Blackberry vs iPhone

Published: 29 May 2010

The smartphone is rapidly becoming the type of mobile phone everyone wants - the ability to access email, update facebook, leave a twitter post, find a restaurant recommendation or check a map is what everyone expects from a phone these days. Blackberry and the iPhone are leading the way, but who comes out on top?  Who wins the Blackberry vs iPhone battle?

Handset Design - Blackberry vs iPhone

With a sleek design and a large screen, the iPhone really sets the scene for a modern phone. The Blackberry products designs tend to be shorter but wider to incorporate the keyboard. The iPhone looks fairly fragile with the large screen, but it is surprisingly durable, unless its dropped directly on its face. There are many accessories available that can protect the screen, but with the precision laser cut screen, it should withstand at least as much abuse as the Blackberry. The iPhone comes with a simple 2 sided leaflet instead of an instruction manual, which goes to show how simple the handset and the iPhone as a whole is to operate. The style and design of the Blackberry Bold 9700 and iPhone 3GS are similar, and although the iPhone screen is large, the Bold has a denser ppi ratio than the iPhone for a higher resolution display.  

Keyboards - Blackberry vs iPhone

The Blackberry is very well known for its conventional qwerty keyboard, located like a regular mobile, as keys below the screen.  The Blackberry 8310 Curve is the smallest and lightest smartphone from the company to offer a full qwerty keyboard. For the iPhone, the touchscreen is the sole method of writing texts, navigating the internet etc. Touchpads appear to be the way the market is going with allsorts of new products, but they do have their downsides. Being able to write lengthy emails using a touchpad can be quite hard work, so the 'external' keyboard of the Blackberry makes that task easier, especially for those who find touchpads hard to use. For those who don't, but would like a bit more room to type, the iPhone 3GS allows the touchpad qwerty keyboard to be rotated to landscape for easier typing. The Blackberry Storm (now superceded by the Blackberry Storm 2) was the first Blackberry to use touchpad technology, but there are still loads Blackberrys that offer the conventional keyboard. Some say the touchpads are quicker to use, but if you're an email warrior writing emails on the go a QWERTY keyboard Blackberry is likely to be your ideal phone.

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Battery Life - Blackberry vs iPhone

Battery life can play a large part in which phone you choose. The battery for most Blackberry's lasts without a power boost for days and by using an additional battery you can double your battery life, ideal for those of us who go on regular overnight business trips. The Blackberry Bold , apparently has 'exceptional' battery life. The iPhone has to be charged pretty much every night even with moderate use, despite the attempts to provide further battery life using firmware. The battery, and any other part of the iPhone, cannot be accessed, which means you can't carry a second battery around just swap them over.  Battery life is the iPhone's biggest weakness but hopefully the new iPhone 4G will sort this issue out.

Email - Blackberry vs iPhone

For the iPhone multiple email accounts - as opposed to one email account on the Blackberry - can be set up. The iPhone has clear menus which are easier to navigate than the Blackberry and emails are easier to read on the iPhone, with a screen that can be used in either landscape or portrait to view more clearly, and if that fails the screen can be enlarged. However most other features and usability related to email is better when using the Blackberry, probably because of its own integrated, patented email system that includes special servers processing the emails before they are sent to your phone.

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Internet Browsing - Blackberry vs iPhone

The iPhone uses a cut down version of Apple's Safari and it's superb multi-touch user display to provide the best internet browsing experience on a mobile phone.  The iPhone 3GS with it's more powerful processor offers faster browsing than the iPhone 3G. At the time of writing neither the iPhone or Blackberry internet browsers supported Flash but this is likely to change in the future for Blackberry.

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Apps Music and more - Blackberry vs iPhone

Both phones have a camera, making multimedia messages and uploads an instant possibility. The iPhone 3GS has a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and video, a photo application, autorotation when viewing photos, uploading to YouTube and all photos can also be geotagged for future reference. Several Blackberrys also have a camera up to 3.2 megapixels with digital zoom, a self portrait for those social networking profile pictures and the all important flash – something the iPhone doesn't currently offer. Some Blackberrys, for example the Curve, Pearl, Storm, Tour and Bold series, offer video recording which can be synced with photos via the Blackberry Media Sync. Particularly with the car driving executives in mind, the Blackberry does support bluetooth, but the iPhone can only do this via the handsfree device.

Blackberry Messenger has become something of a cult hit with the kids.  Thousands of teenagers are picking Blackberry as their phone of choice, previously seen as a businessman's product, because the Blackberry Messenger chat feature works really well and is free to use (assuming you have a good data tariff).  

The App store is of course a massive pull for the iPhone. “Apps for Everything” is the tag line that gives the consumer an idea of what Apple are aiming for. The iPhone has a veritable feast of Apps and games that can be downloaded, and if you cant find an App for your every need.  Blackberry has an App store and Facebook, Twitter and other such applications are available, but it's nowhere near the scale supported by the iPhone. When it comes to gaming, the motion sensibility of the iPhone wins hand down. With the opportunity of  designing your own games, the attraction is huge.

With iTunes and iPods in the Apple family, the iPhone is a dream to use as a music player and is simple to sync with your PC or Mac.  Blackberry are trying to catch up in terms of multi-media but if you want a great music phone the iPhone is still the best there is by a long way.

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Software Updates - Blackberry vs iPhone

When it comes to software updates, the iPhone operating system is regularly updated with new features and improvements provided for free.  It's very easy to update your software when you sync it with iTunes, at which point your entire iPhone is also backed up. Although Blackberry updates more regularly, the background infrastructure remains the same, which doesn't really result in many actual changes within the phone. 

Business use - Blackberry vs iPhone

Blackberrys were designed with business use in mind.  For instance, they were designed to be well suited for company IT support teams to look after their users. The demands of business users varies from that of the personal user – good security, excellent call quality, easy access to emails, the ability to open, read and edit attachments, a decent battery life, practical and compatibility with back office systems. The Blackberry Bold 9000, for example, offers a 'Documents on the Go' suite, allowing on the move access to Word, Excel or Powerpoint files. The iPhone operating system has developed to become more suitable for business users with support for Microsoft Exchange Server for email, contacts and diary synchronisation.

Blackberry call quality is claimed by some to be better. As above, we have already seen that the battery life of the Blackberry is far superior than that of the iPhone, Bluetooth is more straightforward to use and the qwerty keyboards are easier to use when writing documents or long emails. With companies issuing phones to their employees, the competition for who gets the all important contract will surely get hotter.

Network Availability - Blackberry vs iPhone

O2 no longer hold the monopoly over the iPhone market in the UK, with Orange, Tesco and Vodafone getting in on the act, however the pricing between the networks is almost identical so you are choosing between network coverage and customer support. Most Blackberrys are available on all UK networks.

Verdict - Blackberry vs iPhone

The winner between Blackberry vs iPhone depends totally on why you need a smartphone. Business users will find the easy link to their companies IT support, easy access and editing of email, spreadsheets, long battery life, bluetooth connectivity point them towards a Blackberry for now. However if you prefer Applications, access to music, larger screen, easy uploading to internet sites,  a sleeker design, motion gaming, multiple email accounts and a touchpad doesn't scare you, then the iPhone is for you.

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