BI Professional

“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” – Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi

My six week experimentation with Android is over. I am back on the Blackberry network. My aging Blackberry finally gave up the ghost in December. While I was seduced by the siren call of the iPhone, my carrier provided such a steep discount on the Samsung Galaxy S2 that it made the iPhone ridiculously expensive in comparison (my choice was free or $200+). So I made the switch to Android.

I should tell you that I was warned. A friend of mine who had both a Blackberry and an Android phone described the Blackberry as a communication device and the Android as a toy. I soon understood what he meant. For while the Android had a great screen, wonderful web surfing ability and more apps than you could possibly imagine, I did not like typing on it. At all. Maybe it was because I was a Blackberry user for 3 years. Maybe it’s because I like to use proper punctuation. Whatever the case, I couldn’t stand it.

I had tried typing on the iPhone of a friend. It was surprisingly easy. But in my test, I hadn’t tried to punctuate, type numbers or special symbols, write a full email, or fix a typo. So it seemed easier than it really was. The split of special characters into 3 screens was especially annoying, as was trying to move the cursor around with your finger. A few weeks into my life as an Android user, I quickly found myself back on my PC for all of my day-to-day email functions.

So like most people who don’t like something, I used it less and less. And then one day I missed a very important call. That was the last straw and I decided I had to switch back. Switching was easy thanks to Kijiji, where I quickly found a Blackberry user who wanted to switch to Android. We did a fair swap of my used Samsung Galaxy S2 for his used Blackberry Bold 9900. I couldn’t be happier about it!

Why I love my Blackberry:

• The keyboard.  The Android (and iPhone) keyboard were not adequate for my needs.  The shift, alt, and symbol keys on the Blackberry are like gold to me.
• The cursor control – what used to be that little white ball on my old Blackberry.  I found that I really had no adequate cursor control on the Android phone.  It was usually easier to erase everything I had written than to try to pinpoint my error with my finger on the screen.
• The red light that tells you there is a new message.  I want to know at a glance.
• Push email.  I like getting my email when it is sent, not when my phone gets around to checking it.
• The scheduled shutdown – I can’t believe other phones don’t have this as a standard feature!  I never want to hear from my phone after I’m in bed.  I have young kids who keep me up at night – I don’t need my phone to join the parade!  I attempted to have the same effect on Android with Flight mode, but then you have to remember to set it every day.

Blackberry apps certainly do not have the same diversity as the Android or iPhone apps.  But then most of the Android apps I saw were either games or micro-tasks, neither of which were generally relevant to my life.  So I can’t say that I’ll miss them.

Now if RIM could just get that pinch zoom to work on Blackberry…  That would be something!

Sincerely,

A Newly Loyal Blackberry User

P.S.  I got pinch zoom working too!