BlackBerry to iPhone

Okay, I’ve had this thing for about a week now and my first impressions have somewhat changed.

First off, let me say that I am still not convinced the iPhone will ever rival the BlackBerry in terms of sheer productivity. The lack of a physical, wide-layout QWERTY keyboard gives it a natural disadvantage in this department – no matter how clever a touch keyboard is designed, it simply cannot match the tactile response of physical keys.

However, I will say this. On day one I found typing to be a slow and arduous process, preferable only to, say, masturbating with sandpaper. Now, a week later, I’m up to about twenty words a minute. I’m writing this post on the iPhone, and have gotten to the point where I may actually choose it to write short emails with if it’s more convenient to hand than my laptop.

Certainly it’s gotten much easier, and I seem to be improving daily (a three-hour argument by text message didn’t hurt my progress – don’t ask), so maybe there’s something to that whole “try it for a week” thing.

The inclusion of a popular, centralized, third-party application store makes a huge difference in overall phone functionality. All I have to do is open up iTunes to find a wide variety of apps that expand greatly upon the phone’s functionality. Granted, about 90% of the programs on athe App Store are crap, but it only took a few gems to reach the point where I pull my phone out for just about everything. Which may or may not be a good thing.

All things considered, I can now count myself a fan of the iPhone, which is a pretty significant turnaround for me.

This change in attitude was mostly due to… well, a change in attitude.  Once I stopped trying to force my iPhone to behave like a BlackBerry (something it’s never going to be able to do), I started to adjust the way I used my phone.  And that has made all the difference.

For instance, while I no longer use AIM nearly as much (this will hopefully change in September if apps get push notifications), I use SMS a lot more.  I showed my hardcore AIM contacts how to send me SMS messages by AIMing my phone number, so I still keep in touch with them just fine.  In fact, all things considered, using SMS is a lot better experience than using AIM on the whole.  I pay a few more a month for unlimited SMS messages, and I’m good to go.

I no longer write lengthy email responses since I’m still not up to speed on the keyboard, but I make much better use of the fully-synced IMAP capabilities of the iPhone.  I used to have to organize my messages when I got back to the office (my BlackBerry couldn’t send messages to folders like I can on the iPhone).  Now I have a little extra time to send lengthier email follow ups to my shorter iPhone-composed replies, if necessary.

I’ve ranted about battery life, but I’ve adjusted thusly: since I no longer have to carry a separate phone and iPod in my briefcase, I’ve got an extra slot in my bag to stick one of these backup batteries for the iPhone.  If my iPhone battery gets low, I snap it on and toss it back in my bag, and it charges while I’m not using it.  I don’t actually have to leave that thing on there while I talk, because it charges the iPhone while it’s on, so once my battery is charged up enough, I can take it back off and go about my day.  It’s no more expensive than carrying an extra BB battery around, and I don’t have to take off the backing or restart my phone to use it.

I don’t use Google Maps as much as I used to – the Google Maps application on the BlackBerry offered more information about business hours, etc than the iPhone does – but I do use Yelp and Urbanspoon to find that stuff instead.

All things considered, I honestly do think I get more functionality out of my iPhone, despite my gripes.  I cannot stress enough, however, that this is due to the way I use my mobile – if you’re the kind of user who wants to be able to type out lengthy emails, or do a lot of networking via BlackBerry Messenger, you may want to stick with your BB.  The new Bold is destined to solve a lot of the gripes people had about BB screen quality, media applications, etc.

I still hold to my conviction, however, that the iPhone is seriously lacking in some features, and in a way that boggles the mind.  The lack of MMS (on a camera phone, no less), video capability, copy & paste, etc. is unforgiveable.  There are rumors, of course, that some of this stuff is to be fixed, but several of those rumors have been around since the first iPhone was released, too, and since they haven’t added these capabilities with the release of the 3G I have my doubts about their intentions to.