Why is the Blackberry still better than the iPhone?

[Passante]

Not completely accurate. 2.0 has exchange support which does push. Don't buy everything that Apple and Jobs try to sell you.




As an owner of both, this is my opinion that I posted in another forum:

snip"The only thing with exchange for iphone is that you have to be willing to use it for business and personal because personal calendar/contacts will be overwritten once you add exchange support.

That is not entirely true. There is a setting on the iPhone's exchange setting which lets you choose if you want to use your exchange contacts or your personal contacts.

As for calendars both my iCal calendars and exchange calendar reside on my iPhone. You can view all the calendars at once or each individually.

 

[Passante]

I understand what pushing is as I have a blackberry. My whole point is that getting emails from the same exchange email account takes several minutes longer on my iphone than it does on my blackberry.

My experience is different. My iPhone sits in its cradle next to my monitor and makes a sound and vibrates when it receives email. My computer flashes the new email message in the bottom corner of my monitor. Sometimes my iPhone alerts me to new email first and sometimes it flashes on the monitor first. Usually its no more than a 10 second difference. Not that I have observed every email that comes in but I have not noticed big delays.

 

[apockalipse]

That is not entirely true. There is a setting on the iPhone's exchange setting which lets you choose if you want to use your exchange contacts or your personal contacts.

As for calendars both my iCal calendars and exchange calendar reside on my iPhone. You can view all the calendars at once or each individually.

True, but you have to pick one or the other without MobileMe. If you're using the iphone as a business phone you need to pick your business contacts.

As for calendars, without MobileMe, exchange wins the syncing.

I didn't mean to imply that it was completely impossible to have personal and business data. I guess what I should have stated is that when I have free access to exchange, is MobileMe worth it? That's something everyone has to decide for themselves. I personally would just prefer to use exchange for both personal and business.

 

[seedster2]

I didn't see it mentioned in this thread but one reason why BB is better for businesses is that its fully controllable and configurable by IT departments. They can decide what access you get from your bb, where the email is stored (for auditing), they can do bulk configuration (change the configurations on all their bb's at the same time), remote wipe (in case it gets lost), encrypt data on the bb, multiple (corporate and user) address books, etc etc. Its not just about push email, which bb does very well.

One other thing where bb's are ahead is local storage. Business people usually travel and being able to take documents down onto the phone and work when disconnected (or when data roaming charges are too expensive) is another big thing. I remember in my last job we would get a podcast sent to us which we could listen to when on a plane or whatever.

Another issue is corporate apps (developed in house) - How can a business get these installed on an iphone. Do they have to give it to Apple and get it onto itunes?

Replacable batteries IS another real issue. We had over 2000 bb's in my last company all the same - same headsets, same batteries same cables, same car kits. Batteries typlically only last about a year or maybe 15 months so getting a replacement from the IT group was easy. Can you imagine telling a sales person that they need to send their iphone off to Apple for a couple of days to get the battery changed - oh and btw - under data protection laws the phone has to be wiped before sending to Apple!!

These are the things that tick IT departments boxes and until Apple gets these issues sorted I don't see major IT departments adopting iphones.

Quoted for truth.

We can make all the cool train analogies we want, but until iphone addresses a lot of the fundamental encumbrances no one can expect a corporation to invest resources and subject themselves to such risk just to be cool.

RIM is in a great position. It's easier to immerse yourself in the consumer side after conquering the business end. In NYC all you see are iphones and BB's. I doubt all the people carrying BBs are using them for work purposes.

 

[yg17]

It's not.

Wow, now there's a thoughtful response


It depends who you are. Someone using it for personal use like us? The iPhone is probably better. But for business users, nothing beats a BlackBerry.

 

[sellitman]

Umm...ok. That's higher priority than having your battery drain out every 6 hours?

There's this new invention called the charger.....

Not trying to be snarky but with all the info possibly on a company phone the battery change out issue is a deal stopper.

All the other issues won't even be addressed because the iPhone won't make it past the IT Dept.

 

[StuBeck]

Didn't Apple have to change their term in something when they said "Push" and it wasn't?

Saying that, both devices have their own place. If you want multimedia stuff, the iPhone is definitely better than the Blackberry. But if you want e-mail, having a real keyboard and a push client like Blackberry is a lot better.

And I feel the people talking about their "dinosaur IT" are misunderstanding what's occuring. The new iphone's been out for a matter of weeks, it hasn't been proven at all and in a corporate environment where 100% reliability is required, bringing in an unproven device is not going to make users happy. Even once the device has been proven, changing is going to take a while. Also, changing everyone from blackberry's to iPhone's is most likely going to be a company wide change, so that will require many to be nearing the end of their contract, expensive training and many other problems which are ilkely to occur. Finally, IT almost never makes the final decision on purchasing decisions. Its usually someone else who makes this decision who doesn't understand everything technical.

Also, working as an IT consultancy, we're telling a lot of people to look at the iPhone who currently have WM and other phones.

 

[mrtune]

One thing everyone has failed to mention is Apple's email notification system on the iPhone. It is the worst in the industry, IMO.

You get a small beep that is not very loud, and that's it. No other customization is possible is stock trim.

It is very easy to not hear or feel the phone vibrate when you get an incoming email. What good is PUSH email if I have to pull the phone out of my pocket and unlock it to view the home screen for any incoming emails? For this reason alone, I have turned off PUSH and set it to 15 minute fetch intervals. If I'm going to have to constantly check my phone anyways, I'd rather save the battery life using fetch versus push.

Apple needs to step up and offer at the least a popup window on the lock screen like they do for missed calls, voicemails and texts. No need to have a preview or anything. A simple 1 new or 4 or whatever the number will suffice. Allow a custom ringer for the email sound would be nice as well.

What I'd like to see on the next version is an external LED that can show visual notification as well, just like the blackberries. That way I don't even have to hit a button. I can just pull the phone out of my pocket and look for a blinking light.

I had the taskbar notifier on my first phone (via jailbreak) and will jailbreak my current phone as soon as that program is ported to the 2.0 firmware (my fingers are crossed that they will actually do so).

 

[z0n3x]

Good comparison of the Bold vs the 3g iPhone:

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008...d-vs-iphone-3g-yeah-we-definitely-went-there/

 

[ubersalad]

There's this new invention called the charger.....

Not trying to be snarky but with all the info possibly on a company phone the battery change out issue is a deal stopper.

All the other issues won't even be addressed because the iPhone won't make it past the IT Dept.

I guess the ability to replace battery IS higher priority than constantly running out of battery.

 

[chinl]

Quoted for truth.

We can make all the cool train analogies we want, but until iphone addresses a lot of the fundamental encumbrances no one can expect a corporation to invest resources and subject themselves to such risk just to be cool.

RIM is in a great position. It's easier to immerse yourself in the consumer side after conquering the business end. In NYC all you see are iphones and BB's. I doubt all the people carrying BBs are using them for work purposes.

Also add in the strong history of support from RIM and the fact that Apple has only been in the "corporate" business for a couple weeks.

Most of the people ignoring these fundamental issues have likely never worked in or with a large IT department. Changing the infrastructure for hundreds or thousands of employees is a bit different than upgrading your family plan at home. It isn't that they are "dinosaurs" either. The fact is that there are serious ramifications in change/upgrade, especially just because something is "cool."

 

[scotty96LSC]

Also add in the strong history of support from RIM and the fact that Apple has only been in the "corporate" business for a couple weeks.

Most of the people ignoring these fundamental issues have likely never worked in or with a large IT department. Changing the infrastructure for hundreds or thousands of employees is a bit different than upgrading your family plan at home. It isn't that they are "dinosaurs" either. The fact is that there are serious ramifications in change/upgrade, especially just because something is "cool."

The blackberry has a stranglehold on corporate America right now. To change, which is the hardest thing for anyone or any company to do, will not happen over night. And the iPhone will have to infilitrate this part of America with apps and programs that are a necessity for business.