# Blackberry - Smart Phone Question

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blackberry-smart-phone-question/599546>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 13, 2011, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blackberry-smart-phone-question/599546 "2011-10-13T16:07:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blackberry-smart-phone-question/599546/21 "2011-10-17T11:32:43Z")

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> [@DaveBfd](#):
>
> 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.

[http://www.whatsapp.com/](http://www.whatsapp.com/)

Even better, it is cross-platform (iOS, Blackberry, Android and Nokia). Incidentally, the iPhone now does a similar thing to BBM with iMessage in iOS5.

I honestly thing it is just down to first-to-market (as someone else said). Weirdly, here in Sweden they are really quite rare. 99% of the time if I do actually see a Blackberry, which is almost never, they are being used by a foreigner.

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blackberry-smart-phone-question/599546/22 "2011-10-17T12:14:30Z")

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> [@Misnomer](#):
>
> 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.

That may not be a description of push email, but the iPhone (and indeed nearly everything else nowadays) does support push email.

In reality, the difference between push email and frequently-polled conventional email is largely semantic - in either case, the client device advertises itself to the network/server, and subsequently plays the receiving part in the conversation that gets the data comprising the mail message onto the device.

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**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2011, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blackberry-smart-phone-question/599546/23 "2011-10-18T02:42:06Z")

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> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> That may not be a description of push email, but the iPhone (and indeed nearly everything else nowadays) does support push email.
> 
> In reality, the difference between push email and frequently-polled conventional email is largely semantic - in either case, the client device advertises itself to the network/server, and subsequently plays the receiving part in the conversation that gets the data comprising the mail message onto the device.

There’s quite a noticeable battery life difference between push e-mail and frequently polled e-mail. Outside of that, yes, it tends to be a semantic difference.

-D/a

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