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I think otherwise. I have had my iPhone for a week and a half now, and I think I can get a lot more done with my iPhone then I ever did with my Blackberry. I'm begining to think the only people who say that are the ones that are jealous of iPhone, or Blackberry fanboy's. This is the best phone I have ever had. Just wanted to share my thought as it popped into my head.
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.
BB's are good for messanging but media, forget it. And I was a hardcore former BB user that had 8100, 8820, 8310, 9000, 8900, 9700, and dumped the 9800 before my 30 days was up. i4 is my 3rd generation iPhone ive used and I wont give it up
Another former hardcore BB user here. Those that say stupid things like "iPhones are toys and blackberries are for real work" are just as smart as the comment they made. People that are jealous say things like that while they cry for QNX. Hypocrisy? To them, all the extra features of iOS is unnecessary because their device can't do it. If their device could they would tout how great it is. But with iPhone you can be productive AND have fun.
I owned about all the blackberry's that were on verizon and it was such a pain and hassle getting on the internet with an iphone it is so much faster and easier than with a blackberry I also can get much more done with the iphone
I was surprised to learn how much faster I type with the iPhone screen that I did with the physical buttons on the 8830 or Tour.
BB will always be around because corporations that buy thousands of phones would much rather buy their employees 20 dollar Curves as opposed to 200 dollar iphones or Android phones. The bosses don't really care if the rank and file can surf the web or play games. They just want you to get your emails and respond ASAP. What is funny is that in my experience with the corporate world, the top brass carries iphones or whatever else they want, regardless of what carrier the company uses or what kind of hoops IT has to go through to make it work.
Agreed but corporations are also allowing people to buy their own iPhones and use them which saves them from buying iPhones and blackberries. And it's not just about the fun features of the iPhone but you can be just as productive and even more. Which is why companies are using iPads as well. But you're right those some companies will not let go of the blackberry and that's cool because they are a business and don't need to care about how much fun their employees can have with their devices.
Yea there is definitely nothing to compare when it comes to BB and Iphone. I agree!
I mean just compare the two! Iphones are so much more responsive, quicker, and smoother than any BB out there.
I agree. I type faster on my ViP 4 then on any of my berries. I used my wifes tour the other day, and was shocked how much i hated it since I've owned basically every berry.
8130>8330>HTC Hero>8530>9630>9650>Droid>Droid X>ViP4
I've noticed the same thing. It's funny, a few years ago all you saw in a business meeting were 8330's, now you see everything from the 8330 to the iphone 4. And almost everytime I see the iphone it is either a higher up, or an IT guy, never a salesman.
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.
I miss my daily battery pull! NOT!
I hate to say it but I was an avid iPhone basher/hater...until I bought the VZW iPhone 4.... (just sayin)
I don't miss that either. Lol
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.
I guess my Storm was the wrong one to buy, I am forever tainted by the experience.
I miss the notification light...and that is about it. I thought I would stick to blackberry because of email, until I head about the instant email in exchange accounts. Last month I had my blackberry, there were outages on the west coast (verizon blamed rim, rim blamed verizon, go figure) and my emails were delayed, sometimes for hours on my storm2, but my iPod touch and iPad were just chirping away as the emails were arriving instantly there. That finished it for me...
i agree with you too. i had the 9530 and the 9550 and love the iphone so much better! I think i get everything I need to do a lot faster plus have all the great apps and media along with amazing stability (which i didnt have on my bb- need for resets everyday)
Not even coming from a BB, or even a smartphone for that matter, I'm still thrilled to have a phone that just WORKS. It used to be "If I deal with this crapware I could attempt to maybe get a simple web-page to load" or "I'll attempt to check my e-mail, but I can't guarantee anything because most of my e-mails don't get to this phone". Freezes were almost as common as calls and the battery was always getting pulled. Now it's just "I'll surf the web" or "I'll check my e-mail". It is making me rethink my entire view on Apple. I used to just think "Overpriced" and "Cult following", but now I am beginning to understand it. It just works.
I miss some of options/settings that blackberry gave you that iphone doesn't (some of which I don't understand why they're not on every phone today). Mainly custom dictionary and changing the autotext replacement suggestions. I really like my new iphone buy one thing I have to ask is how in the hell does the best smartphone ever not automatically put punctuation in contractions. And little shortcuts like il for I'll, wel for we'll, etc. Not being able to customize text tones, and set different tones for different messages gets on my nerves a little too, but not a big deal.
Overall, I'm still on the fence. I'd love to be able to say I can type faster on iphone, but it really isn't when I have to spend time to do things my blackberry (storm2) did for me. It's typing convenience vs. web experience. Itunes is kind of a pain in the *** too.
It most certainly does. I'll, can't, don't all were done by the iPhone for me. I noticed because I actually text with proper grammar. O_o
Yeah, you're right. I guess I'm more concerned with we're we'll, those that homonyms. I don't like the way I'll is done though. I don't want it changing ill to I'll (not that I ever really use ill).
I text with proper grammar too.
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.
Well don't get me wrong, but if a smoother, faster, better constructed, sharper, more visually pleasing experience makes this phone a "toy" then I guess I prefer "toys". :)
All work and no play will make BB obsolete. I simply got tired of carrying two devices (storm 2 & iPod touch). I had a really good BB with none of the problems others had with their surepress. I actually really liked it...until I got my touch. After using the smooth, powerful UI and being able to actually use the net, I knew I had to have an iPhone. Two things that I miss are the LED notifications and my holster that put the phone on standby. I don't mind the slide feature, but I preferred the holster feature.
Sent from my ViP4 viaTapatalk
Yeah you're used to the blackberry autocorrects. I was too. It took a while for me to get used to writing I'll instead of il. The custom autocorrect, and dictionary should be a feature here, and I hope it is in the next os version. I had some really nice autotexts setup before.
I still dont get why people call them toys. And I will admit I used to be one of those people. I can honestly admit that I have only played a game for like 5 minutes on this phone so far. I played brickbreaker much more lol. I have so much more that I can do, I don't think to play a game.
Lol. I also carries around a touch and my s2. I loved the screen on the s2 as I never had any problems either. But using the touch was just so much nicer and smoother and it always worked.
My iPhone is much more efficient than my BB ever was.
I think some of the mentality comes from so many people using it as a toy, it has kinda been marketed as a toy relative to blackberry, and the best selling apps ever are almost all games.
My 11 year old son begs for an iPhone pretty regularly but doesn't even know what a blackberry is.
I totally agree with this. I came from a BB 8330 and have noticed that I type faster on the IP4 then the BB. I also enjoy not seeing that stupid little blue bar down at the bottom while trying to load any web page.
There were a couple things i feel i was spoiled with on my bbs, (profile settings and pushed notifications) but as far as how the device handles, apps available, etc. I am much happier with this Vip4.
I did the 9530 --> 9550 --> DInc --> VZWiP4 route.
I've had iPods before and loved them, though I had a Mac once and it wasn't for me, I much prefer PCs.
I absolutely love the iPhone 4. I was on the fence until I Jailbroke it and customized it more, added some apps thru Cydia, etc. I will definitely keep it now.
Having said that, my 9550 -- which I loved -- was way more customizable in general and BBs are still the best at handling e-mail (and I'm not just talking about push, which many devices can do now.)
The iPhone 4 has the best straight-up touchscreen keyboard I've ever tried, bar none, but I still type much faster on my 9550's SurePress and think the press-down touchscreen is superior, though I'm well aware most people think that's nuts. (There are many more people that bash SurePress who have never really tried it than people who bash iPhones that have never really tried them. Just sayin', haha..)
Lack of a notification light on ANY device is an absolute JOKE. Again, LOVE my iPhone, keeping it, but still, come on, Apple!
I do miss BBM and while I guess there is no incentive for Apple to develop their own with the free ones out there in the App Store, it's too bad because if they did, it would be so well integrated into the phone it would be killer.
My DInc was faster than my iPhone but I don't mind, it's not like the iPhone is slow by any means. Plus the UI is smooth as silk.
They are all great devices and, "toy" vs. "real tool", blablabla -- a Porsche 911 Turbo is a "toy" and it also does business better than most every other car on the road in many respects, so I don't really get that argument...
Ideally, I could take all RIM's Email handling, BIS features, security and customization options plus Android's customization options, the speed their phones generally offer and their Google Apps and put them all on the iPhone but that's not the way it works, there are many great devices out there that have their strengths and weaknesses.
I *love* and am keeping my iPhone, but, please folks, it's not perfect by any means and there's lots of other great devices out there, too.
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? The calendar is nothing special either Why does a touchscreen device not allow you to click on a time slot to open a new calendar entry? Typing is faster except for one thing. It's slow waiting for the magnifying glass to allow for placing the cursor in the middle of a word. That makes quick edits more of a chore than they have to be. And sometimes the iPhone insists on capitalizing in inappropriate spots.
Yep, it's awesome to have a phone with web browsing that works, and that doesn't truncate emails. But it's a trade off. We'll see how responsive apple is to their usability quirks.
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?
Nice things about BBM:
- I did not have unlimited texting and most of my friends/family were on BBs so it saved me quite a bit on my monthly bill with Verizon.
- International texting is very expensive but through BBM there is no extra cost for this as it goes through BIS in your data plan. Saved a ton there, too, with mostly family and some friends in Europe, Latin America and Australia.
- Gives you real time status of your message: [S]ent, [D]elivered and [R]ead.
- Send messages, pictures, contacts, voice notes, groups/group messaging, etc. There are many industries that rely heavily on BBM for business, too.
It may not be of interest to many people but it's a tremendous application.
Now there is Kik and LiveProfile which are cross platform, though RIM sued Kik and LiveProfile's BB App still hasn't arrived. I have read that RIM considers BBM it's most prized retention tool so I'm sure they'll do everything they can to sink any BBM-like Apps or block any cross platform Apps from including BBs.
I certainly miss it and have unsuccessfully tried to get people I IM with a lot to install Kik. Despite it being free and super easy, the average person is pretty lame when it comes to doing anything that requires the slightest effort going outside proprietary and brand name apps on their smartphones, sadly. I am not very tech savvy but sometimes the tech-lazy/frightened people in my life drive me nuts haha... "Oh, no - what if it breaks my phone?" Ugh...!
RIM is lagging so far behind upgrading their phones, though, that many of my fellow BBers have jumped ship for Android and iPhones, so I have fewer people to BBM with and it's less of an issue now.
Thanks for explaining that. I never realized the benefits because I always had unlimited text, and when I'm out of the country it's on pleasure and the phone stays off. I can see where it can be a somewhat useful tool. I know BB is starting to push it hard in a new commercial I saw. They even have some girl giving her PIN# to a guy in a bar. Doesn't Google Talk and AIM do the same thing as BBM though?
I'm not 100% sure but I believe those programs don't support S/D/R status indicators, direct file send (as opposed to posted links) or push, but I could be wrong. I use all the major IM clients but I use BeeJiveIM or IM+ to have them all in one place and prefer BBM over those Apps but I've never used any of those clients individually outside of a multi-client App.
I haven't had the pleasure of using BBM to pick up a date haha but it is pretty easy to add other BBs by just scanning their barcode and you can instantly transfer all sorts of contact info.
BB is a dinosaur in many ways but there are many things they also do really well, I think.
A lot of my Blackberry carrying friends do this, I used to also. I keep telling them to try the iPhone, and they don't want to. Me I like to simplify my life by only carrying one device around. Sure I don't have bbm, or as great of notifications, but the advantages out weigh the disadvantages.
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. :o)
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.
+1. Notifications REALLY need work. Apple realizes this and hired the engineer that created the Palm Pre notifications system.
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.
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".
I'll look into that. Thank you.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
That would be badass ... like a MacBook Pro LED backlight keyboard
Cool, Thanks!
Couldn't have said it better myself.
After the Blackberry Tour, I'll never touch another Blackberry again. :mad:
From the inbox, hit "edit".
This will all you to select multiple emails to delete.
One Tap Dial or similar app. 99 cents.
Oh, please no. As useful as the LED indicator was, it's probably the thing I miss the least about my BB. I'm not opposed to some type of small indicator light on the face of the device in future iterations (or not), but definitely not a proponent of the home screen button being used for this purpose.
Personally, I'd much rather see something done about the audible notifications rather than an LED light I've quickly grown accustomed to not having.
A coworker had forewarned me about missing the LED, but I can truly say that I don't miss it. My main issue with the iPhone over my Storm2 is just that it works and it works well just like the VZ commercial. :) Did miss BBM, but found ways around it and definitely love the variety of apps & games and find myself using my device way more than my Storm2 for a ton of other things than I did when I had my Storm2.
To be fair, I have to admit that the e-mail push on the BB is superior, but not a huge deal for me. That small difference wasn't enough compared to the rest of the things I can now use my phone for.
Email push is actually better for me on my iPhone than it was on my Storm 2 since I use MobileMe. On my Storm 2 there was always a delay. On my iPhone I get my email instantly.
As a business user who came to the iphone from a BB 9630 and 9650, I'm not quite sure why you'd say the iPhone is a toy or BB is superior for business users. BB's claim to fame - push email - isn't a BB exclusive anymore. My iPhone lets me get all my email, and handles pdf attachments (which I use in business a lot) much better than my Berries did. The iPhone also handles my subfolders in Outlook much better than my BBs did.
What do you mean "handle" pdfs. Iphone doesn't handle pdfs, it just opens them. Not being able to save natively is unreal for a phone of this level. I didn't pay for this phone to have to pay some more for it to begin to match the functionality of my 9550.
If all you need as a business user is push email then great. But as a "poweruser" I guess, and not even a business user, I feel severly limited with what I can do with my iphone unless it's play games/music/movies. Iphone can't even get on the web, download any given file, then attach it to an email and send it out. IMO, this is a little ridiculous for the most expensive phone out there. As a student, I could work on a project on my laptop without wifi. Finish, save it to my blackberry and email it to turn it in. Not so with iphone.
The lack of true multitasking also makes it more "toylike". With a blackberry I can open several webpages, close out and send an email/text whatever, come back and pages are loaded. Iphone I come back and I still have to wait for the pages to load.
Yes it "works", and is pretty to look at, and imo, Apple didn't initially intend for the iphone to be a business phone. After all it was advertised as the ipod that happened to make a phone call too. Out of the box it has little more functionality (besides pushed email, media) than my old motorola razr.
What I mean by "handle" pdfs is that half the time my 9650 wouldn't even open them, and trying to make them readable on the screen of the 9650 was very painful.
You can argue the merits of the blackberry vs. the iphone, but calling it a toy is silly. If it doesn't work for you, that's why there is a market with numerous manufacturers and operating systems to choose from.
If you enjoyed web browsing on the blackberry, you are the first I have ever heard of. Good luck clicking on about 90 percent of web links you get in an email, because the BB either can't open them or it be so slow that you'll just give up.
I don't use many third party apps and out of the box it does everything I need it to do. You pays your money, you gets your choice.
I never really had any problems opening them, but I agree that viewing them on iphone is easier.
I'm not trying to argue blackberry vs iphone, necessarily, just that the iphone is as much a toy as any other smartphone. For the price, I expected more from it out of the box. But that's what I get for not doing more research before I bought it. Then again, some of the things I didn't know I'd miss until I tried and found out I couldn't do it.
I didn't enjoy it, which is why I got an iphone. I agree, iphone beats blackberry hands down in this department. Opera mini made it tolerable.
Don't get me wrong, the iphone is phenominal at doing what it does and is a great phone, but for the money it should do everything any of the competition can do and more out of the box. I think being called a toy is quite fair as it is geared more for media and gaming as are most smartphones nowadays. And why the offense when it's called a toy? If it wasn't it would be messaging and phone calls, that's it.