Monday, November 17, 2008
iPhone update
My iPhone vs. Blackberry debate has come to an end. The verdict being, I am sticking with my blackberry. I played with an iPhone for a while and while it has its nice features, I feel that it lacks the raw business power of the blackberry. Granted, the iPhone does have the wealth of support from itunes and the untold numbers of apps available there, I would rather own the device that cuts down on the flare, and goes with functionality. Don't get me wrong, the blackberry is not without its flaws, I simply was able to get over the flaws of the blackberry much faster than those of the iPhone. For those of you who are big Apple fan-boys that are going to whine and cry of my critique, here is the answer to your question before you ask. My biggest complaint is this; have you ever tried to type on the iPhone in any window other than safari? IT SUCKS! the touch detection was horrible for me. I don't have huge hands, but the iPhone was constantly registering keystrokes for letters that I did not intend to type. Not a huge problem unless the predictive text engine sucks as much as the iPhones does. And heaven forbid you type something you didn't want to and it finds its way into the custom dictionary. Then you have a whole new problem to deal with. Granted I did not own the iPhone I was testing so I did not want to tear it apart and change all 3 of the settings it will let you change. The point being, that for a first time user, the advanced settings and functions were hidden in typical Apple fashion to keep them away from the normal users way. While this streamlines everything and gives the user interface a nice look, it doesn't help someone like me that actually cares about the nuts and bolts. To be fair, I might like the iPhone more if I spent a little more time with it, but I already own a blackberry, and the cost to switch far outweighed any gain on my part. So to cure my previous ailment discussed in the last iPhone post, I am purchasing a new iPod touch to replace my aging iPod to run my apps and do everything that iPhone can do minus the phone and camera.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think the BlackBerry Storm may be the best of both worlds. Everything about it screams I am as cool as the iPhone and as productive as you already know I am. If they had it on ATT so the office would pay for the service I would buy the Storm myself.
ReplyDeleteUnless you need exchange extreme support I would strongly disagree with the "business power" comment. Microsoft has announced plans to create office for the iphone and you can already get apps from mainstream companies such as Oracle and Salesforce which so many industries use. As far as typing, it's something that takes about 1-3 days of use to get used to, the ONLY downside once someone is aclimated is you usually have to look at the screen rather than be able to FEEL where buttons are (this is only really useful when typing while driving). I would guess you would have the same learning curve if you decide to pick up the Blackberry Storm this week as it also has no physical buttons for letters. You can actually turn on and off spell correction and it will learn words you use frequently (even foreign language words...I type french in text messages from time to time...it corrects me when I misspell). Advanced settings are in the Settings App...where they should be. The things you need to adjust frequently are right on top, the stuff you change once or twice to get things the way you like are buried a little deeper, because you don't need quick access to things like setting up a new email account or how long you want it to take to turn the display off when not used. I'm not an Apple fanboy, I was incredibly irritated by their recent changes to the Macbook Pro and Cinema displays, but I feel you should spend at least a day or two of CONSTANT use of the iPhone before condemning it.
ReplyDeleteIf your entire reason for sticking with Blackberry was just "I want to stay in my comfort zone" or "I'm already comfortable with the hardware and love the reliability" or "I use Blackberry servers for email hosting"...those responses would be fair...just a thought. I had trouble typing on my iPhone for the first couple days too...now I can type on it nearly as quickly as I type on a fullsize desktop keyboard. If you're on ATT I'll let you borrow my old one for a few days if you want.
We use Good, Blackberry and now iPhone in our corporate environment all running against my Exchange server. I like to give people choices so that is why we have all three. I personally carry the iPhone and have decided to stay with it (even though I agree it is not fully business ready yet). A couple of users didn't care for the iPhone at all and moved onto a Blackberry and have stayed there. The majority of my users are on Good with a Treo phone. I agree the iPhone sucks when typing but I havfelkd adapoaidit . . . oops . . . have adapted . . . mostly. For me (a piano player) the muscle memory thing is kicking in and as long as I have it in my left hand and am typing with just my left thumb I seem to do ok. The iPod feature and a couple other apps is what keeps me with it - that and it is so so sexy!
ReplyDeleteOn the Blackberry side - I now have two users carrying the Blackberry storm. One a newbie that came off a flip and the other an experienced smartphone user. Both like the Storm a lot so far.
Which Blackberry are you carrying? BTW it really took me a full month before I was able to type quickly and accurately with the iPhone. That is compared to about a day with a Treo/Centro.
One last thing - we are not allowing all employees to have the iPhone option - only senior managers. Because I don't have a good way to push policy onto the phones it will keep me from allowing it to be deployed company-wide. Blackberry and Good both have the ability to push a lot of policy down on end-users.