# Blackberry V Iphone for business use



## anniemac (23 Feb 2010)

sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but I have my BB about 4+ years now and I am coming out of my contract mid June and being a gadget person feel I 'NEED' an Iphone. but my phone is mainly for work- emails, diary, instant messaging from office etc and as I have to have two phones one north one south buying a IPod touch means I would need a trolley case not a handbag. so my question is anybody here switched from BB to Iphone and if you had the offer again would you still change? I would be so thankful for any views!


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## Sconhome (23 Feb 2010)

BB all the way for business.


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## jhegarty (23 Feb 2010)

Blackberry, no contest for business.


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## jack2009 (23 Feb 2010)

i dont think the i pod is as good for business. Dont think you can type half as quick on a touch screen.

Also i pod is not as robust when it comes to being thrown around etc.


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## anniemac (23 Feb 2010)

thanks guys its what i thought [hoping]that I could be wrong ! new bb it is then!


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## Sconhome (23 Feb 2010)

And I would go with the 9000 series. Same mini usb port as older models, with a bigger keypad and screen for busy users.

The others are fiddly little things.


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## jhegarty (23 Feb 2010)

I have a Bold for a few months now without a complaint.

Touch screen would be nice though.


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## jack2009 (24 Feb 2010)

jhegarty said:


> Touch screen would be nice though.


 
I thought the same but having used one I dont think you can beat the full/nomal qwerty keyboard althought the touch screen is faster fhen you are on the net and messing with pics but that is not much help when you spend most of your time on email.


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## Boros (24 Feb 2010)

blackberry all the way for business, i phones are alot of fun but take alot of tinkering to get it to do what you want. Having said i have a bold and and finding that alot of developers are starting to make some decent apps for the blackberry now. 

I recommend 
amaze (free tom tom),
 poynt (find shops and cinema timing) , 
bloomberg mobile for market news and currency rates, 
facebook new version (as very similar to iphone version) 
Opera mini 5 beta (for web use sooo much better than the standard browser) and finally the updated blackberry messenger.


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## censuspro (24 Feb 2010)

Can you put all your music on a blackberry?


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## Boros (24 Feb 2010)

yea all in mp3 (as easy as putting music on a usb stick), no messing around with itunes as well (which i hate by the way) 
you can also put movies/ music videos on there with the HD screen.

i will say however the only problem with blackberry's is the camera, the old bold camera is rubbish, but i am told the new bold is better though. having said that the iphone camera is not much better


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## jack2009 (24 Feb 2010)

censuspro said:


> Can you put all your music on a blackberry?


 

Dont know about "all" but yes you can put a lot of music on it, sdmini disks are cheap enough but just double check that you dont get one that is too big for your phone (I think some devices cannot handle mini disks that hold too much memory)


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## Latrade (24 Feb 2010)

There's pros and cons to the iPhone as a business phone. As others have said it isn't really designed to be a business phone, more a personal phone. However, it depends on your business really. One advantage to the iPhone is the development of apps that _might_ prove useful depending on your work. 

But that's about it. 

It's also not a phone to be throwing about in the handbag without good insurance covering screen damage.

So if it's just emails, calls, some music and the usual, probably better with the BB.


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## jhegarty (24 Feb 2010)

censuspro said:


> Can you put all your music on a blackberry?



Yes, and video.


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## tiger (24 Feb 2010)

I've heard the battery life isn't as good on an iphone compared to a blackberry (no personal experience)


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## jack2009 (24 Feb 2010)

tiger said:


> I've heard the battery life isn't as good on an iphone compared to a blackberry (no personal experience)


 
I believe the bigger the screen the shorter the batter life.


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## mrblues (24 Feb 2010)

iphone battery life is very poor, in heavy usage its less than half a day. I bought one at serious cost out of contract abroad and although lovely to use the touch screen interface doesn't work for business - emails and messaging.
If you use Blackberry messenger then stick with a Blackberry as its all you can use. I've moved back to Nokia from a Bold 9000 and got an E72 recently, I love it and it outperforms everything i've used for ages - all about personal preference though


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## inchy (3 Mar 2010)

There's no question that the battery life is poor on an iPhone, but that is the only major draw back.

We have exchanger servers on each of our sites, and to use blackberries we would have had to purchase blackberry enterprise server for each site, $$, new server hardware $$, and would have had an additional application to support. This isn't required when using the iPhone for mails.

Anyone who says that you can't type as quickly on a touch screen may not have used one for long. 

I don't think you can say tha the iPhone isn't suitable for business.... for me, it is suitable, and preferable to using blackberries. Unfortunatley, the phone providers don't seem to agree, and there are no tarriffs available that are aimed at business users.

Data roaming is horribly expensive (which is a real drawback)

Vodafone are officially offering the iPhone from March 25th, but they are maintaing their cosy cartel with 02, and there's not much difference in pricing in the tarrifs.

Can you tether with a blackberry? (Use the blackberry as a modem to get internet access on your laptop)?


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## mrblues (3 Mar 2010)

inchy said:


> There's no question that the battery life is poor on an iPhone, but that is the only major draw back.


There are lots of reasons touchscreen just doesn't work in the business environment and the E72 i'm currently using requires nothing additional at the exchange side as its running a client that looks just like activesync. Any reasonable amount of mail use for me requires qwerty and I did try and persevere with iPhone as I loved the twitter and facebook ability.
The other massive drawback is that in the three months I used it I broke the screen twice, any kind of drop at all and it smashes. I know there are screen protectors but that completely takes away from touch experience of it so iPhone is a nice to have but not practical in heavy use environments.


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## censuspro (5 Mar 2010)

mrblues said:


> There are lots of reasons touchscreen just doesn't work in the business environment and the E72 i'm currently using requires nothing additional at the exchange side as its running a client that looks just like activesync. Any reasonable amount of mail use for me requires qwerty and I did try and persevere with iPhone as I loved the twitter and facebook ability.
> The other massive drawback is that in the three months I used it I broke the screen twice, any kind of drop at all and it smashes. I know there are screen protectors but that completely takes away from touch experience of it so iPhone is a nice to have but not practical in heavy use environments.


 
I have the old iphone 2G and the big drawback for me is that I can't always get access to the internet despite having a dataplan. If I want to use the internet I have to be connected to wifi.
The other thing is trying to send work e-mails, I can receive them but for some reason cant send them. I also dont have access to my inbox so it only gives me unread messages, once I get back to my laptop and read the emails on my laptop they're gone from my iphone. Is this the same with a blackberry?


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## AlbacoreA (5 Mar 2010)

Will be if you don't get it set up properly like your iphone. 

Theres lots of different BB and iPhones so it really depends on which one you are talking about. The iPhone 3GS has far better SQ for music than a BB and browsing the web is far better. The touch screen keyboard on the iPhone is suprisingly good, but I still prefer buttons like on my Nokia E71. The Apple has loads of 3rd party apps, but a lot of them do not synch or can't be backed up. Dunno about  BB never had one.


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## mrblues (5 Mar 2010)

censuspro said:


> I have the old iphone 2G and the big drawback for me is that I can't always get access to the internet despite having a dataplan. If I want to use the internet I have to be connected to wifi.
> The other thing is trying to send work e-mails, I can receive them but for some reason cant send them. I also dont have access to my inbox so it only gives me unread messages, once I get back to my laptop and read the emails on my laptop they're gone from my iphone. Is this the same with a blackberry?



Is the iPhone on the original network? I remember having an issue with a Vodafone sim on my first one as it was originally on O2. The email part is a configuration issue by the sounds of it, this will be the same no matter what the device is but Blackberry uses a slightly different way of connecting to the mail server so may get over the issue in its own setup.


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## Sconhome (6 Mar 2010)

censuspro said:


> once I get back to my laptop and read the emails on my laptop they're gone from my iphone. Is this the same with a blackberry?




No you can set up your BB to reconcile your email accounts. So when you read a mail on the BB it shows are read on your Outlook, webmail etc and vice versa. 

You can delete a mail on the BB and have the option of deleting it off the web server wirelessly from the handset.


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## AlbacoreA (6 Mar 2010)

I think all phones/email accounts can do that if set up properly, including the iPhone.


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## sustanon (6 Mar 2010)

I use the Motorola Droid (Milestone in Europe)for business and daily use in the US, it's comparable to the iphone, but it also has a full real keyboard and touch keyboard. runs android, has apps, great for e-mail, excellent music, video, Googls Maps GPS (very cool with satellite imagery), fast WiFi, replaceable battery, 5M Camera, DVD quality Video posts straight to Youtube etc. etc. 

I use a Blackberry in Europe as it has a SIM card. my Droid is CDMA and has no SIM. Blackberry and iPhone are not your only two choices. Before the droid, I had a BB world edition, great little phone, but not missing it now.

My Cousin is an IT manager, and recently bought 20 Droids/Milestones for business use. He was an iPhone fan until he got his hands on my droid


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## Paddy199 (8 Mar 2010)

Sunday Business Post ran an article on all smart phones on 7 March 2010. See attached link
[broken link removed]

Iphones now have an application to work with email applications such as Outlook.


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## censuspro (8 Mar 2010)

mrblues said:


> Is the iPhone on the original network? I remember having an issue with a Vodafone sim on my first one as it was originally on O2. The email part is a configuration issue by the sounds of it, this will be the same no matter what the device is but Blackberry uses a slightly different way of connecting to the mail server so may get over the issue in its own setup.


 
It's on Meteor. Should I contact the hosting provider to get it configured properly?


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## mrblues (8 Mar 2010)

censuspro said:


> It's on Meteor. Should I contact the hosting provider to get it configured properly?



Was it a network locked device originally? I'd restore the device completely and make sure the first sim that you put in is the Meteor one - that should make the data.meteor.ie the apn and use it as default when the device is out of wifi.
Be careful if it was originally locked as you will have to run the unlock program again prior to putting the Meteor sim in for the first time.


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## headache (11 Mar 2010)

Battery life on iphone is pretty awful.  I'm on the road all day and never bothered with an incar charger for my little tocco.  I bought the tocco for its 5MP camera.  The iphone camera is apalling by comparison.  Touch screen is charming, texting is responsive.  However, in order to maintain battery life I have turned off 3G, WiFi, Fetch, Email and location services.  I love Maps but until I get a car charger, I have to turn it on, get my position and directions and turn off Location Services again to save battery.
Love the iphone, just wish I could actually use all its facilities!


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