Dave Shen

People often ask me which is a better smartphone… iPhone or BlackBerry?  Although they both are similar in functionality and features (as evidenced by the most recent launch of BlackBerry AppWorld) And I always try to summarize this way:

- If you do a lot messaging (e.g. text messaging, instant messaging, email), you should lean toward the BlackBerry
- If you do a lot surfing the web on the mobile device, play games, listen to music, and watch movies, you should lean toward the iPhone

BlackBerry wins in the messaging categories because people prefer to have a tactile keyboard to do rapid typing — you simply can’t do that on either the BlackBerry Storm or iPhone, which uses a virtual keyboard.  The end-to-end rich media experience on the iPhone is unparalleled with iTunes and the Safari web browser is virtually identical to the desktop version.

So what happens when you must have a device that supports both great messaging capabilities and a rich web browsing and rich media experience?  I carry both.   It’s copout but I seriously cannot live one without the other.  There are a couple of new devices coming out in the next few months that I will definitely be looking out for: the Palm Pre and the Nokia N97.