I recently had to acquire a new phone after mine decided to stop working in the most annoying way possible. My options were to pay several monies for a fancy new phone, pay less monies for a less fancy phone that was actually the precursor to my phone (which would have actually made my "upgrade" a downgrade, and I said "fuck that"), or pay some monies for a phone that was outclassed by a newer model, but still probably at least as fancy as my current phone/paperweight.
If you were able to follow that last paragraph, congratulations! You're at least as crazy as I am! That's probably not a good thing. Grapefruit monkeys!!
Anyways, I ended up switching from my Blackberry Bold to an Apple iPhone 3GS. Let's see which one is superior! Obviously a categorical breakdown is the best way to settle this.
Blackberry Bold (with some numbers) vs. Apple iPhone 3GS
Ease of Texting
I'm talking Day 1, just out of the box ease. Obviously after a few months with any phone, you're probably going to get pretty good at sending messages to people.
My old Blackberry had the full keyboard that you could touch all the keys, as opposed to that weird one that you could actually click the screen. I like being able to touch the keys. Especially when I have to type the same letter twice in a row. In the 3 days that I've been using the iPhone, I have not once successfully hit the same letter twice in a row. Apparently I type too quickly for the iPhone to pick up my clicks. That's dumb.
Goddam touch screens.
On the other hand, if you and the person you're texting both have iPhones, you can send them whales. That's pretty cool. Big whales, medium whales, little whales, it's all possible with the iPhone.
Round 1: While whales are awesome, this round goes to Blackberry.
Camera
It's 2011, and somehow I own a phone whose camera doesn't come with a flash. What kind of ridiculous bullshit is that? How am I supposed to take hilarious pictures of a dopey-faced Odin without a flash? It's just going to look like I'm taking pictures of darkness.
Round 2: Blackberry
Calling Someone While Driving
When I wanted to call someone on my Blackberry, all I had to do was start typing their name and their name would pop up. Then I could click the green phone button and that was that. Calling someone from my iPhone requires all sorts of shenanigans. I am pretty sure I can do it by using the Search feature, but I'm trying to drive here! Maybe I can set up voice-dialing or something. Otherwise, you're going to have to call me if I'm in the car. Also, the top ridge of my iPhone sort of digs into my ear. What's that about?
Do people even still use phones to call each other, or is it all texts now?
Round 3: Blackberry
Texting While Driving
Texting while driving is illegal, so this round cannot be decided without violating the law. Which I don't do. Even though texting is super easy, and shouldn't impact your ability to drive a car.* But if it was legal, I think it would be easier on the Blackberry since you can actually touch the keys instead of randomly guessing where on the screen your stupidly fat thumbs might be.
Round 4: Tie, I guess. That's sort of a copout, but I've heard that it's not a good idea to promote illegal activities on the internet.
Apps
Is this round even a contest? I am pretty sure my Blackberry does not have Angry Birds. Even if it does, there's no touch screen so how am I supposed to make pinpoint accurate shots to trash those stupid pigs. I'm also very sure that Blackberry App World sucks donkey balls compared to the App Store. I can't remember exactly, but I think you have to download an app so that you can download apps. What kind of ridiculous bullshit is that?
Round 5: Apple
Talking to Someone on the Phone
Call quality seems better with the iPhone, but I haven't tried doing other things while talking on the phone, which I could do with the Blackberry. That was especially useful when I had to check my calendar to decide if I could take on additional officiating assignments, because it's always nice to acquire more assignments as they often lead to more dollars. The iPhone still hurts my ear sometimes though.
Round 6: Tie pending future testing of the iPhone's multitasking capabilities.
Battery Life
My Blackberry usually could go about 3 days between charging, although that could sometimes vary depending on how much I did with it. That was also assuming I turned the phone off every night, since I wasn't going to be taking any messages while I slept. It also had an awesome feature where you could set an alarm, and it would automatically turn itself on to wake you up. That is a genius idea.
So far, the iPhone seems to have a battery life of around 40 hours. However, I don't know if this is going to be a consistent amount since I haven't really gotten many apps yet and this 40 hour estimate is only based on 2 chargings, not exactly a large sample size.
Round 7: Blackberry. Having to charge my phone annoys me when I can't do it overnight.
GPS
The GPS on Kate's old iPhone was absolute garbage. It gave you a route, but if you missed a turn or weren't exactly where the phone thought you were, it didn't update, leading me to several instances of rage when we were in unfamiliar places. So I wasn't exactly expecting great things on my new phone.
Turns out that there have been some updates or something, because it works a little better on my iPhone. The GPS on my Blackberry was pretty good, but it usually took a really long time to figure out where I was, and often told me that the GPS was unavailable.
Round 8: Neither are great, but the iPhone one seems a bit easier to use. Apple wins this one.
Internet Browsing
The built in browser for Blackberry is garbage. The built in browser for the iPhone is Safari, which I find to be much better than garbage. I also tried getting the Opera browser for my Blackberry because it was supposed to be kickass. Instead, it constantly crashed, stopped responding to clicks, and would not shut down unless I pulled out the battery from the back of the phone. So I went back to the regular browser, which is about as fast as Chloe climbing a flight of stairs. Nice work Blackberry.
Round 9: Apple
Calendar
It's really easy to sync my iPhone with my computer to keep my calendars updated. It was not really easy to sync my Blackberry with my computer to do the same. This might be because both the iPhone and my computer are Apple products, but the important thing is that I like things that should be simple to actually be simple.
Round 10: Apple
Ok, that was a fairly extensive series of tests, but phones are serious business. Especially when you use them for a calendar, text machine, email, etc. We live in a constantly connected world these days, so you can't risk falling behind because you're rocking a Zack Morris phone.
Winner
And the winner is... my old Blackberry for now, with the caveat that I am pretty sure I'm going to end up liking the iPhone more in the future. After 21 months with my Bold, I was very comfortable with everything it did and how it did these things. After 6 days with my iPhone, I am still a little overwhelmed by everything. Plus it made moving my super sweet "Frog's Theme" ringtone from my computer to my phone a huge pain in the ass at work the other day.
Check with me in 3 months, and I might be singing a different tune.
-Jon
*Unless you are from CT, in which case your driving ability is already terrible and you should focus exclusively on driving when you're behind the wheel. No phones, no food, no music, just drive your car in the way a normal human being would do it. Which means not doing 60 in the left lane.
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