First, why leave the iPhone?
My reasons were varied. I actually really liked the iPhone. The keyboard was easy to use for me (I know this isn’t always the case) but to me it seemed intuitive. Ease of use and stuff like that, the iPhone had it all. It set itself up for disappointment though, because it did so well, it made me want features out of it that it was never intended for. It became a full featured computer to me, I wanted to be able to leave my laptop at home and just work out of the iPhone while traveling. All I would have needed was a Bluetooth keyboard (and not one that’s been preordering for the last 8 months) and I could have rocked. Also, I was on a gen 1 phone, and it had grown painfully slow after two years. I’m not used to my phone needing a fresh install to be running smoothly, nor can I flush it out regularly and keep going, my life is on that sucka. Lastly, it started giving me delays in receiving messages and voicemails and the like, which AT&T blamed on apple (after several resyncings and updating network codes blah blah blah) and Apple of coursed blamed AT&T. The woes of an unsanctioned marriage I guess.

And the BlackBerry?
Well let me be candid… I hate the freaking wheel. After using screen gestures, the wheel feels like I’m stepping back in time. But I decided I’d use my iPhone like a touch (err, minicomputer) and just sit it by my bed or on the couch and cruise internet over wifi, listen to my music and podcasts with it, pretty much just turn it into an iTouch, because if you remove the phone features, I’m still quite happy with it. But the BlackBerry has keyboards! w00t! Beyond that, they are work horses, and so for an IM / Email / Internet / Phone machine, this will work great.

How’s my experience been so far?
I really hate the wheel. It just seems so stupid to me. And then trying to click with the wheel if I have a finger bigger than a 7 year old, I’m button mashing. The iPhone keyboard made me feel like it knew what I was going for and would give me credit, the bb just gets frustrated with me as I get frustrated with it.

BlackBerry email for a Gmail power user is an absolute failure. If you can’t figure out Gmail and everything is in a huge pile in your inbox, the BlackBerry email works fine. If you’ve discovered labels and filters, you end up getting half your messages. BlackBerry’s solution is to get the Google app. Fine, but it’s not nearly as well integrated as the native email app (obviously) and for this, I blame BlackBerry. People say the iPhone used a web based email yada yada, which is bologna. It’s straight IMAP just like BlackBerry and if bb can’t figure out how to let me choose the home folder I want (all mail) I want to live out of, they should put a freaking developer on that 6 lines of code and let me choose my dang folder. Also the app store…. I didn’t know how good I had it. But I never paid for an app anyway, I just used free ones and as such never really felt like I ran into an amazing app (tower defense excluded), just the shopping experience was so much more intuitive. The problem lies in the fact that BB should be sponsoring the app store, just as Apple does theirs. Could you imagine if AT&T had to do the app store? Yeah, we got a Sprint app store here. Ugh.

The other side of the coin is for 900 Minutes, 1000 text messages and the data plan my bill was 90-100 dollars and if I used up my minutes (happens sometimes) it would shoot to 150-200 that month. Moving to Sprint I got a family plan, with 1500 minutes and unlimited data and messaging (remember, I can call ANY mobile phone and its seen as mobile to mobile, regardless of carrier) and since no one calls land lines anyway, I’m comfortable putting 3 phones (got 2 more buddies to go in with me) on this for 149 a month. Split 3 ways, I’m paying $50 bones. That’s what put me over the top. I had to get something that was reasonable price wise. And $100-150 for just me, for just 900 minutes, and text message plans that were built to get me over the limit, I was gone.

So, I am gone, and coverage was never even an issue, I have great coverage out here. So Apple, I’ve forsaken you due to your friends. Guilty by association – I hope you both get your act together.

I’m off to play with my wheel like a 2 year old, but I’ll have a phone that works.

Ahhh freak, no visual voicemail. Yeah, that too. Who dials 1 for their VM and listens to them all. Breathe slowly now, I can get through this…