I’ve been on the smartphone bandwagon for years now. I bought one of the first Palm’s to hit the stores, followed by the Tungsten, followed by various versions of the Treo and I’ve now been running on a Palm Treo 500v for over a year. Over the years, my only non-palm phone has been the Sony Ericsson p990i, which wasn’t all that bad.
One of the reason’s I stuck to Palm was Palm OS, which ofcourse is now history. My biggest frustration with the Treo 500v has been it’s speed and functionality. It works like a clunky windows machine would work in the early days, which means it crashes or freezes and becomes extremely slow at times. The time to open an application is too much time for a mobile device, and of late my Palm has certainly been trying my patience.
I’m thinking about getting a replacement, but alas, there is much choice in the market and not enough experienced information out there to make a decision. The new Palm looks promising. Blackberry has always ruled the business world, but iPhone is fast catching up for both business and leisure.
As a hard-core business user, I need something that can handle all my email, wifi, web browsing and mapping needs without choking or slowing down the device. Blackberry is the unparalelled leader on the email side of things and over the years the one thing that always made me go for a Palm has been the QWERTY keyboard, which is something that Blackberry shares in common with Palm. This is possibly the only department the iPhone is lacking in.
So, the million dollar question (not quite, more like £200-£300) question is which is it, the Blackberry Curve or the iPhone 3G S. Well, both operating systems seem genuinely reliable. Blackberry is also fast developing its applet store to compete with the iPhone. The Blackberry OS also looks to work smoothly and looks great, although it’s not as flashy or as graceful as the Mac. I’d personally prefer a Windows Mobile device, and I had given some serious thought to the Sony Xperia X1, but the lack of speed in windows devices simply turns me off.
With reviews floating around, it seems pretty clear that the iPhone is the device of choice when it comes to browsing the web or using maps, or getting other apps. The only department the iPhone falls short in is the keyboard.
Here, however, is where the iPhone makes up for it. As someone who has to frequently travel on London’s dismal but loved Underground, I very much like the idea of having to carry only ONE device for my music, video and phone needs. That’s a plus, provided the battery can survive me a comfortable 10-12 hours.
I’ve also considered Google Android phones, but their limitation to T-Mobile hasn’t done much for them. The iPhone seems like it’s fast becoming the winner, but somehow that Qwerty keyboard attachment is hard to part with.
Suggestion or advice, anyone?
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