Despite all the reasons I posted earlier for not buying an iPhone and keeping my Blackberry Curve, I ended up buying an iPhone and completely love it.
Despite all the reasons I posted earlier for not buying an iPhone and keeping my Blackberry Curve, I ended up buying an iPhone and completely love it. Call me fickle, but it won’t bother me. I just needed to experience both of them first hand and should have held off on my judgment of the iPhone until I had the chance to use it first hand.
Price was one of my biggest concerns, but I discovered by asking the right questions from AT&T, that I could add the iPhone onto my existing plan for the upgrade price of only $199, and then suspend my Blackberry line and only pay $9.99 a month for the suspended Blackberry line. If I find someone willing to take over the Blackberry line, then it’ll only cost me $16 to transfer it over to them, and then I’ll be free of that monthly service charge.
Maybe Craigslist can help me out, or maybe you know of someone who would like a used Blackberry.
I also already had a family plan for $59.99 with my wife’s phone and mine, and that’s all that AT&T requires, so I’m now paying the same that I paid with my Blackberry.
And don’t spend the extra money for the Exchange integration. It works out of the box with the regular data plan.
The iPhone really proved it’s value to me on my last trip to Switzerland, and it’s cool factor completely blows away most of the arguments I previously blogged about for the Blackberry vs iPhone.
Yes, battery life is still a concern, and I find my self charging my iPhone on a daily basis – compared to every other day with the Blackberry.
That might also be partially due to the fact that I use it quite a bit more than I used my Blackberry. The web browser is so much easier to use because of the larger screen real estate, especially when you flip the iPhone sideways and the browser switches over to landscape mode. Love that feature!
I found that it took me about 2 weeks to really get used to the keyboard. It requires a soft touch, but it recognizes most of my fat-fingered attempts at words, and the built in auto-correction works extremely well. I’m already about as fast on the iPhone as I was on the Blackberry with typing out email messages, and I’ve found that a super light touch is the best way to go (and appreciate no longer listening to the click-click-click of the Blackberry keyboard).
The App Store is also one of the most amazing concepts I’ve experienced, where developers upload hundreds of free or low cost applications that you can download and run on your iPhone. Everything from Google Earth and free language translators, to race car simulators and fun games, can be downloaded and installed right from your iPhone. You can also download them to iTunes on your computer, and they’ll install themselves the next time you sync up your iPhone with your computer.
It’s of course up to you to decide between the iPhone and the Blackberry, and there are also several other gadgets on the market trying to compete with these two leaders. But as someone who has lived with both and carefully evaluated the pros and cons of both of them, I can tell you I’ve been very happy with my iPhone and haven’t missed my Blackberry at all.