bb (recent) vs iphone vs Symbian (P800 era) vs WM
 

First of all, this is a very bad compasion, as of these platforms were coming out from different era. But I just wanna post my $.02 to explain why I get a bb even tho I'm not joining any bb plans.


* Symbian

Here's the story, my first smartphone ever was a Ericsson R380, it's a touch screen, "graftte" kind of input phone, I love it but simply no program to be installed.

Due to the love of the R380, so P800 was bought in immediately. It was a big hit, got a nice set of features, including a MP3 player, video player, Office viewer, etc etc.
The interface is superb, it is a device based on a Ericsson phone with PDA features, whereas PocketPC phones is based on PDA with ponky phone function. I used it for 2 years b4 the screen eventally breaks.

Then for a while, I have no smartphones. Got different fones from solely Ericsson (SE).

*******************

* Windows Mobile (PocketPC)

I had a hp hx4700 as my PDA to get online with GPRS phones connectied (with BT) one time, it was great, but then I notice there's a lot of maintenance work on the PDA, especially the RAM share w/ storage that kind of idea, I just dun get it why M$ implementing something like this. So I swear never get a smartphone w/ Windows on.

*******************

* iPhone

Then iphone came out. Cool, fancy, colorful, playable phone.
It was too expensive to get one (I'm in Asia, meaning paying $1000 for such).
Not only that, I notice it's got several big issues about this phone (as I heard, but I maybe wrong):

1. Bluetooth support non-existent, only Headset profile exist, aka no file transfer, no sync via bluetooth, no Dial-up to GPRS...etc, a reason why I stick with Ericsson phones instead of Nokias when initially Nokia does not support fully with Bluetooth.
And u can't Bluetooth for any PHOTO you took from iPhone. No point of sharing your photos with an iPhone. This is really one of the biggest impact on me.

2. No Copy & Paste, YES, I heard now it's got work-around with copy&paste with 3rd party program. But what the hell why I got this function back in 2000 with R380, while a 2007 iphone doesn't give a piece of function like this???

3. (minor) No Graftti; I know this is personal, but I simply so much get used to the hand writing from Symbian, or even Palm OS. With an onscreen keyboard u have to look at the screen and type in character one by one, while in some practice, you can handwrite with Graftti without stare at the screen all time.

*****************************

So with no iphones, no WM phones, And Symbian fones from SE being too long to release a new one for me. I stuck with normal phones for a long time.

Until last winter I visited my fds in Canada who showed me the bb Curve 8300, I was impressed because of these:

1. Trackball, a trackball? Meaning a mouse cusor u can really click on the web browser, wahooo... (Something should've hp hx4700 PDA use instead of the faulty touchpad)

2. Interface, it is a big concern to me as I really respect a good, designed, easy but yet, technical interface that makes a device to work properly. In which bb gives me such a feeling of a professional interface. Symbian does this, iphone does it sort of entertainment way, and WM - NOPE.

3. It works. While I need to find utilities for WM in order to make it smoothly, I dun see a need to find a piece of software that's in utilities category for a bb.

4. Keypad, I love the keypad. After all, a touchscreen is just a fancy stuff, not practical for real work. U see why all professional video cameras are very expensive? Becoz they have buttons all around with it.
The keyboard design of the bb, u can tell, some work has really done on it.

So when Javelin just release, I simply buy it straight without any plans. Because I like the Blackberry by its reilable, handy-interface design, and simply, it just worked right out the box.

PS: Apologize if I have any typos and grammer stuff, along with such a long article in my 2 cents. :?:?

Wilkommen.