iPhone vs. Blackberry Storm: You never get a second chance to make a first impression
My completely unsolicited (and unpaid) thoughts on the Apple iPhone and the Blackberry Storm.
I remember walking into the Apple store in the Westchester Mall shortly after the iPhone was introduced. I wasn’t looking to buy a new cell phone—I wasn’t in the market at all—but I wanted to see what all the hype was about. Why were people getting this jazzed up over a cell phone, and a $600 cell phone at that? Surely it wasn’t that great, or so I told myself. But the simple truth was after playing with an iPhone for half an hour, I new that this device redefine what a cell phone was. It was revolutionary.
I didn’t buy an iPhone at the time primarily because I didn’t want to change carriers from Verizon to AT&T. Not that Verizon is great, but I haven’t had any problems and their cellular coverage is good. But I watched the market evolve, waiting for a device that would compete with the iPhone, but on Verizon’s network. Naturally, I was very eager to see if the Blackberry Storm was that kind of device. On paper, it looked like a contender—big, bright touchscreen, phone, cool apps and Blackberry’s email pedigree and development experience. I was eager to get my hands on one and see if it made a great first impression, and if it could truly compete with the iPhone.
Over the past week, I read what I could about the new device, and noted that the review were mixed at best. After getting my hands on a Storm today, I walked away thoroughly inimpressed. Professional pundits must be circumspect in what they write in order to avoid the wrath of editors, publishers, advertisers and readers. I don’t have any of those constituents, so I can be blunt: the iPhone kicks the Storms ass in no uncertain terms. After playing with a Storm for a solid half-hour at a local Verizon store (oh, were you waiting to try this out too?), I handed it to the next guy in line and wished him good luck. Then I went to an Apple store and played with the iPhone for over an hour, enjoying every minute.
The most immediate difference in the devices is the user interface. Where the iPhone shines is with it’s polished, intuitive presentation. Like the iPod, the iPhone has a minimal learning curve; all the features and functions, including setup, are easy to access and use. The Storm, on the other hand seemed clunky and often counter-intuitive. Much has been made of the Storm’s “revolutionary” SureTouch screen that requires a firm physical press on the screen to type or click icons. Compared to the iPhones screen, SureTouch was slower and less accurate. Then there’s they keyboard layout - in landscape mode, the storm has a full QWERTY keyboard (but loses much of the display real estate), but in portrait mode it has an odd layout with two letters on each key. WTF? This is just hard to use. Huge differences separate the two devices in terms of legibility: all the iPhones icons are easily legible, and text is crisp and clear. Not so on the Storm where text looked worse than old ASCII monitors. I’ll also mention that the Storm’s navigation was often confusing and lead to dead ends, with the Blackberry key being the only way out. Commands were also slow to execute, and on one occasion the device “hung” while I was trying to use the browser. No good. By comparison, the iPhone’s navigation was very easy to understand and use, even on more complex setup tasks. I’ll confess to being a Mac OS fan, and this struck me as much the same as the difference between OS X and, say, Windows 98.
Other reasons I preferred the iPhone? Built-in Wi-Fi!!! Why would I want to burn cellular minutes syncing my calendar or reading email, when I can do these functions on Wi-Fi at home and work? Then there’s iTunes. No other similar software has met with such widespread adoption, and for good reason—it works. Oh, and I did I mention that the iPhone works with both my Vista Ultimate laptop and OS X iMac?
The choice is clear. Now I just need Apple to discount the iPhone next Friday as part of their traditional “black friday” sales and I’ll be buying one for my wife and one for myself, even if it means changing carriers, there are enough benefits to justify switching.