The iPhone sensation although less news-hyped this year then last, still begs the question to PDA wanters everywhere. iPhone or Blackberry Curve? While many of you have made your solid choice and stand on your side of the line ready to defend any misnomers headed towards your precious PDA’s way, there are still a huge amount of people out there that simply want to know the differences between the two devices and not only what features they offer, they want to know how it will benefit their life.

While we could get into the actual specifications that would bore your average Mensa member, we wanted to take a more realistic approach and actually write a review of how the phone works and feels in everyday life. We will leave the overly tech-y stuff to places like www.howardforums.com or your basic www.cnet.com review.

We want to discuss not what makes it tick, but Why?

So lets get into it and try to decipher these overly marketed devices for what they really are.
The very first thing to discuss is probably looks/form factor. The iPhone is a keyless touch screen wonder that looks like a piece of art from the Bang & Olufsen museum rather then a cell phone. Its all glass front and chrome sides exude luxury and “look at me” status. The Blackberry Curve screams “Wow! Look at me, I’m micro small too and I feature a tiny usable keyboard that has a multitude of function keys designed for just about any thumb jockey to ride into the sunset.” With its Pearlescent trackball, the Curve reminds one of a fully functional arcade game like Defender ready to take on the world and accomplish any task. The iPhone in the other hand uses the entire screen as an input device. Its beautiful clear glass screen reminds oneself of the sapphire crystal of a fine Swiss watch.

Both units come with high-resolution screens in full color and can be easily viewed in dark rooms or direct sunlight. Speaker phones are present on both and quite useful. Both have Bluetooth capabilities, WiFi (Curve 8320 T-Mobile) and actual GPS chip built right into the unit (Curve 8310). The iPhone offers WiFi and uses 3-point triangulation via the AT&T cell sites to ballpark your current location. The AT&T Curves GPS will pinpoint your location to a cars length away. The iPhone uses a “digital” touch screen keypad to dial numbers while dialing from the Blackberry is accomplished via the keyboard through direct keyboard presses.

So what is it really that sets these two items apart albeit the obvious branding “camps” and followers? Well, for one thing the iPhone has a plethora of built in features “widgets” that could make a data junkies info box overload with continuous information. SMS messaging that resembles a chat room, stocks, weather, maps, iTunes, You Tube, web browser, note taker, calendar, camera, and photo gallery. The curve offers maps, calendar, notes, media player, blackberry messenger, etc., and can add many 3rd party applications such as jivetalk www.beejive.com that will act as instant messenger connections to services such as AOL, MSN, YAHOO, ICQ, etc.

Both units offer the ability to get your email for you so that you can read, reply or just ignore (usually mother-in-law pecking) your emails. Here is where the big difference lies:

The iPhone while awesome in all of it’s other “widgetry” functions, does not compare to the blackberry as far as email accessibility and functionality. Lets us explain. There are two types of email delivery functions currently available to PDA’s. The first is called push email and the second is pull email. The basic difference between the two is that with the push email device (Blackberry) the phone just sits there and “waits” for the mail to be sent to its in box and then beeps to notify the user a mail has arrived. With pull email (iPhone) the phone has to, at predetermined intervals, actually go online and check the server for any emails that are new. Once it sees new emails, it then has to download the emails one by one and then notifies the user with a beep that new emails have arrived.

You ask okay, what’s the big deal then? For one, the Blackberry email is pretty much instantly on your device when someone sends an email to you. Although there can be network delays of a few minutes sometimes, its pretty much dead on instantly received. The iPhone on the other hand (depending upon your settings) might be an hour before actually letting you know a new mail has arrived. The minimum interval currently available to iPhone mail checking is every 15 minutes. The reason that Apple does this is because its very battery intensive to have the phone constantly checking the server to see if new mail has arrived. The only current exception to this is if you have a Yahoo.com account. Yahoo mail is actually pushed to the iPhone and doesn’t require the phone “checking” the server every so often.

The basic drawback to the pull type is that if you are trying to access many different email accounts such as business, AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, etc., on your iPhone its gonna be over tasked trying to constantly check each email account looking for new mail. From my personal experience with 3 different corporate email accounts (and 9 different email addresses) and multiple personal email accounts Yahoo, Mac and AOL receiving hundreds of emails everyday, my iPhone was always checking mail and killing the battery.

Since the iPhone is currently only “Edge” technology and not “3G”, as it’s checking your email simultaneously as a call is coming in, it sometimes doesn’t ring and goes straight to voice mail, thereby, showing as a missed call. This can be very frustrating if you live off of your cell phone as a primary communications device. It can also be equally frustrating to constantly look at a rapidly descending battery bar as if it were the gas gauge on a Hummer climbing a steep mountain.

The Blackberry on the other hand with its proprietary push technology has neither of these problems and will actually sit idle conserving battery power by sipping along like a long lasting Icee drink.

Phone call quality for both phones is excellent with my personal edge going to the iPhone for earphone and microphone quality. It just seems to have a really clear sound to it for both the caller and the callee. It reminds me of the quality of the Bang & Olufsen Serene motorized folding phone from 2006 with its land line crystal clear home sounding clarity.

So what is the conclusion to the question about which phone is better? Well, if you have 1 or 2 email accounts, don’t get a lot of emails, and use your phone to talk more than data, then the iPhone is for you. If you are a data hungry email addict then I would suggest the Blackberry with all of its rock solid build quality and email functionality.

In some cases such as my personal experience, I opted for…….BOTH!!! Yes folks, I couldn’t live without the exceptional clarity and sheer beauty and widgetry of the iPhone. That shimmering piece of all glass, chrome and brushed metal calling to me like a siren of the sea. Neither could I live without the unwavering stability of having my hundreds of annoying emails perfectly delivered to my Blackberry Curve and lining up like little soldiers waiting to be highlighted and deleted in mass annihilation. Since I don’t actually have a land line voice phone other than a dedicated fax line, it was an easy rationale for me to have both. The iPhone for voice and SMS messages and all of its cool info seeking buttons along with a built in iPod and the Blackberry for all of my emails and pinpoint 9 foot accuracy of GPS mapping and directions.

For the iPhone visit www.apple.com or www.attws.com
For the Blackberry www.blackberry.com

Randy