iPhone vs. Blackberry Curve

My advice is take what you've learned from the people. The feature set on the iPhone is wonderful, but there are some serious gaps. My general rule of thumb for Apple products is if it doesn't specifically say it does something it probably doesn't do it. If you need reliable push email, exchange connectivity, MMS, multiple recipient text messages, truly customizable ringtones, 3rd party apps or other common business needs the iPhone isn't for you. That being said I've used both Blackberries and Treos and for my personal, non business needs the iPhone is great.

I just moved from the Curve to the iPhone and must agree that there are some serious gaps. I really miss the message search feature and 3rd party apps. Its great to scroll so easily through messages but I would love to just search by sender and find specific emails.

Overall I have to say that I'm happy with the iPhone but I look everday on this site in hopes of some upgrades / new features. I even tried to post a few suggestions but it wouldn't work last night (Kept saying "Forbidden").

If you have specific questions, just let me know and I'll be glad to answer them.

A question like the one in your subject heading is only going to get you confused. Everyone here is going to give you THEIR own opinion on the iPhone. You need to go to an Apple or At&t Store and play with one. Ask all the questions you need answers to. In fact, take your BB and compare. See which one suits you better. YOU are the only one that can make that decision. There are things the iPhone has that the BB doesn't and vice-versa.

P.S. The only thing I will tell you about the Curve that is similar to the iPhone is that... it's MAC compatible. 🙂

The iPhone run circles around the Curve, period.

If email is a major part of your daily life and business, then the iPhone may not be your ticket. I just switched over from Blackberry. I had problems with it continuing to communicate with my PC hence why I finally jumped, cause there was NO way I was going to have a refurb phone...been down that road before.

The "Phone itself and its features" are better on the iPhone in my opinion. I am WAY past ringtone's and things like that. The Old Phone ring is professional enough for me and plenty loud. The few people that I assign their own ringtone to, I am perfectly okay with the limits the iPhone has.

I am okay with paying 99 Cents for a ringtone.....everyone else charges as well. theplaces you get them for free, are paying for them, they are just doing it with the advertisements. Anyways, too off topic.

The email though, is unmatchable to Blackberry. Blackberry by far has the BEST email interaction. Period.

So it is more about what is important to you then anything else. I hated the blackberry as a phone. Nothing really wrong with it, I just don't care for the search functions to get to numbers and contacts. The iPhone has the best interface as a phone I have had. The one thing I have noticed reading all these threads, is that most of the complaints people have about the iPhone are about lifestyles not fitting in with what the iPhone provides more so than anything else. Faulty products are always a part of doing business. First year models are always going to have some faults in them that need to be repaired. You never know with ANY product exactly how well it is going to work until you get REAL WORLD experience...then you improve it and fix it. At least the iPhone has the ability to be upgraded and improved through downloads. Not something most phones can do!

Personally for me, it boils down to what the most important features are that you need. I got the iPhone because I wanted the integrated iPod, knowing that I would miss the regular phone features and speed I have been used to for years now with other PDA phones.

My biggest consideration though, is how much you would be typing. If you are a casual user of e-mail and texting, you will have no problems with the iPhone. If you are an intensive user of e-mail and do lots of typing, your going to be disappointed.

I must have fat fingers because even after using by iPhone since Day One in June, I find the pop up keyboard virtually unusable, except for hunting and pecking one finger at a time -- it is definately NOT a replacement for a dedicated keyboard on your blackberry -- I routinely got about 60 words per minutes on my old phone, I barely get 13 words per minutes on my iPhone.

Other users milage of course varies. And the more everyday words you type, the better off you are, Being a medical professional, the iPhone does NOT learn medical terms, but it does try to correct all of them for you making the errors in typing just non-stop unless you go one letter at a time and keep deleting all the spelling suggestions.

Still -- I am using my iPhone less for messaging, but just LOVE having the iPod built in and listening to music and watching videos, while still being able to take calls, and read my e-mail easily. Responding is a different story.

I'm always surprised when I hear people complain about the keyboard. I like it much better than the blackberry. The keys, on the virtual keyboard, are bigger and the way in which it predicts what you are typing to type is better. I type just as fast on my iPhone. You have to trust that it's going to accurately predict what you are going to type.

I type about 75 words a minute and I seriously doubt anyone could type close to even 30 words a minute on any handheld device.

I type faster on the iPhone then I did on the blackberry. I do agree......if ytou type and try to correct as you go, it will take longer. You have to trust the word correction of everyday words. What I will usually do, is type out my entire email or text, then go back in and correct the mistakes. There are usually about 4-5 mistakes I have to fix in a two-three paragraph email. No mare than I had doiong the same thing on the Blackberry.

So apparently you have small fingers, and you don't type medical or legal words.

You can't trust it to type it correctly because it DOES NOT learn words that are not in the built-in dictionary. I'm not going to argue that here because you can do a search and find hundreds of posts pro and against the keyboard. I for one can guarantee you I was getting 60 wpm on my Blackjack, and can't get more than 13 on my iPhone.

I also prefer the iPhone keypad to the blackberry keyboard. I had a Curve for 2 days before returning it for an iPhone. The keys were tiny and hurt my fingers. After using the iPhone the Curve felt so primitive.

Eric3TBA wrote:
I have a Blackberry Curve and I love it, but I'm so curious about the iPhone. But I've heard alot of people so so many good and bad things about the iPhone. I am very tempted to go out and buy the iPhone tonight, but I don't want to get something I'll regret. Any words of advice?

Eric

Curve has more features at present. Custom ring tones, you can add 3rd party programs, voice dialing etc. I am hoping the iPhone will catch up. Its still early for the iPhone. The big plus is the Safari Browser for me...

I have both and enjoy both... I just pop the SIM into the phone I want to use that day... 🙂

William

I have had the BlackBerry Curve...and loved it.

I have the iPhone...and love it.

But, they are two very different phones for two very different customers. Although the Curve is BlackBerrys' attempt to cash in on the media-hungry market...at the end of the day, it's still a BlackBerry with some media apps built in and a more consumer-friendly shape and feel. The one thing BlackBerry does better than anybody else on the planet is...email. If you are a business person that needs email pushed to you almost "real time"...and reply to a LOT of emails...then there is no comptetition. The BlackBerry 8300 Curve is for you.

If you want a device that handles email well...albeit not "push" fast but displays HTML emails in their entirity and not stripped a la BES and BIS...the iPhone does a great job at it. If you want a device with an awesome screen and media display, the iPhone has no equal. If you want a bright, clear, beautiful multi-touch screen...nobody does that like iPhone. I personally wanted and needed those things more than I did getting my email as soon as it was sent. Having it hit my phone within 15-minutes is fine with me. I like the simplicity and amazing effectiveness of the iPhone functionality. It simply is the most user-friendly user interface in the world...and that is one thing Apple does the best...UI. And, although the iPhone is limited as far as functionality goes, and there are currently no 3rd party applications (at least very few...mostly beta ones) for the iPhone...I do not doubt for a minute that Apple has more goodies to come soon in the next weeks and months in the form of easily downloadable...and non-buggy, updates.

I'm not an Apple fanboy...just very practical and realistic. For what it is...the iPhone is a terrific device.

davistld01 wrote:
I have had the BlackBerry Curve...and loved it.

I have the iPhone...and love it.

But, they are two very different phones for two very different customers. Although the Curve is BlackBerrys' attempt to cash in on the media-hungry market...at the end of the day, it's still a BlackBerry with some media apps built in and a more consumer-friendly shape and feel. The one thing BlackBerry does better than anybody else on the planet is...email. If you are a business person that needs email pushed to you almost "real time"...and reply to a LOT of emails...then there is no comptetition. The BlackBerry 8300 Curve is for you.

If you want a device that handles email well...albeit not "push" fast but displays HTML emails in their entirity and not stripped a la BES and BIS...the iPhone does a great job at it. If you want a device with an awesome screen and media display, the iPhone has no equal. If you want a bright, clear, beautiful multi-touch screen...nobody does that like iPhone. I personally wanted and needed those things more than I did getting my email as soon as it was sent. Having it hit my phone within 15-minutes is fine with me. I like the simplicity and amazing effectiveness of the iPhone functionality. It simply is the most user-friendly user interface in the world...and that is one thing Apple does the best...UI. And, although the iPhone is limited as far as functionality goes, and there are currently no 3rd party applications (at least very few...mostly beta ones) for the iPhone...I do not doubt for a minute that Apple has more goodies to come soon in the next weeks and months in the form of easily downloadable...and non-buggy, updates.

I'm not an Apple fanboy...just very practical and realistic. For what it is...the iPhone is a terrific device.

🙂

William

Just a bit about email. I've had a berry and now have an iphone. Lacking push is about the only category I think the iphone loses in, but then I don't find I need immediate push anyway. When I'm on the road and need mail pretty quickly, I just set to manual check every 15 minutes, and if I'm waiting for a particular email, I just check it more often than that.

But it's in the IMAP implementation where the iphone is just a dream. I have my entire business's email structure on my phone, and can get to any folder in my hierarchy going back years very quickly. Everything I do on the phone is replicated on my IMAP server, so that when I return to my computer it's all there too.

Some folks have had trouble with various providers' email (yahoo, gmail, and the like), but it seems to me that the cost of having your own domain hosted now is so low there's no reason not to just do it yourself. I use lunarpages, which for $90 per year gives me a hosted domain FREE for life, 350 gigs of storage, virtually unlimited email accounts, fully functional IMAP server, websites, subdomains, ftp access, blogs, etc. And I never have to change my email address. The iphone syncs up with the IMAP brilliantly -- I haven't had a single problem.

I had a treo 650 for a long time, and used Chattermail because it had true push. But I ordinarily left it off anyway, preferring to check mail when I needed to. And the iphone's data package is half the price of the treo's and blackberry's.

Just my experience. Just my two cents.

My wife recently purchased a blackberry Curve and I am a die hard Apple enthusiast. But have to say I was impressed with the feature set the curve included as opposed to my iphone. And the keyboard was def. a plus one thing im not too fond of with the iphone. Also its pretty interesting how she downloads new apps and games etc.. on a daily basis. Me on the other hand has to use web apps which are ok.. but some are just there to be there I guess.
Another thing is we have only macs in our home and blackberry has an application for the mac to sync calendars, contacts etc.. but doenst let you add music or photos or anything... so we put windows on my imac via boot camp and that version of the blackberry desktop software has all the features to let you put video, music, pix and anything else you could think of... so I guess it makes a difference which kind of computer you use at home as well.. so in closing shes extremely satisfied with her curve, im satisfied with my iphone I just wish apple would eventually issue and update for the greatly requested missing components everyone has requested since launch day, ie... multiple recipient texting, better email sorting, MMS, copy & paste, ability to save pictures from email etc...