Blackberry or iPhone?

Can depend on what servers are available. if your company has a blackberry server, then a blackberry would be great. it’s not totally necessary, but it’s easier if you have it. if your company has Exchange email and allows you to get your email via “ActiveSync”, then an iPhone or phone with Windows Mobile would be great, too.

Now, if your company doesn’t use Exchange and/or doesn’t have a blackberry server, then all of this doesn’t really matter. you can still get your email using IMAP/POP3 with either device..

You can view office documents on either device…although with the blackberry and DocumentsToGo Standard (comes with blackberry), you can edit PowerPoint files where you cannot with the iPhone…iPhone can only handle Word, Excel, and PDF files…

as far as a business device goes…it all depends on what you can and/or want to do with it. if you want to do music and videos, then the iPhone is the way to go. If you need a more simple device to look at files and check email, then the Blackberry might be the way to go (or a Windows Mobile Device). If you don’t mind a touch screen for everything that you do, then iPhone is great. if you hate the thought, like me, of being stuck with a touch screen, then don’t get an iPhone. I had a windows mobile device for work that had touch screen with a slide out keyboard. I hated the fact that I had to dial numbers with a stupid touch screen. This makes driving and dialing difficult. and I guess I just like navigating with hard buttons a lot better…but to each his own. I now have a Motorola Q that has Windows Mobile but doesn’t use a touch screen. the buttons are kindof small, but the screen is a decent size, I can use it as a modem for my laptop, view office files, and I can watch videos and listen to music if I so desire.

lastly, if you need a lot of space for files and music and videos, then the iphone has a lot more space. blackberry’s and windows mobile devices don’t usually have a lot of extra space, but you can add storage with mini SD cards.

sorry for the long answer

nice job ccatron

@ccatron – my thoughts exactly. I appreciate your thought process on this answer. Its the “which one is better” process I go through as well. I use the Blackjack I now but it is on its last legs of too much use. I have a Mac at home and with MobileMe I can connect to the home access as well. At work we have Microsoft Exchange and I can use it for either device I get.

The comment about touch-screen dialing is true. Its not easy while driving. Then again, I don’t think I should be doing that while driving anyway ;).

I think its a coin-toss at this point.

@mrjadkins-if your company uses Exchange (as you point out), check to make sure they allow the use of the IMAP protocol for accessing their Exchange server outside of the LAN; otherwise iPhone won’t be able to access their server.

I have this problem at my work as the lame IT director won’t set up their Exchange server for IMAP…frustrating!

@sndfreq – do you like IMAP better than ActiveSync on the iPhone? ActiveSync will work from anywhere. we have 1 user that has an iPhone and I think he likes it better than IMAP.

@ccatron: I don’t know much about ActiveSync because my employer’s Exchange server sits behind a firewall and the only access they’re permitting is via Outlook Web Access (OWA)...is there another way to implement ActiveSync out to the internet from behind a firewall?

At work, on the LAN, ActiveSync seems to work fine…I think MobileMe approximates it fairly well except when updating on the Mac, which takes 15 minutes to sync up to the “cloud”-I’ve seen it in action :(

Theres a lot more potential with the iPhone plus I think it’s more useful for non work related things like music and video. BTW if you can hold out a couple months your carrier might have the Blackberry Bold avalible which seems pretty nice. Hold out even longer and you could get the touchscreen blackberry rumored to be called the Thumder or Storm.

@sndfreq – I misread your post the first time…I apologize. Yeah, if they are not allowing IMAP, it won’t work.

I have seen the rumored pics of Storm/Thunder online. It looks like an iPhone killer at some point. Pretty interesting watching these new touchscreen phones roll out. I don’t think I can wait. I get paid on Friday and think I am going to go ahead and get the iPhone. Having access to web apps like Twitter and my blog will be good too. Plus, I take digital pictures to post on our website so condensing into one phone/device is preferred.

Storm/Thunder looks good if that’s what it is to be but I can’t wait that long.
Thanks for all the good discussion.

I have an iPhone and can tell you that especially after the 2.0 update, the Blackberry is beginning to look more stable and useful. If I wasn’t so Apple-obsessed, and was thinking logically and objectively, I would probably have gotten a Blackberry. But… I’m a bit of a fanboy… (kill me now!).