The first and only Smart Phone I have ever owned or played with is the BB Curve. Overall, I really like it, as I mainly use it for business with email and cell phone use being 99% of what I use.
I am due for a new phone with VZW, and I am looking at the options.

What I want to know is, what about the BB/RIM devices makes them better email, business machines than the other smart phones, or are they better at all?
I seems to me that most of the new devices are more geared towards kids/gaming/texting/goofing off etc...
I do not need anything to help me goof of, so I do not want to end up with a new phone that is anything less of a valuable tool for my work.

I am looking at the new Moto-Droid, manly b/c of the full size keyboard. My concern is it will be more clumsy to use as a phone. Same goes for the new Strom 2.
If the new Tour is the better phone for me, then so be it. I have not looked at it much with the previous touch screen units making all the noise, but may. I hate that VZW has locked out so many functions in the RIM devices (WiFi, and more)

All of the new,large screen units seem to loose the primary function of the cell phone, and that is to CALL PEOPLE!

Any help or advice will be great.

Thanks

The main advantage (among many) for me is the efficiency and security of the e-mail push. I think you will find that others here agree.

I encourage you to read through the fourms here...should give you a good feel for why so many use BlackBerrys.

As ndub said, email and security are two major reasons. I would also like to add reliability. The OS is pretty much rock solid. The installed apps, email, calendar and contacts are all geared to the business user - hence Outlook sync is "built in". Some of the newer models are more consumer oriented, but retain their business class apps as well.

What does "email push" mean exactly?
I think this is the info i was looking for, as it seems that RIM has the best emailing abilities, but I was unsure why.

"Push" email means that the second you get a new email in your ISP's inbox, it gets pushed to your BlackBerry. It's almost instantaneous. Phones like the Palm Treo relied an a scheduled polling of your inbox. Every so often your Treo would establish a network data connection, check for new mail, alert you to new mail, and then down load all or some of it. As you can imagine, this wreaks havoc on your battery life. With BlackBerrys, the RIM servers do all the work and push the new mail along to you as it arrives.

Thanks for the quick and detailed response. I knew the BB was the referred emailing machine for some reason.

Even non-corporate users like me, using BIS instead of the Exchange BES connection, can get this push mail if the email provider supports the IMAP/IDLE command. MobileMe added this feature when they updated from .Mac for the iPHone's push mail. Hotmail does it natively, and so does GMail.

Does the new Motorola Droid have the same push email function as the BB devices?

Windows Mobile and Android 2.0 have ActiveSync support built in. The Motorola Droid is Android 2.0.

ActiveSync also provide push email and synchronization of Calendar and Contacts.

Email security with ActiveSync is just "secure" as BB/BES email.

The OP said he wants his phone for business and what he uses it for is 99% email and voice calls. So, for what he wants, the reasons given by people in this thread are not an advantage of the BB. They are the same.

Keving75,

For your stated usage, you should go to a Verizon store and check out the Storm2 and the Droid. They both have WiFi. They will both give you secure, push email from Exchange.

I really like my Storm1. It is a great phone for the things you said you want to do. The Storm2 is an improvement on the S1 and adds WiFi (which you mentioned).

The Droid is also reported to be a very good phone. Everything I've read about the onscreen keyboard is good. People seem to like it even better than the Storm2 keyboard, but I really think that will come down to personal preference. The fact that it has a physical keyboard too, without being significantly thicker than the Storm seems like a really nice bonus.

In fact, the only advantage, on paper, that the Storm2 has over the Droid is that BES will sync Notes from your Exchange Inbox, where ActiveSync does not. But they both do push email and sync Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks.

OTOH, the Droid has numerous advantages over the Storm2 (on paper). Higher resolution camera, faster OS performance, bigger, MUCH higher resolution screen, physical keyboard, free Google Navigator, much better Web browser, Flash support coming soon, generally cheaper to operate (comparing overall expense of using ActiveSync versus BES). And last, but definitely not least, all your data does not get routed through RIM's servers, which eliminates one single point of failure in your data comm chain.

Like I said. Check 'em both out in the flesh and then decide which one you like better. They will both meet the requirements you have stated.

Wait, two more advantages to the Storm over the Droid:

- The Storm (1&2) is a world phone and will work in Europe, Japan, etc.. The Droid is U.S. only.

- The Storm has Blackberry Messenger. Some people consider this an advantage. I'm not actually sure why it's an advantage over any of the numerous free IM apps that are out there, but if you've been using it on a Curve, it might still be a point of favor of a BB for you.

The one thing I see as he advantage to BB Messenger is that it does not use your text messages. If you do not have an unlimited text plan, the other Im programs ( Aim Yahoo ) will cost you in text message charges.

There are no SMS IM programs.
AIM, Yahoo, GTalk, WLM all use data now.

Thanks for the replies and info.

I will be looking at the Storm 2 and Droid once all of the hypes dies down and I can actually get into the VZW store. I am glad to know both of these are designed to work with what I need in a phone. It will be tough to beat by Curve though, as a workhorse business tool.

Boy Genius Report did a pretty thorough review of the Droid and, while they did like it, they found some serious flaws. Especially with Droid's Exchange support.

Motorola historically wasn't so great about OS updates, but hopefully they would improve the Droid OS over time. The thing that may help is that third party developers have a chance to fiddle with it.

I would wait on the Droid myself as Motorola doesn't seem to get things right until the 2nd or 3rd version. The Razr for example took about 2 or 3 years to fix some of the early problems like earpiece volume. And they release things like the Rokr or the Q. Those were basically beta tests at the consumer's expense.

There's a new guy running the mobile phone division at Motorola, but until they prove they've changed, it'll be the 2nd version that I'd wait for.

No. It's not.
ActiveSync uses SSL for security. BES uses AES or 3DES for nearly unbreakable encryption.
From a security standpoint, they're not even in the same league.

From a corporate perspective, the device management offered by BES is a plus. It doesn't, however, sound relevant to you though.

Does his company use BES?

SLL is good enough for internet commerece transactions, it should be good enough for most people's email. If you're not passing government secrets or working on a revolutionary cure for baldness, I don't think this matters.