Everyone says Blackberry's are for poweruser, but...

[volsfan0911]

I've had 3 Berries (Curve 8310 on AT&T, Bold 9000 on AT&T and Tour II/Bold 9650 on VZW). Road warrior for a living, spend a lot of time traveling and am definitely the stereotypical corporate "power user". My 3G was pretty good for business use when they finally added ActiveSync in what? 2.1? And this ViP4 actually improves on that. Contacts, vastly better HTML email than the BB, Dropbox and Things (R) pretty much handles everything I need on the go. Travel apps are so much better on iPhone (especially CardStar which gives on the fly access to customer service numbers and websites). The Blackberry version of that app sucks in comparison. My 3G never crashed and this version hasn't either (don't think it'll happen either). My BB 9650 froze on a regular basis and battery pulls were a way of life. Battery life is great on ViP4 so far and will improve I'm sure. Phone calls are excellent - noise cancellation system really works and damned well. Noisy environments, cars, sports bars with TV's in the background, whatever - iP4 really does a great job of reduction/elimination. Landscape keyboard works well and I'm almost as good with it as I was on my BB's. I do miss one thing on the BB - press and hold one key for hot dialing.

Oh - and the one little thing that destroys Blackberry? VIDEO! Come on - I don't have to pull out the laptop and fire up Skype? Love it. Texting my wife that I'm on the way home is nice. A quick video call from delta sky lounge before going to the gate beats the hell out of that anytime. )

 

[TiNuts]

or as great of notifications

Actually, the more I use it I think the iphone has a terrible notifications system. I think the next time I'm surfing the web and i get an sms popup it's flying into the nearest wall. A flashing led and small icon at the top of the screen is more than sufficient. I don't need it shoved in my face when I'm busy doing something else. This is becoming increasingly annoying.

Unfortunately, as the novelty of this phone is wearing off, I'm liking it less and less.

 

[Darth-gamer]

Actually, the more I use it I think the iphone has a terrible notifications system. I think the next time I'm surfing the web and i get an sms popup it's flying into the nearest wall. A flashing led and small icon at the top of the screen is more than sufficient. I don't need it shoved in my face when I'm busy doing something else. This is becoming increasingly annoying.

Unfortunately, as the novelty of this phone is wearing off, I'm liking it less and less.

In the iPhone's defense, it involves simply hitting cancel. No more than .5 seconds and far less of a chance of missing a notification.

 

[tourstagefan]

I can take a screenprint, and have it uploaded to this site in roughly a minute. It took me forever to attach a picture to CB on my berry. Just one small example. Now lets just get the notifications up to snuff, and I'll be estatic.

+1. Notifications REALLY need work. Apple realizes this and hired the engineer that created the Palm Pre notifications system.

 

[TiNuts]

In the iPhone's defense, it involves simply hitting cancel. No more than .5 seconds and far less of a chance of missing a notification.

While this is true, but when it pops up when I'm in the middle of typing something, which is pretty often because most of my browsing is various forums, and it completely messes up typing, it takes a bit more than .5 seconds to recover. At least give the option of disabling the popup without disabling notifications all together.

 

[E_Brown]

While this is true, but when it pops up when I'm in the middle of typing something, which is pretty often because most of my browsing is various forums, and it completely messes up typing, it takes a bit more than .5 seconds to recover. At least give the option of disabling the popup without disabling notifications all together.

I have my phone jailbroken, and use bitesms. The pop ups are a little better with that. You should give it a try.

 

[hoosieriphone]

Oh yes.... the morning ritual of the battery pull. I don 't miss that at all. I do miss the flashing notification light. Coming over from the "Dark side" a month ago was the best move I ever made. My 11 year old daughter kept telling me that the iPhone was so much better. She was right!!!!! She and my wife suprised me with the iP4 for my birthday. Absolutely the best birthday I have ever had with out a doubt!!!!!I will never go back to the "Dark Side".

 

[TiNuts]

I have my phone jailbroken, and use bitesms. The pop ups are a little better with that. You should give it a try.

I'll look into that. Thank you.

 

[muzikmyke]

You can Search your Inbox and any Mailbox at that.

I agree with all of you but I am having a hard time adjusting to typing on the touch screen. I also miss being able to search through my inbox by topic or sender/recipient, etc. (let me know if I can do that. & just haven't found out how). I think that's the big stuff I miss. EVERYTHING elis pretty amazing & I get emails on my exchange account faster than my BB which had to be set up as BIS.

If you don't see the "Search Inbox" bar at the top when you go into your inbox, then just scroll up one click and it will become visible. It also give you the "From, To, Subject and ALL filters to use. This not only works for the inbox, but any other Folder/Box that you have set up on your exchange account that you would like to search.

 

[muzikmyke]

Enlighten Us???

I went from the Blackberry Storm 9530 to the iPhone 4. Let me preface things by saying after just over a week with the iPhone, I absolutely LOVE it. For the most part.

It's fast. It's fluid. It doesn't require an app specifically to re-set the device to get it to work properly. It doesn't lock up for no reason whatsoever. And it does the internet far better than any Blackberry product ever.

Having said that, for all I've said, the iPhone is a toy. Blackberry IS superior for business users, not to mention being far more customizable than Apple will ever allow the iPhone to be.

Again, don't get me wrong - I love the iPhone and can only see my enjoyment growing over time. But it's still, ultimately, a toy when compared to a Blackberry.

I would love to hear some of the reasons that helped you draw this conclusion that the iPhone is a toy when compared to Blackberry for Business??? I am a business owner myself and was a blackberry user to two years before switching to the iPhone. My blackberry actually slowed me down. I finally have a phone that can keep up with my business demands.

 

[anon(4706943)]

Bbm

I've had Blackberries before and I never quite understood what the big deal was with BBM. It seems to me that it's just free texting to other BB owners. That's great, but I don't know anyone that doesn't have unlimited texting, so what's the big deal?

The cool thing about BBM was the ability to send >160 character messages, voice notes, pictures to anyone who has a BlackBerry anywhere in the world for free. There were many times that i was out of the country and could use BBM for free to talk to family and friends without it costing me anything at all. Even in areas that had no wifi i could always use BBM. It was a great tool.

I do business with partners inn Canada and we talk quite often via BBM and it worked out very well. If you didn't have need for the things listed above than there really isn't anything special about it. Bottom line- if you have friends who own BlackBerries then you want BBM. If you don't, well, you don't

 

[anon(4706943)]

BB vs iP4

There are a few things that my Berry did better than my iP4:

1-Obviously notifications were better but i knew that going in. Hopefully they'll fix that in a new upgrade (maybe iP5?) via an LED and software update

2-the BB calendar was far more robust and quicker to enter events in. I do a lot of conference calls and with my berry i could check the box for a conf call, enter the call in number then the code and all was set. When the reminder went off for the call all I needed to do was click "join" and it dialed everything for me. Not crucial, but a damn nice feature.

3-email was better on my berry. I'm using gmail, mobile me, as well as a normal POP account and i think the berry just plain handles email better-at least in terms of receiving it in a fast, reliable fashion. I get my gmail and mobile me emails pretty quick but the home POP account lags. I can hear my wife get an email on her berry and mine won't have it for at least 5-10 minutes later. Again, not a deal breaker, but nice.

4-ability to hold a call in the sketchy spots of my geography was better on my BB as well. I drop more calls with the iP4 where i never did before.

Every other aspect is better on my iP4. The apps work better, and the ability to surf the web is beyond comparison. Camera and video quality are outstanding as well.

All in all I love my new device. I really don't see that I'll be returning to BB unless they get their act together othe media front. Sending pictures and video is far better on the apple device. Dropbox and Evernote work better on my iP4.

The biggest reason I moved to the iP4 was the ability to sync my multiple Mac's with my phone. BB and Mac do not play well with one another and i was constantly fighting to get all my calendars (mine, wife and two kids) to work correctly. MobileMe is a wonderful thing- as long as it's working well.

Yep, I'm staying with my iP4...BB does some useful things but the overall experience is better with my iP4

 

[anon(5335877)]

Only thing I miss is the notification LED. If Apple could make the home button light up or glow as a notification light, that would be cool.

 

[TiNuts]

One thing I'm noticing, in safari, is having to scroll up to the top of a page to refresh it. Does anyone know how to refresh without scrolling to the top?

 

[anon(5335877)]

One thing I'm noticing, in safari, is having to scroll up to the top of a page to refresh it. Does anyone know how to refresh without scrolling to the top?

Not that I know of. Do you manually scroll to the top? There's a shortcut. Just tap the status bar, and it'll bring you to the top and display the address bar.

 

[Cleveland]

Only thing I miss is the notification LED. If Apple could make the home button light up or glow as a notification light, that would be cool.

That would be badass ... like a MacBook Pro LED backlight keyboard

 

[TiNuts]

Not that I know of. Do you manually scroll to the top? There's a shortcut. Just tap the status bar, and it'll bring you to the top and display the address bar.

Cool, Thanks!

 

[PSU]

I agree coming from years on RIM devices. Most bashers have never used an i4, so they really are speaking from emotion and not experience. My i4 is by FAR the best smartphone I've had.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

After the Blackberry Tour, I'll never touch another Blackberry again.

 

[Iphonefour]

Email on my storm was far superior than it is on iPhone. Why does a device with multitouch not use it to allow for quick choosing of a bunch of email to delete? ...

From the inbox, hit "edit".

This will all you to select multiple emails to delete.

 

[Iphonefour]

... I do miss one thing on the BB - press and hold one key for hot dialing.

..

One Tap Dial or similar app. 99 cents.