Smartphones - Why I Still Like my iPhone

I have to admit that when it comes to smart phones I have always been impressed with the iPhone. Admittedly there are some very annoying things but overall the iPhone has been a good experience. Yet among my colleagues and friends, there are a number of people who love Blackberry and Android phones. So as luck would have it, I happened to include both of these devices in my daily use. I received a new Blackberry on T-Mobile from work and received a Google Android Motorola Droid on Verizon from the Google IO conference.

So I have myself a month and a half to evaluate both smart phones. The approach was simple enough. Use one device exclusively for a few weeks and see how I like it. Now the bar of expectation is pretty high: allow internet use, productivity such as email and notes, social connectivity via Twitter/Facebook, and entertainment for trips such as audio, video and some games.

Let me start off with Blackberry. Personally I have grown so used to the touch screen on both the iPhone and Android devices that using the physical keyboard was a throwback for myself. Even after weeks of use I grew pretty darned frustrated with it. Also the Blackberry is really great for work emails. However since work also has Outlook web access this while nice was not really all that necessary. Overall I found almost all the Blackberry experience pretty primitive and frustrating and while good for things like Outlook, it was pretty underwhelming in everything else. The T-Mobile service was very stable and overall the quality was great. T-Mobile had better coverage than my AT&T iPhone in almost all areas. A few trouble spots were common between both carriers.

The next device was the Motorola Droid. I have been using Android for a while with my iPhone so the Droid was not unfamiliar. It was fast, had lots of the same apps I had before which helped a lot. Overall while heavier than the iPhone it was not uncomfortably so. Tailoring the experience was a bit of a chore but again being familiar with it did not take a lot of time. Android also had a lot of the apps and experiences I was looking for. However compared to the iPhone some of the UI is a bit of hassle at times and while the multi-tasking is great, having too many things at once caused my Droid to hang more than a couple of times during normal use even with the latest updates. Using things like App Killer helped but having to do that manually still is a cumbersome chore reminding me of the desktop experience. Verizon was an excellent service provider whose 3G and voice coverage beat out both T-Mobile and AT&T. I never once lost a call anywhere I was traveling and the snappy network was really nice. I am really hoping the rumors of an iPhone for Verizon are true because based on this experience I would switch almost immediately.

In the end I have gone back to my iPhone. I love the apps, the feel, the ease of use, and quite frankly the reliability of the device even if on a less-than-desirable carrier. Personally the Blackberry is lacking so many things that I find it totally unusable. It is really only being used to take telephone calls. The Motorola Droid is pretty good and I use it extensively especially in areas with AT&T service is not very good. However while it does do things well, it does not do them outstandingly well and the constant hassle of reviewing what tasks are running and shutting them down gets old really quick.

Overall I see the Google Android devices and iPhone being the clear leaders for a long time to come in the  smart phone market. Both devices are really much better than existing offerings in terms of flexibility, ease-of-use and applications. While Blackberry is very dominant in the business space, I can see the both Apple and Google working their way towards becoming more enterprise friendly.

Choice is good from a consumer standpoint and the fact that companies are once again competing for my hard earned dollar and offering choices is really great.