The new Blackberry Bold is supposed to ship in October.
Luckily I got one yesterday thanks to a friend (i’m not sure I’m supposed to say his name or not).
I’ve been using various blackberry models for years until the iPhone 3G came out. The built in MS Exchange support & address book search was the clincher for me and the App store is just too much fun. I got my 3g iphone on opening day and have been using it as my main squeeze ever since.
But the iPhone has real shortcomings. My biggest issues are:
-no email search
-no copy & paste
-it doesn’t roll between 3g and Edge as nicely as it should
Because of these things, and the new look of the Bold, I thought I’d give this new Blackberry model a test run today.
Observations:
1. Keyboard. It took awhile but after a few months, I actually prefer the iphone keyboard to the Blackberry Bold keyboard. I think the Bberry Curve has the best keyboard. The keypad on the Bold seems too close together or something
2. Email simply works better on the Blackberry. I forgot how smooth things work like drafts, forwarding attachments, offline editing/deleting etc.
3. The Blackberry has a task manager that wirelessly syncs with the tasks on MS Exchange server. The iphone doesnt.
4. I miss copy & paste and email search.
5. The browser on the Blackberry Bold is slow and ugly. I tested it directly against the iphone on a variety of sites and the results were consistent. The iphone was at least 2x faster vs the Bold on 3g. Once the Blackberry finally rendered the page it didn’t look good or in some cases it didn’t work at all. I ddin’t test wifi.
6. I missed the 3rd party iphone apps that I rely on these days (e.g. Twinkle, Yelp, Shazam, Google mobile, Mobile Fotos).
7. I like the iphone calender better than the blackberry calender. I especially like how meeting invitations are handled on iphone.
8. The Blackberry Bold is big and feels even bigger. It’s also thick. They should have made this machine in the form factor of the Blackberry curve. The screen is very nice although it almost looks smaller than the curve. The resolution has improved.
9. The iphone camera quality is better – although its faster on the Blackberry.
10. I still don’t like the phone part of the Blackberry. I like the phone app on the iphone.
11. I think the iphone handles SMS generally better than the Blackberry. although why doesn’t the iphone support MMS yet.
12. I’m glad the iphone doesn’t have a blinking red light like the blackberry.
13. I love having photos, videos and tunes with me everywhere. the blackberry “media player” just doesn’t compete.
14. The software and UI on the Blackberry bold is pretty much the same old thing. I didn’t see anything new.
15. It is possible to use the same AT&T sim card in the Blackberry Bold and iphone. The trick is to ask AT&T to add the Blackberry data plan to that sim card and give them your Bberry serial number. Just tell customer care that you are only going to use your Blackberry. Once that is done you can move the SIM card to & from the iphone and everything (voice & data) will work fine. The only thing that won’t work with this set up is Apple’s Visual Voicemail. That’s okay by me because I use PhoneTag.
The iPhone has plenty of things that need improving. My friend Jason thinks that the 2.1 upgrade is going to be a major fix. It may even bring world peace :)
I don’t know if he’s right or wrong. But I’m willing to wait because right now I’m happier with the iPhone 3g than this Blackberry Bold.