BlackBerry v. Android

I have been griping about my BlackBerry for years now.  How did it come to this?  How did the little magical device with the unidimenstional scrolling wheel capture my heart and show me the wonders of constant communication?  How did the company that makes the BlackBerry so totally fuck up their ownership of the market?  I am not going to spend much time thinking about it.

But now that I have a new phone, I will take a moment to give a spin-free assessment of the relative merits of my previous and current phone.  The previous phone, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry “Tour” 9700 was in my possession for about two years.  Its successor, Samsung’s “Note” GT-N7000 has been in my sweaty hands for about a week.  Let’s compare the two.

Things that drove me from the BlackBerry, screaming for a real smart phone:

• The web browser.  The mouse/scroller interface to the web only works at 1024×726 resolution or larger.  I would even argue that the ultra-low 800×600 resolution that appears when you mess up your Windows installation is unfit for web content.  My BB’s screen was much smaller and the thumb scroller much less precise than a mouse.
• The requirement that the phone be rebooted after every application install or update.  Was that thing running Windows 95?
• The seven minute boot time.  Paired with the previous item, application management on a BlackBerry is very painful.
• That applications can only be installed on the built-in memory.  Sure, you can expand the storage with an SD card but you cannot install applications on that expansion.  You can only use it for media like movies, music, or application user data.  My Tour seemed to have about 256 MB on the built-in storage.  It took about 10 apps and two input methods (Mandarin Pin Yin and Mandarin Bi Hua) to completely fill the storage.
• The limited memory for running applications.  With more than four applications running currently, BlackBerry swaps memory to the built-in storage.  That storage was unavailable because I had installed 10 apps.  So I was receiving daily warnings to close and remove essential apps.

A colleague of mine came into work one day with the Galaxy Note.  This device, set against his head, gave the hilarious look of a person talking into an iPad.  While he joked that other phones looked small, I reminded him that with electronics bigger was definitely not better.  But the more I thought on it, the more attractive the big screen and slim form factor became.

So, I bought one.  And it is so much fun.  Here are some cool features of this phone:

• The screen is monstrous.  Its bigger than any smart phone you have ever seen, although it would be small for a tablet.  Think of it as a phablet.  Or a tablone.  Either way, its a joy to look at.
• Android phones can use any number of competing app stores.  This means great value, great service, and all the benefits of free market capitalism for Android users.
• The mix of widgets and icons on the home screens are amazing.  Traditional icons will launch applications but widgets are variably sized dynamic objects that show real content without leaving the desktop.
• The stylus on the Note is awesome.  With a tap of the screen any image can be captured, annotated, and shared to Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Email, or anything you can imagine.

Really, I have had more fun with this phone than any I have ever purchased.  All the newness and fun of a fun is back like never before.  But I will admit, there are a couple serious limitations of this device that no one ever mentioned.  When I brought this up on Twitter, I was attacked by rabid fanboys.  The love that Android and Apple products inspire within their users makes them blind to the faults.  Here are the faults I have noticed in two days of use of this Android device:

• Because every device but BlackBerry uses ActiveSync to Exchange servers, only native features (integrated with and completed trusted by the OS) can connect to work mail, calendar, contacts, etc.  If you are using a third-party app that adds events to your calendar (like WorldMate) it can only apply those events to your Gmail calendar.  There is no easy way to synchronize your Gmail and Exchange calendars.  This means third-party events (like WorldMate’s plane flights) are invisible to colleagues.
• The phone will not wake up from an alarm.  This means you have to leave it on all night if you wish to use it as an alarm clock.  By going to airplane mode it is easy to disable incoming calls and messages.  But calendar reminders–a real pain for someone like me with colleagues around the world–will sound off all night with the phone on.
• My Samsung Note lacks an indicator LED.  The BlackBerry had one and I understand that other Android devices do, too.  I really got used to (and miss) that multicolor LED that would blink various statuses of the phone: charging, charged, message waiting, bluetooth connected, etc.  With my current phone I have wake the phone up to see what’s happening.

In retrospect, it makes sense that BlackBerry is really good at the one thing they have always been known for: email and calendar integration.  They are terrible at the consumer friendliness of the device.  I think in the end consumer friendliness will trump IT control.  People these days have the money to buy their own phones.  So, if RIM does not reinvent itself immediately they will be gone in short order.