I have owned my Blackberry Bold 9780 for nearly 3 years now - which is like 120 in smartphone years. It’s showing its age1. RIM doesn’t support it, and in fact is actively harming it with the latest BBM updates that are touch-optimized. So I began thinking about a new phone.
Blackberry
Pros:
- Keyboard. I have not gotten used to a touchscreen keyboard. This is a highly subjective but extremely important quality in a phone. No super-secret-awesome keyboard app sauce is going replace a keyboard. I will say that touch keyboards have gone a long way, but it’s still not there for me.
Cons:
- App support is pretty shit. The apps they do have is pretty shit as well. Often a third-tier platform.
- Honestly it feels like the company is staying afloat until it gets a buyer. I’ll give credit to the new CEO however for putting the loltrain back on track.
Apple
Not much complaints. It seems to be a very polished phone. There has been lots of complaints for the walled-garden approach that has taken, at least in the beginning. But it works out well for Apple, and arguably for it’s users. The biggest con by far is the price - approximately $700, or half a new computer. If it was perfect, it’s a bargain price. But nothing is perfect.
Android
I have been cautious of Android mainly because of Google’s involvement in it. Unlike Blackberry, Apple, or Windows, Google probably knows the most about me and the real value I provide is the more data it collects about me.
My friend Tom recently lent me a Samsung phone and I played around with it. I used a new e-mail address, and found it to be fun to use for games or just browsing. I ended up getting an Android tablet for this very reason.
Windows
I really want to give this a try but WIND just stopped selling them. Finding an unlocked WIND compatible phone is turning out to be more work than I want to put in.
Result
How do I Grindr on a flip phone?
1 how many webpages can you load on 512Mb of RAM? There are some pages I can’t load even with images/javascript disabled