I currently have a Blackberry Curve as my personal phone, and I have written a lot of software for the iPhone in addition to using one on an almost-daily basis for debugging …and because it is awesome.
I love them both, and while I haven’t traditionally leaned towards one or the other in terms of a favorite, there are a few elements about each where one either falls short to the other or vice versa, and I aim to cover most if not all of these differences in this post.
(I don’t have enough experience to write about the Palm Pre, so don’t ask me)
Camera: Blackberry 1, iPhone 0
While the iPhone has a higher-quality camera than some Blackberrys, you just can’t top video support.
Every since I got a bigger memory card for my Blackberry, I’ve been shooting videos with it left and right (you can’t use the video functionality without a large memory card, something I previously lacked). I love it - and drive people nuts with it constantly.
The iPhone is slated to gain video support in a newer hardware/software release, but for now this is a major feature it lacks (along with MMS). My Blackberry didn’t have video support until I updated the OS software, telling me that the video functionality is merely a stream of stills formatted into an MPEG stream.
But still, you just can’t beat a video camera in your pocket.
MMS: Blackberry 2, iPhone 0
AT&T is the primary cause of this one, although ironically my Blackberry is also under AT&T.
MMS is on so many phones, including AT&T phones, that the iPhone’s lack of support for the protocol specifically for the iPhone is just incredibly pathetic. And even better, the video capability of the Blackberry integrates well with MMS - I shot a football play and the corresponding score yesterday and MMS’d it to a friend running late to the game.
If I had an iPhone as my personal phone, then no - there isn’t an app for that.
App Distribution: Blackberry 2, iPhone 1
The iTunes app store is great - there are just so many applications to choose from on it, as the commercials tout, and the majority of them are free.
The Blackberry follows the typical operating system paradigm of “find it and download it yourself”. Not cool. And as far as RIM’s own app store goes, I haven’t heard enough about it to know where to even find it - it isn’t advertised, there’s no icon for it included in updates, and the BB Browser doesn’t bookmark it.
I had quite a time finding the few apps I have on my BB, whereas the legions of them on the iPhone I use were all downloaded on a whim. Best part is that this isn’t something RIM can’t imitate - they just need to centralize their apps around their store better.
App Development: Blackberry 2, iPhone 2
This one really should be “iPhone: 1.5″ because getting an app through the mysterious App Store approval process can be a pain for many developers, especially since the average approval period is higher for updates than initial submissions.
Other than that, I enjoy writing apps for the iPhone a lot more than for the Blackberry. Java is easily my strongest programming language, yet RIM’s Java API for Blackberry development is still a nightmarish mess for me, compared to the breeze of writing an Objective-C app for the iPhone (once you learn it).
Just look at the menuing system - it requires extensive experience in programming 2D graphics in order to draw an even half-decent menu on the Blackberry, and this same “more-complicated-than-it-should-be” pattern extends to many other areas of the API, as well.
Needless to say, everytime I even attempt to further my developmental experience on the Blackberry, I just wind up burnt out and frustrated. It’s an art, and one that I don’t plan on mastering as a hobbyist.
AT&T-free: Blackberry 3, iPhone 2
AT&T is part of the reason you can’t get Slingbox to stream over 3G, the suspected reason why Google Voice is a no-go for the iPhone, and the reason the iPhone can’t update to the year 2007 with MMS support.
But, unless you want to risk jailbreaking your iPhone, you’re stuck with AT&T. The Blackberry, on the other hand, is shackle-free - you can use it on any carrier that has been blessed by RIM, and most of the major carriers have been so.
This appears to drive hardcore iPhone-addicts up the wall.
Visual Voicemail: Blackberry 3, iPhone 3
The greatest innovation I’ve seen since the dawn of voicemail, unless you count Google Voice (a Blackberry application). Seriously - a little piece of me dies everytime I have to cycle through the 20th century voicemail menu system on my Blackberry.
For such a “smartphone”, not having visual voicemail or even a better system than the existing is just stupid.
OS features: Blackberry 4, iPhone 3
We’ve discussed the iPhone OS here many times, yet I still like the Blackberry OS much better.
The scheduling and power management is more robust, and I get much better battery life with my almost 1.5 year old Blackberry than a new iPhone does.
That, and the Blackberry crosses a line Apple didn’t even want to cross due to “possible power issues”: the ability to run apps in the background. I can hit “reload” within Opera Mini, and while the page is downloading I can go do something else, say, check on my Twitter timeline or replies.
(as a side note, I just mentioned Opera Mini - good luck getting an alternative web browser on the iPhone)
This is the essence of playing with my phone while in a waiting room or on the toilet - I am a very attention-deficit person, as those of you whom follow me on Twitter can attest to, so I love the ability to multi-task - especially when AT&T’s latent network is core to the functionality of said tasks.
And one more thing about the Blackberry OS I like: the security. BB’s OS is very sandboxed, which is both essential as an open OS (not open source; open as in getting apps deployed on one without approval), and as a smartphone in general.
I can manually set the permissions for each application within the OS settings, so as to keep (say) my SSH application with a possible security bug from accessing my Address book database. This security re-assures me a far as putting sensitive information into my device - even if I lose it, there is no way to access this information without my password, thanks to encryption at a very low level.
Even better, the security of the Blackberry can be centrally configured for legions of devices, using a thing called…
Blackberry Enterprise Server: Blackberry 5, iPhone 3
BES is a product made by RIM that is essentially a Group Policy clone for the Blackberry platform. For those of you who have no idea what I’m referring to, it is basically a service that allows you to centrally control every aspect of the Blackberry’s functionality.
Deployment is Windows-only, and a challenge to install from what I hear, but for large corporations with company phones this is invaluable. Disable installing apps other than the ones you wish to be pushed to every phone, or maybe centrally sync all company contacts with every device - these are just a few things BES allows you to do.
This is one field where Apple always seems to have trouble - if Mac OS X had this functionality, then you wouldn’t see so many Windows Server and Windows workstation combinations in workplace scenarios. It is no different with the iPhone, apparently.
Final Notes
Am I biased for having a Blackberry? Nope. My contract expires in a few months and my eyes are looking around for the next phone. I just find that the Blackberry has more desirable features than the iPhone does, especially out of the box.
Granted, I play with the iPhone constantly - its apps are incredible. Other than that, the Blackberry trumps it as far as its basic architecture and core feature set goes.
I look for this to change in the (hopefully near) future: All the iPhone has to do is get Video support, MMS support, drop AT&T (or allow an option), and maybe beef up its OS integration and enterprise feature set - then its on par with the Blackberry, in my book at least.
As far as the general public goes, however, the iPhone is just what everyone needed. While it has a few flaws compared to other devices that drive some of us geeks up the wall, you simply can’t resist the usability of the device.
But for now, I’m sticking with my Blackberry, and waiting for the iPhone to catch up with some of its features before I possibly make the switch at the end of my contract. That’s my take on it all, now tell me yours.
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