blackberry

[KDroidX]

So with all the iphone hate, where does the blackberry fit in? In my oppinion its the worst smart phone around. I know its popular because of business people but come on.. its the biggest competetor for android and the worst smart phone.

 

[sontaikle]

I've tried numerous blackberries and I find them all to be horrible. The UI stinks (hopefully OS 6.0 is better) and I find the keys and trackball annoying to use.

My best friend is in love with them though, so I guess they work for some folks.

 

[Tre Lawrence]

I disagree.

If I did have an Android device, I'd probably, maybe stick with BB. Has a lot to be desired in the frills department, but mostly very reliable devices, IMHO.

 

[mrspeedmaster]

So with all the iphone hate, where does the blackberry fit in? In my oppinion its the worst smart phone around. I know its popular because of business people but come on.. its the biggest competetor for android and the worst smart phone.

In many ways, BB is smarter than Android for enterprise stuff. Remote wipes, remote management, vpn connectivity.. Isn't getting your job done and connecting w/ clients and vendors something a smartphone should be concentrating on? Timely notifications of messages via PUSH is very important for many,many people.

 

[Tre Lawrence]

In many ways, BB is smarter than Android for enterprise stuff. Remote wipes, remote management, vpn connectivity.. Isn't getting your job done and connecting w/ clients and vendors something a smartphone should be concentrating on? Timely notifications of messages via PUSH is very important for many,many people.

"Smarter" for a specific niche, yes. BlackBerry means business, literally.

I think they made a well-timed gamble to reach out to regular consumers, but failed to focus on development of the core platform in the medium run.

 

[Andy in NY]

Blackberrys are great for anyone who is business oriented and needs reliable email 24/7. when i first crossed over to the smartphone world it was to bb largely for the quality of the phones themselves. After a slew of problems with LG phones, I never looked back from the bb side.

As a new Moto Droid user, I like the phone. But I HATE the email. Good thing it's not top priority for me.

Blackberry has it's own niche in the market, and my opinion is it will continue to do well with business users.

 

[takeshi]

So with all the iphone hate, where does the blackberry fit in?

Yeesh. Do we really need another thread to rile up the fanboys? Can't anyone be happy with what they have without pissing on other people's choices?

Every device has a niche and the BB is no different. I'd certainly rather support BB's than Android devices in a corporate environment. As just one example, IT policies allow admins to easily lock down devices to prevent users from causing trouble. We don't use IT policies here but even so we have 1 part time BB admin and we have hundreds of units deployed. We'd definitely have far more problems and would need much more support staff if we had Android devices deployed out there.

BB's with BES also integrate extremely well with Exchange. Ask any Android user about how well their tasks and notes are wirelessly syncing with their Exchange server...

While these features also require BES, every BB has built-in device management out of the box as well as intranet access.

I don't miss my BB's but I never had problems with them and they were all extremely reliable. The BB was nowhere near as versatile as Android and the browser was terrible. The app selection on the BB is also very poor. The BB did have much better centralized management of all alerts (audio, vibrate and LED) but Android's profiles app are a reasonably close attempt and add some functionality that the BB didn't have (BT, WiFi, screen management). I also have yet to see an Android device with a truly good keyboard but it's not difficult to find a BB with one if you want it.

Every option has its pros and cons. Just because one is mostly cons for you specifically doesn't mean that it's the same for everyone.

 

[Tre Lawrence]

Stumbled on this article:

RIM BlackBerry 6 OS:10 Reasons Why Apple Needs to Worry About It - Mobile and Wireless from eWeek

Now, a lot of it seems to be conjecture and what-ifs...