I’ve been using smart phones for a number of years and in that time I’ve had plenty of them. For many years, BlackBerry was my phone of choice. From the 6230 to the 7290 to the 8800 to the Curve and a few more in between I’m sure I’m forgetting.
I’ve even had many regular cell phones here and there as well including an old LG landscape flip phone with a qwerty keyboard.
When the first iPhone came out I was extremely happy with my Curve and had no urge whatsoever to give the iPhone even a second thought. My resolve crumbled however when the iPhone 3G was released. I gave in and stood in line with all the other schmucks fanboys (not on the first day mind you) and bought my very first Apple product.
Currently I use my device for work email, personal email, texting and calling so obviously Enterprise integration on the 3G was a big factor in giving it a shot. I have to admit, at first I was gobbling up the hype. I spent money on cases (quite a few until I found one I liked and was usable), I spent money on Apps, you name it and I bought it.
Slowly but surely though I found something peculiar happening. I found myself texting less and less. If I knew that I had an email that I needed to reply to I would actually break out the laptop and set it up rather than just shooting off a reply on my iPhone.
Maybe it was the years of BlackBerry use but I could just never get used to the lack of a tactile keyboard. Even the few applications that utilized landscape keyboards really didn’t solve the issue for me.
I finally came to the conclusion that to deal with the amount of email I get a day between my work and personal accounts, not to mention my preferred method of communication, texting, that the iPhone was just not very efficient for me. It took the entire life cycle of the 3G but I finally decided to go back to BlackBerry. Luckily I was eligible for an upgrade so the device was free. I brought it home, took the SIM card out of my iPhone, slid it into my 8900 and have never looked back.
Now, I have my the new BlackBerry Javelin (Curve) for talking, texting and emailing and I find that it beats the hell out of the iPhone in all three of those categories as far as efficiency goes.
What’s great though is that I still have my iPhone which still works on wifi and still gives me access to some of my favorite apps like Tweetie, MLB.com At Bat, The Weather Channel and most importantly Kindle. There’s also Sportacular, Buddyfeed and Scorecenter to name a few (I have six pages of apps). Plus, I can still make Skype calls on my iPhone as well. All while paying absolutely nothing for any sort of data plan. It’s the best of both worlds, a fast, productive BlackBerry for email/text/talk with a sweet 3.2MP camera with image stabilization and flash that takes some pretty great photos and a free iPhone to basically use as a tiny PC tablet/iPhone/SkypePhone when I’m at home or at a hotspot.
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