Apple iPhone 3G vs BlackBerry 3G

I have been using a BlackBerry 8707g for a couple of years now, and have really liked it, previously I was using a O2 XDA 2 which I also liked.

A couple people at work were moving to iPhones so I was playing with one trying to get it all setup (Another Post Coming) and as I played, there were a couple things that the iPhone did that my BlackBerry struggled with. These really jumped out at me being someone who mainly uses my BlackBerry to read emails. Here's what I found.

1. I could actually read emails as they were formatted, including html emails, this was fantastic, reading emails zooming in if needed with top text quality. The BB really is good at reading plain emails, but anything special, formatted it struggles.

2. I get a lot of emails from our Jira system, which is a web based system. One thing I've never been able to do on the BB is to read the jira Issues on the web, the BB just doesn't render web pages well enough. But on the iPhone it was flawless, displays the web pages perfectly, zoomed out, then you can zoom in and move around as you need, I was impressed.

3. I then thought thats nice, I wonder how other webpages look, and they prety much all look great, shame there is no flash support, but all in all it was a great experience.

4. Then opened a PDF & PPT attachments and wow, they were almost perfect, the PDF's are great, this is a real pain on the BB, you get a thumbnail, then need to say, more, more, more until you get the whole thing.

I was about to get a new BB, but figured it would be the same old stuff, and this iPhone was truly taking my email / web browsing mobile. The keyboard is no where near as good, but I read a lot and don't reply to a lot from my phone.

So long story short, I went for an iPhone, this is my first ever Apple purchase, I'm not into music so I missed the iPod craze, and am a Windows / Dell man.

The iPhone has beaten the BlackBerry at it's own game, email. BlackBerry is set to become the next Palm unless they can address these issues.

They have done a great job, there are some things missing, simple stuff that they will fix with future software updates, but a very good device.

Here is a list of pro's and cons of my new iPhone, all of the cons can be fixed with software updates.

iPhone Pros

• Better render of emails, formatting and html emails.
• Better rendering of webpages
• Better screen, bright, large and crisp
• Has 16gig of memory, my BB doesn't take a memory card although new ones do.
• Has a camera, my BB doesn't once again new ones do.
• Good online access to additional programs etc.

iPhone Cons

• Couldn't work out how to order email by sender or search emails
• Emails show that you have replied but don't allow you to link to the reply
• Emails marked as Urgent aren't highlighted
• Can't copy and paste
• Notes don't sync with exchange