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anyone switched from blackberry to iphone?

4

49erPress

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 14, 2007
23
0
has anyone switched from a blackberry to an iphone? i have a 3g ipod that is dying on me and i want one that plays video. my blackberry is two years old and is worse for wear. but, i am pretty dependent on email at my job and i'm worried that without push mail it will be a waste of money.

as for background, first, i'm a noob. second, we use the google email client. so my email address is "@work.com" instead of "@gmail.com" but it all is routed through google. my email downloads to outlook and my blackberry. it is currently setup as "imap." does anyone have any experience with this? does it download your email every time you check it or every 15 minutes? if you're a business person, can it replace a blackberry?

thanks for the help.
 
Yes i've made the switch from Blackberry (albeit BIS as opposed to BES) and am very happy. Having been accustomed to a Blackberry BIS service, the 15 min 'pull' hasn't been an issue for me at all. Also, the calendar function is fine for me me in terms of a BIS service not really synchronising with Exchange anyway - I'm using an imap NHS mail account

The whole user experience for me has been great and I've been using a BB Curve.

Pete
 
49erPress said:
has anyone switched from a blackberry to an iphone? i have a 3g ipod that is dying on me and i want one that plays video. my blackberry is two years old and is worse for wear.
Click to expand...

A friend of mine, after looking at my iPhone, is going to.

49erPress said:
but, i am pretty dependent on email at my job and i'm worried that without push mail it will be a waste of money.
Click to expand...

Then, for you, the iPhone is a waste of money.

My friend is giving up his "push mail". He'd rather have a phone with essentially an 8Gig iPod Touch than "push mail". As others in this forum have stated, "the mail can wait".

49erPress said:
as for background, first, i'm a noob. second, we use the google email client. so my email address is "@work.com" instead of "@gmail.com" but it all is routed through google. my email downloads to outlook and my blackberry. it is currently setup as "imap." does anyone have any experience with this? does it download your email every time you check it or every 15 minutes? if you're a business person, can it replace a blackberry?

thanks for the help.
Click to expand...

You can easily set up imap in an iPhone, then use polling instead of push mail. You can set the polling interval.

I've been to business seminars, and overheard business people say that iPhones suck and they will never give up their Blackberry/Windows Mobile...

The iPhone is the "Smartphone" for the rest of us...

So, you decide (if you haven't already)...
 
on the iphone, when you go from the home screen to your mail, does it automatically check your email?
 
49erPress said:
on the iphone, when you go from the home screen to your mail, does it automatically check your email?
Click to expand...

Yes, generally it does every time.

I was a hardcore blackberry user for years, with BES. I made the switch, and haven't looked back. I was really worried about issues like losing push email, and the ability to keep my contacts and calendar in constant wireless sync. But it's been fine. No push email, but when you open your mail, it checks for new messages. Otherwise, it's checking every 15 on it's own. I still miss the wireless cal and contacts, but have found that practically, it's really no big deal.

The keyboard took a little while to get use too, and I'm certainly not as fast on it as I was on the blackberry. But, the keyboard is totally fine and gets the job done.

The screen is so much easier on my eyes, and the emails just "look" so much better. And the other benefits, from video to ipod functions, to the incredible browser (that really flies with wifi), make the iphone so much better than the blackberry when you look at "total" features.

Make the change.
 
if you relay on the push email (instantly being able to read it when it comes in) then the iphone is not for you.

A lot of people require push because a delay in access to an email even 10 mins can translate into thousands of dollars lost or having to now spend hours fixing something that would of taken 10 sec to prevent happening in the first place.

So it all depends on how important quick access to your email is.
 
I left BlackBerry (BES) as well for the iPhone and I don't regret it in the slightest. No noticeable difference in mail delivery, live calender update vs sync doesn't phase me in the slightest. Push vs pull for your mail? I honestly do not think you will notice any difference using imap with a 15 min poll interval. I don't and was an mail addict with my BB and still am with the iPhone.

Hope this helps your decision,

Jim
 
I switched.

This iPhone is 100x better then my blackberry and when 3rd party apps come 1000x.

I love the fact I have a phone that syncs with the mac RIGHT.

I never needed push email. I can wait 15 mins.
 
If you rely on BES push and calendar synchronization, I would strongly urge you to think it over before replacing your bb with an iphone

The iPhone is a wonderful device for combining a multimedia device (ipod), internet device and phone but it's very weak on the productivity side.

Email is limited as a matter of fact it sucks subpar compared to a blackberry, there is no wireless calendar synchronization, no to do list, and no notes synchronization. Google maps would be great if it had gps but for now its just a great way to avoid 411 charges.

I have a BB 8700g that i still keep charged and ready to go. iphone is a "smart" phone but its not a pda phone.
 
so my outlook calendar would not sync with an iphone? what about my outlook contacts?
 
imapidle has now reached installer.app so you can get instant mail notification provided your imap server supports it... I find that new mail notifications are only 2-3 seconds behind the actual delivery of the mail.

The downside is it's very much a new app and has some issues (it can't be setup to start at power on, ssl doesn't work, only one account is possible, and sometimes dies on you silently).
 
I moved my personal communications from an 8700 series to an iphone. I love the iphone, and for me, the superior browser more than makes up for the inferior e-mail/calendar.

However, as others have said, if you rely on instant e-mail, the blackberry is hands-down a better bet. I am anxiously awaiting the iphone SDK so the iphone can get some productivity apps.

I do not use my iphone as a music player, I was after the browser. I felt that the blackberry browsers allowed me to get on internet if I needed to, but the iphone makes it as close to a pleasurable experience as possible in a mobile device. My laptop stays home a lot more now, which is a true indicator to me of the functionality of the iphone.
 
I had an 8700 before I got the iphone.
Miss my crackberry but love my iphone more.

I still switch SIM cards to the 8700 when sending text to friends in Europe because we all know that PIN to PIN (blackberry to blackberry) messaging is free no matter where you are in the world.
 
I had a personal BB.
iphone is much better as I use Yahoo and the BB could never show me my yahoo folders.

end of story - imap is better
 
gkarris said:
I've been to business seminars, and overheard business people say that iPhones suck and they will never give up their Blackberry/Windows Mobile...
Click to expand...

Many of those people after spending a week with a loaner iPhone, changes their mind. For example, if you try to open a few things on WM, then it runs out of memory, and asks you to exit other programs. iPhone can open many more apps, web pages without noticeable slow down.
 
changed from a Blackberry Perl.
iPhone is MUCH better IMO. dont miss push email at all, every 15 mins or every time I click 'mail' is good enough for me.
 
Just thinking out loud for a minute but if you needed your mail right away could'nt you foward it to a yahoo account the woulf push it to the iphone?
 
snook911 said:
Just thinking out loud for a minute but if you needed your mail right away could'nt you foward it to a yahoo account the woulf push it to the iphone?
Click to expand...

can you reply from your primary email account though? or will the reply be from a yahoo email?
 
snook911 said:
Just thinking out loud for a minute but if you needed your mail right away could'nt you foward it to a yahoo account the woulf push it to the iphone?
Click to expand...

yahoo forward is glitchy at best. More than once from multiple different emails accounts it got stuck in a loop and kept forwarding the same message to me like every 5 mins for a few hours.

plus reports I am reading is it flacky at best and it is not a true push account from what I understand.
 
KYBOSH said:
... because we all know that PIN to PIN (blackberry to blackberry) messaging is free no matter where you are in the world.
Click to expand...


Please explain.. I don't quite understand what PIN is, but the prospect of free messaging anywhere in the world sounds quite exciting as I SMS internationally quite a lot
 
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