The recent Blackberry outages prompt this question:
If you can get your email with a smart phone/iPhone, why are Blackberry’s so popular?
Blackberry’s are much more business oriented particularly in regard to security. In fact India threatened to ban Blackberry phones in their country unless RIM promised to give them access to the encryption.
Blackberry’s are not so popular anymore, thier market share is way down. In large part due to the ability to easily get email on iphones and android phones.
There are two big things that blackberry phones have that other don’t. The first is managed email. The business that gives phones to it’s employees can remotely manage the mail on the phones. You can do things like remotely delete messages on the phones if they are lost. The other big thing is cheap messaging. Included in the blackberry service is bbm (blackberry messaging) which is basically like unlimited texting.
Both of these things can be done to a greater or lesser degree with add on apps for other phones now which makes the outages really bad for RIM (the company that makes blackberrys and runs the network to provide the above services). If their phones aren’t cool and the service is bad there isn’t much to recommend them.
iphones also have the ability to remotely delete mail if they are lost but they’re a little more brutal about it. Depending on the settings they could disable the entire phone, not just the email.
Blackberry has better security and they had a more efficient email to device system first. They’ve lost their competitive edge in efficiency and security is all they have left. The problem with their increased security is that it’s design requires all mail and BBM’s to go through their network which introduces the point of failure that’s currently causing them issues.
It’s their own network which is having problems and therefore the problem is impacting all their customers.
You can get your email even with a semi-conscious phone. I was reading email on an otherwise run-of-the-mill Nokia almost a decade ago.
I just bought a blackberry (worst imaginable time I know, but I’d walked all the way to the store on an injured knee and I’d be damned if I was leaving without a 3G phone).
For me it was purely cost. I didn’t wanted pay as you go with 3G service from a cheap provider as I felt that my phone use is such any more would’ve been frivolous. This left me with two choices: a bottom of the range Android phone and a fair to middling range Blackberry and I decided on the former.
I also prefer their QWERTY pad and trackball sysetm to touchscreen phones, though I’ve only really used a 2.5G touchscreen phone.
For us younger folk its BBM being unlimited texting instantly/free and with a simple interface. I dont care for much of the other stuff, but if I love BBM.
Blackberrys have always been far more popular with business customers than individuals. The Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) integrates with Microsoft Exchange, so that it’s possible to send and receive company email seamlessly from the phone. that’s the biggest (and in my opinion, only) draw for the Blackberry.
Blackberry was also much, much earlier to market than the iPhone, and had a large user (mostly high-powered business people) population before smart phones became popular for the “ordinary people” set. Much of their popularity now is left over from the time when they were the only really smart phone game in town.
The primary reason that people tell me they prefer a Blackberry (I’m one of them), is the physical keyboard. If you’re sending a lot of texts and email, a physical keyboard is a really, really nice thing to have. I also have an iPod Touch and an iPad, so I can vouch for the difference in ease-of-use.
The BlackBerry Messenger? My buddy and I tried that out two or three years ago, and it was absolutely the worst, most user-surly application I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t just send a message to a number - we first had to approve each other BBM contacts, not using the phone number even, but by using some other hard-to-find cryptic number in the phone somewhere. Then after I added him, it would be OK for a few weeks, then would forget him, so I’d have to go through the process to get him to find that stupid phone ID thing and tell me again, then approve me, so I could again send him a message. It was ridiculously painful.
Plus, it only works with other BlackBerry owners. Why not just send a text? It’s immediate and simple.
under a lot of plans you have to pay for a text, And I assume the system has been refined since then.
It took me 5 minutes to set it up.
Back when I made the leap from a plain-jane phone to a smartphone, the reason I picked BlackBerry was because it was then (I’m not sure now) the only real option that would integrate seamlessly with my multiple work and personal email addresses and “push” mail directly to the phone. So when an email comes to me, my BlackBerry beeps immediately–I don’t have to use an app or anything to check it every once in a while.
Now–Idunno. Android and/or Apple may push emails these days.
I got a first-generation BB Torch (the touchscreen one with sliding physical keyboard) and I’ve been happy with it, though I admit it doesn’t have the cool factor of the iPhone.
Main thing I liked about my Crackberry was indeed the keyboard. Also I liked the email setup more than in the iPod, but from where I was sitting, that was mostly just a matter of liking the look more on the Blackberry.
I’m heading to Japan pretty soon, and if I can get a Blackberry for a reasonable price, I will, but I am most likely going to be giving Android a spin if I can find a model with a keyboard.
Really glad to hear the responses here and why the Blackberry was popular. I say that as I bought one a few years ago and I hated the thing. I purchased it wanting to use it as a “smart” phone and my friends all had them for work. They raved about them and I thought it was terrible. The screen was tiny and the browser just plain awful. The trackball was a good idea, but didn’t work as good as it should have. After reading the posts above it becomes more clear why a business user would want it. But anyone using it for mobile internet will be disappointed.
Do they not know that there are many Android smartphones on the market with physical keyboards?
The only issue with most (if not all) of those is that the keyboards are usually slide-out or fold-out. Extra moving bits means more ways the phone can wear out or break. Whether or not that happens before you plan to replace the phone anyways is probably a combination of build quality, how you handle your electronics, and luck.
I carry a Blackberry Torch 9800 and my wife has an iPhone 3Gs, so I can offer some comparison points.
I spend a lot of time in an area that has very a very weak cellular signal. The BB will drop from the network about 1/2 of the time, but the other 1/2 of the time, it will acquire a signal and transfer email and texts. Sometimes, it is possible to complete a short call before it drops. The iPhone NEVER acquires a signal. It is useless at that location. So, the BB clearly has a better transceiver and/or antennae. This was the biggest factor that causes me to pick the BB.
The BB synchs with MS Outlook, so I can keep my calender and contact lists backed up on my home computer. At the time I chose the BB, the iPhone did not do this. I don’t know if it does now or not.
I like having the real keyboard in the BB. The tactile feedback of the keys helps me type with my clumsy fingers.
The iPhone clearly has a better user interface and better application support. But. that’s about the only advantage it has, in my humble opinion.
Yes on the iPhone, though I think the most frequently you can make it check is every 15 minutes. I have manual retrieval on because both my work and main home E-mail addresses are linked to the device (I could link more but don’t bother; also, the app lists them as their own inboxes and also has a combined all-accounts inbox), and I don’t want the phone retrieving constantly when I only linked my work e-mail for use when I’m out of town.
Tully Mars - No idea about Outlook contacts and such, though I suspect there’s an app for that. My workplace uses Outlook, and I get the e-mail via Exchange in the native iPhone e-mail app. I haven’t yet had the need to retrieve business contacts/calendar on it so I haven’t looked into it.
I believe that nearly all smartphones offer push now.
I don’t know about the iPhone, but my Droid synchs with Outlook and does all of that. (I went from BB to Droid about two years ago.)
That’s not push: push is when you get your email as soon as it hits the server. You don’t check or retrieve the mail, it just arrives.
The iPhone can connect to Exchange Servers now, which Gmail offers as an option for smartphones. Result is that I get new emails pretty much whenever folks send them to me (cite: My wife and I having email conversations pretty much in real time that way).
Also, I know it can sync up with Google calendars, so that’s an option if you use Google’s calendar service.