Some of you might have heard it from me but I’m back in the mobile business. As such got new toys to play with ! Over the last 6 months I used as a personal phone an iPhone then and HTC Android G1 (ADP1) and finally a Blackberry Bold and I wanted to share with you my views on those devices.
Just to get an understanding on what’s important for me : I have 4 main email accounts all on Google Apps and I extensively use the specific GMail features such as Archiving and only keep on my inbox what needs to be processed. I never erase emails from the server and always deletes them from my mail clients inbox as they are being processed.
All my contacts and calendar are being pushed to my main GMail account and I expect this to be the center of my PIM Life.
I’m totally not into the music things and rarely store content on my phone, but I’m totally into IM (especially Gtalk) and using my mobile as a way of continuing the services I use on my desktop environment. As such here are my views on those 3 devices
iPhone Pros:
- Amazing app store – totally game changing in the mobile world
- Multitouch is perfect for maps and web navigation
- Amazing games
- Support for word and pdf files preview
iPhone Cons:
- No Push email except with mobile Me
- Can’t type on the soft keyboard – useless…
- no bg process (coming in 3.0) and no IM … totally unacceptable to have to wait 2 years for this to come
- Camera is a joke (totally useless…)
Conclusion : can’t use iPhone as a productivity tool – an iPod Touch would probably better
Android g1 Pros:
- Splendid Gmail support (push)
- Applications are really nice and android market has a lot of potential
- Lots of apps can run simultaneously without harming the device performances
- the keyboard is amazing
- Has a compass, the streetview demo rocks thanks to that
- Decent 2D/3D performances (not too many games here though)
- Touchscreen & Trackball support
Android g1 Cons:
- Only one gmail account supported – to get the others you need download an email client that has limited GMail support and polls the network killing your battery
- no multitouch support
- What’s with the USB headset plug !? HTC get real ! Use jack !
- The plastics doesn’t seem really solid, seeing baby open/close the keyboard always tends to stress me
- No native support for neither office files nor PDF files
- my ADP1 is banned from accessing most marketplace applications – Google guys find a solution ! can’t ban developers from getting their own apps !!!
Conclusion : almost there ! A few more releases and a phone made with better materials would make my day !
Blackberry Bold Pros :
- The push email works flawlessly in multiple accounts – the BB backend server is doing a fantastic job
- Keyboard is fine (though smaller than G1′s)
- Device design is amazing – it really feels good when holding it
- GMail and Google Sync support works flawlessly
- Plenty of apps polling the network in parallel don’t kill the device performance and life-span
- Out of the box support for all office files ( and ppt files look great on this)
Blackberry Bold Cons :
- No touchscreen (feels weird)
- Third party applications look really old and badly designed – not up to the level of iPhone and Android
- Keyboard lock process is complicated and unnatural if you’re not using the holster – which thickens considerably the already thick device
Conclusion : Probably the best productivity tool yet – lets me spend the week end without turning on the laptop and yet keeping the needed responsiveness. Would have loved touchscreen though and some better third party apps…
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