Well, I did debate it in the beginning; should I get a Blackberry or an iPhone? At the time, the new Blackberry Torch 9800 had just come out and it looked pretty sweet. Yet there was also the iPhone, 4th generation. At first it seemed to be quite a hard choice, and I spent a few weeks comparing them. While the iPhone looked amazing and blew me away, at the end of the day it was still little more than a spiffed up iPod touch. As I had just recently (a few months ago) gotten the new Touch, I decided to forgo getting a iPhone. The iPhone was amazing if you didn't already have a perfectly fine, new iPod. The other deciding factor was the price plans of the iPhone.
When I was comparing them, and I went to every cell provider in the city, it just seemed to me flat out that the iPhone plans were more expensive then that of the BlackBerry's. That was also factoring what I was told about the data plans; the guy I was talking to at Rogers told me that while BlackBerrys compress the data they receive when browsing, the iPhone doesn't. Therefore, if I were to get the iPhone I would need almost twice the amount of data every month. Of course, I soon found out that most of what he said was bull***t.
After a few months, I realized the 500mb plan he told me to go with wasn't nearly enough and I was eating up almost a GB worth of data a month; he had told me that was virtually impossible. If I recall correctly, when I was asking how much exactly 500mb meant in terms of surfing time his words were, "you'll never even come close to that amount, unless you're streaming hours of video or tethering".
I knew some people who were very happy with their RIM products so I thought I would give it a go. At the time, it seemed the significantly cheaper and better way to go; I had too many songs to fit on a iPhone at the time anyway and what's the point of carrying both an iPhone and iPod in my pocket? Oh, if only I could turn back the clock to that fateful day!
I was thrilled when I got my new Blackberry up and running. Just the simple idea of having Internet on the go was amazing to me; I'd been wanting something like that for years. The full touch screen was great, while the slide out keyboard gave me a second option for typing. The speakerphone was great; loud and clear with a good mic on it. And perhaps my favorite part of all; Internet radio! I loved having literally hundreds of channels of everything from news, to music, to stand up comedy, with me wherever I went. Of course it sucked my data up like crazy, but it was all worth it. The camera on it was awesome, and the GPS saved my a** from getting lost countless times.
Yes, I was certain I had made the right choice in the great cell phone debate! That was before I had been using it for a few months. The first thing I realized was that while it was still 3G, the Internet was seriously slow; I could go make a sandwich in the time it took to load some web pages. The Internet radio was still amazing, but it used so much data that I had to upgrade my package to 1GB. I was now paying seventy eight a month and everyone else seemed to be paying twenty dollars less for the same thing! The virtual keyboard was nice looking, but the typing was seriously slower than the iPhone. The time it took for the screen to register my touch compared to that of the iPhone was significant. The app store didn't have nearly as many choices as Apple's does, and you couldn't Jailbreak a BlackBerry. I started catching myself staring excessively at my co workers' iPhones, thinking of what could've been. It seemed that while RIM had developed a truly amazing piece of technology, it just couldn't hold a light to the iPhone.
That thought was confirmed when I was reading in the news that RIM's stock had dropped, yet again. With the introduction of Google's Android to throw another competitor in the market, RIM was falling behind. While I am not a fan of Android phones myself, they are a great alternative to the person who doesn't want to have to deal with Apple's restriction of third party plugins, especially their refusal to allow users to install Flash Player on their devices.
So here I am, stuck with my BlackBerry, which is currently out for repair. The battery on it has been dropping, the whole device has developed the tendency to freeze almost daily now, and the other day, it literally took me fifteen minutes to send one freaking text! Needless to say I would have a iPhone by now if I wasn't stuck in this contract for another two and a half years. Yes, it seems that I am going to have to put up with this "not-so-smart" phone for a little while longer. I am praying and hoping that it will work better when it's fixed; I have an older model BlackBerry for a loaner right now that works better than mine did! So while the choice between the Blackberry and the iPhone may seem overwhelming at first; there's really no comparison between the two. Apple is simply the higher power here; take a look at the stock market if you don't believe me!
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