BB Bold vs iPhone 3G...

[stevetaz]

Well, The Boy Genius Report is at it again. They did a head-to-head comparison of the soon to be here BB Bold and the recently arrived 3G iPhone and it was pretty interesting. Didn't seem to pull any punches either.

Take a look at the article here and feel free to post your thoughts, good bad or indifferent.....

SteveTaz

[braxtoq]

Well, The Boy Genius Report is at it again. They did a head-to-head comparison of the soon to be here BB Bold and the recently arrived 3G iPhone and it was pretty interesting. Didn't seem to pull any punches either.

Take a look at the article here and feel free to post your thoughts, good bad or indifferent.....

SteveTaz

SteveTaz, any thoughts as to why links do not show up in posts? I can see them when I post a quoted reply,

Braxtoq

[stevetaz]

Hi braxtoq:

Glad you are out there....

I don't know why and I posed the question to Chris, but I haven't heard back. I also tried underlining the link word before inserting the link, but making it a hyperlink stripped the formatting when I view it on the PC. Note that when I view the site on my BB I believe it uses the mobi version and the link DOES appear as you would expect. <sigh>

BTW, in your reply you quoted my message and I still don't see the link on the PC until I move the cursor over it. Do you see it on your PC or BB?

SteveTaz

[8310c]

Read the report on the Bold vs iPhone. What a great article; no holds barred there. Personally, if I had to choose, I would still go the Bold. At the end of the day it's all aboput personal preference. It would seem that the iPhones screen could withstand more knocks than the Bolds, which an issue RIM might want to look into a some point.

[aggie]

after a few days with my Bold and having had the iPhone 3g since 7/12 and the original iPhone since 6/29 of last year-some of my initial thoughts:

Keyboard: Hands down, Bold. I don't know that I've ever typed as fast on any keyboard as I can on the Bold. As far as the iPhone, I was always having to look at it and got tired of seeing words run together or getting the wrong word because I forgot to push the X on the word suggested by the auto correct feature.

Email: Again, no contest. Bold all the way. The iPhone's display of the email is much nicer and HTML is beautiful on the iPhone but the Bold does now support HTML email and the email client is just so much more powerful. I was so annoyed by not being able to sort by sender on the iphone or by subject. Scrolling through all your email to search for an email is a royal pain. Also, the iPhone's email app seems to have trouble connecting from time to time although 2.1 firmware has helped this some. Deleting many emails on the Bold at once is a breeze whereas, although improved, it's still a pain to delete many messages at once on the iPhone. Also, the convenience of having your email instantly pushed to your Blackberry gives it another leg up. Sure the iPhone has MobileMe, Yahoo, and Exchange compatibility, but the BlackBerry has made it's name based on email and is the clear winner.

SMS/MMS/IM: OK, not trying to turn this into an iPhone bash session because I do love my iPhone. However, score another one for the Bold. Let's get the easiest part out of the way first. The iPhone does not support MMS. It also does not allow 3rd party applications to run in the background. The Bold has a clear advantage here as it does MMS and allows the use of 3rd party IM applications to run in the background. Apple does have push notifications in the works for IM apps but nobody knows for sure how that is going to work out at this point. As for SMS, the iPhone displays them in a much prettier fashion. It's fun to look at texts on the iPhone. But you cannot forward texts. There is no ability to delete a single SMS from a user you are having a conversation with. The threaded style logs all SMS from a contact into one conversation and you can either delete all or none. There is no option to delete SMS individually and save one or just a few messages that you may want to keep. With the Bold you can perform all normal SMS functions that you would expect on a phone.

Browser: This is what makes the iPhone so great. As email and the keyboard are BlackBerry's main selling points, Safari is the biggest advantage of the iPhone. There is not a better looking mobile browser in existence. S60's browser would be the closest thing to Safari in terms of browsing, but the Safari browser renders pages beautifully and faster than any other browser that I've seen. The Bold's browser is much improved over the Curve/8800 series. When I used a Curve the browser was painful to use for me. Most pages on the Bold load fairly fast and are rendered nicely. The Bold browser obviously has a little more functionality than the Safari browser in the iPhone but nothing compares on any device and the iPhone has the advantage here.

Media: This is the most surprising to me. The music player on the devices is basically a tie but I actually prefer the Bold player over the iPhone. Audio output is about the same but a little louder on the Bold than the iPhone. As for video, the iPhone has a bigger screen but the display on the Bold with it's HVGA screen is simply amazing and in my opinion unmatched by any device. I'd have to call this one a tie which is surprising to me as I never really thought of BlackBerrys as multimedia oriented devices.

Call Quality: I never really experienced much of a problem with the iPhone 3g like many did. The Bold seems to be solid as well. Both are pretty solid in my opinion.

Overall, I have to say I like the Bold better. I do wish it was a little smaller however. It's disappointing to hear that the Javelin is not going to be a 3g device-think that would be the perfect BlackBerry.

[stevetaz]

Hi aggie:

That is a super write-up and I thank you for taking the time.

As with everything in life the comparison of phones and features can be a very subjective thing, but I think you presented your experiences, your thoughts and preferences in a very clear and well-reasoned manner.

I am sure your post will be of help to many....If we ever have the opportunity to obtain the Bold!!!!

I am with Sprint (corporate), so who knows.

I would be happy just to see the 4.5 OS released by North American carriers, but I digress....

SteveTaz

[aggie]

Hi aggie:

That is a super write-up and I thank you for taking the time.

As with everything in life the comparison of phones and features can be a very subjective thing, but I think you presented your experiences, your thoughts and preferences in a very clear and well-reasoned manner.

I am sure your post will be of help to many....If we ever have the opportunity to obtain the Bold!!!!

I am with Sprint (corporate), so who knows.

I would be happy just to see the 4.5 OS released by North American carriers, but I digress....

SteveTaz

good luck waiting on 4.5!

Supposedly it's coming very soon to AT&T but we shall see.

Sprint should be getting the Storm after Verizon's exclusivity is up, no?

[v2p1]

bb bold is the best

[8310c]

Aggie, what an outstanding report on the 2 phones. You have covered the most controversial issues with much clarity. Your efforts and opinions are greatly appreciated. I'm hoping to get my hands on a bold some time in the future and your report was an immense help. Thanks

[ergagit]

any new news on bold intro