droid X2. They BOTH were so bad that I almost lost my mind trying to get some sort of consistent performance from them.

ABSOLUTELY terrible devices that focused their energies on their gadget/ gimmicks rather than functionality or effective communications devices. Essentially what I figured out was that they were toys that could also make a phone call or send a message and then only with great effort and the use of third party apps that didn't really mesh fluidly with the device and were ALWAYS problematic after an update.

From the Droids, I "graduated" to an HTC Inspire 4G. Out of the box this was an astonishingly better device than the Droids (hands down).

Better performance, better battery, better, better, better......

However; like the Droids it was a device that was designed for the 20something, Facebook nation who are more interested in the entertainment value of the device than the effective communications value for a professional.

LASTLY and this is a curious observation:
I live somewhat rural and AT&T has crap service here at my home (great in town but crap here at the house). Because of this I have one of the AT&T Microcells. When I was using the HTC (Android) phone I would have a "full" signal coming off the Microcell and would constantly drop calls after only a short amount of time. Sometimes as short as 30 seconds into a call sometimes maybe 5 minutes.

This has not happen at all since returning to BB

When I was on VZW using the Droids I was constantly at odds with my Bluetooth. I used Jawbones, and others and I frequently became so frustrated with them I finally just stopped using them and went to the wire ear phones.

For me the return to BB has been nothing short of a "homecoming" and beyond the comfort of using a device I always felt was intuitive , it's just a more effective device for my usage.

[luminosity6]

hi, all -

I returned to BB this year in January after having android for quite some time.

I used only the pure android devices in the beginning with no vendor bloatware and I was happy with no complaints. I was in the minority using android and I was happy to be an early adopter like I was with BB back in it's early day.

What brought me back to BB was simply how much I missed BB. The keyboard on every model (no matter how much you like another BB keyboard better) is still amazing. The feeling you get when you accidentally drop your phone when it's out of it's case is awesome, BB's are so well designed for real life so you rarely have to worry. It's a reliable and fantastic device.

I came back to BB by joining Boost mobile (my first no-contract carrier) and getting the fun little flip 9670 Style. This is a great device if you like a flip, it has OS 6 which syncs really nicely with my Google calendar (no dupes yet) and this keyboard is yummy. I have my eye out for the rumored 9350 coming to Metro PCS because even though my Boost 9670 is wonderful and service is very strong and reliable most everywhere, it's not very good in my apartment so I'd like to try Metro PCS to see if signal is better here.

Did I mention I like BB keyboards?

Thanks for this thread - it's great to be back!

[rdbrig]

Came back to BB from having the iphone4 for a year. I am loving the Bold. A really nice device. Only had it a week now so still playing with it more than utlilzing it. Glad to see Crackberry has developed into such a great locale for everything BB.

[andruthetech]

My first post I was an Android user for about 1.5 years and have had my BB Bold 9790 for just 2 days. The Androids I have tried are HTC Desire, Nexus S and Samsung SIIX. I rooted every one of them, tried custom kernels and hboots. Even an unofficial Android 4.03 on the Nexus S. It's quite addicting actually. One thing about Android is the flexibility, meaning you can port, for example, a HTC Sense ROM to say a Samsung device. You can completely make the phone your own.

I'm by any means not a loyal user of any given piece of hardware, I use what works for me and I'm thankful there are many choices around.

Now that's over with ;-) my first impression of Blackberry, specifically the 9790 is how did I live without a physical keyboard! While on the subject of that, the build quality is the best of any smart phone I have used, bar none.

It's so nice not to see a force-close pop-up window.

The area around my house has less then ideal coverage. i get the odd dropped call or no signal on rare occasion. Since having the BB, in just 2 days, I notice better signal and haven't been dropped yet.

Battery life on Android under moderate use is about a day. Even if you are at 50% before you sleep you'll need to charge it for the next day. From my experience alone I can make about 10mins total calls during the day, surf a tad, read my rss feeds, txt msg 5-10+ times, facebook, take a few photos, and other minimal tasks. After my first full charge on the 9790 I'm easily going to surpass anything an Android device can delivery on battery life.

I can safely say, that BB has made me excited about owning a phone again. It's my first and won't be my last!

[back2BB]

I explain my reasons for leaving my LG Revolution/Droid here.

http://forums.crackberry.com/general...-droid-712983/

It's hard to explain how happy a "stupid" smart phone makes me. But the I love the 9930. One hand-operation, a keyboard, smaller footprint, faster OS screens. It's a tight little jewel and feels way more productive.

[Varley]

Back when our provider first offered us Blackberries, my wife took them up on the offer and bagged herself an 8520, which she loves. I was somewhat sceptical about BB so opted for the Nokia E72 instead. Whilst this was a fairly decent messaging phone in itself, I found myself becoming a little envious of the capabilities of the 8520.

After living with the Nokia for a while (which wasn't a bad phone at all really), I decided to foray in to the Android world (I admit, I thought I was missing out on something as most people I knew had them and raved about them) and got myself an HTC Wildfire. At first I thought Android was a great platform, loved all the apps, the touch screen etc. But I still found myself wanting in the messaging department. Having used this for some months I started to feel that Android is more geared up for the younger generation (I am not that old at 38), and felt that the platform and the phones themselves were a bit of a novelty. When the opportunity arose for me to renew my contract I took a leap of faith and got hold of a Bold 9900.

All I can say is, I should have jumped on the BB bandwagon a lot sooner. I love the phone, it's capabilities, everything.

[dragon2809]

I've had an iphone and an android. I've come to the conclusion that they are the same. My blackberry is my happy medium. Alittle open source like android and a lot of security like apple. I just hope rim can survive as a company.

[h4mza]

I got iPhone 4 and got a Blackberry for BBM

[Fr3lncr]

Well, I'm back on BB after leaving in September for Android. Having a couple of Playbooks in the house and wanting to try out the 'remote' feature was part of the reason but the main reason was just continued frustration for simple tasks on my Galaxy S2. (That would be things like making calls, sending emails, managing contacts and appointments).

I had a 9900 before and admittedly got really frustrated with it while on holiday in California back in August/September so when I got back I jumped ship hoping to try something else until the next BB phones came out. I'm hoping to balance my frustrations this time as I've kept my S2 so I can just swap SIM cards as needed depending on my needs.

I have to admit, I don't miss my S2 all that much... though setting up the 9900 took a real long time with all the app installs (god it's bloody slow), but outside of that... that keyboard is like coming home. And the notification light... I really missed it. I can't believe how much more I use the phone for emails now, something I really didn't like sending on the S2.

Anyways, good to be back. Funny how after I left, so many people I know actually started getting BB's so I'm actually using BBM more than I ever did for the two years I had a BB before, and Whatsapp keeps me connected with the rest.

That 9900 is really a nice piece of hardware.