I’m going to seriously upgrade my cel phone (old POS with almost no usefulness) this week, and am thinking of getting either an I-Phone or a Blackberry, but both have so many features beyond what I’m used to that I think the most important difference will be which one I can find the most accessible information about (to a newbie). I usually have had a zillion questions that the clerks who sell the damned things can’t or won’t answer for me, or simply make me feel stupid for asking, so I need to know which one I can most easily find the answers to for my zillion dumb questions (“How do you turn the ringer off? How do you make a macro for texting? How do skip ahead to hear the next voice mail message?” I just don’t stop, and worse I often have to ask two or three separate times to get the same basic information.) So which one has the best source of basic info?
Are you near an apple store (or whatever they’re called)? Best way is just to go play with one. I’ve had an iPhone for so long now that when I pick up one of my friend’s BB’s the screen seems unbearably small and I don’t like the track ball.
The iPhone is totally intuitive. The only thing I had to ask the store clerk was how to type on the screen. I didn’t believe that my fat fingers would hit the right letters, but it was so easy. I never even read any part of the instruction manual. I simply doesn’t need one. Go play with one and you’ll see.
Do people buy Blackberries for personal use (serious question). I’ve only thought of them as business phones - it’s what I have, company provided. While they do everything I need business-wise (hooked up to Exchange or Lotus Domino so I get emails, calendaring, tasks plus IMs, functional if not great web, etc), I would never consider one for personal use.
Since my company pays for my phone use entirely, I don’t have need for a personal phone so don’t carry one, but have often wanted iPhone or lately Droid (just can’t justify 50 - 100+ bucks a month when I don’t need to).
As per your question - with minimal searching on the web I’m sure you can find answer to any question or problem you’d have, the installed user base for BB and iPhone is huge.
One last thing - the carrier should be a prime factor in your choice. I’m sure the iPhone owners here will say different, but everything I’ve seen says ATT coverage sucks - I’ve got several colleagues who constantly get dropped calls in NYC and Connecticut on their iPhone (that’s NYC - we’re not talking rural Montana here). I dislike Verizon as a company but their coverage is pretty amazing.
Yep. I have a BlackBerry and I use it for personal use and I love the hell out of it. When it’s all said and done, really, I think it comes to presentation. I’m contemplating changing to an Android-based phone (if they import my contacts from a backup from my BlackBerry, then I just may), and that’s because I have T-Mobile, a carrier that has suited me well through the years.
If you want to dig online, the Crackberry forums should be pretty vociferous defenders of the BlackBerry.