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# iPhone vs. BlackBerry: Which Wins?

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## Video: iPhone vs. BlackBerry: Which Wins?

[Watch (HLS stream): iPhone vs. BlackBerry: Which Wins?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/nwik9ZOn.m3u8) (4:28)

![iPhone vs. BlackBerry: Which Wins?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/nwik9ZOn/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2008-08-27. Thinking of ditching your Blackberry for the new iPhone?  Tech Reporter Josh Quittner has the pros and cons of using the new Apple gadget as a business tool_


---

Jul 27, 2023 12:59 PM UTC

---

## More From This Series

[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

[Apple's iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C: What You Should Know](/video/xWVkGCv3/)

### Apple's iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C: What You Should Know

[New BlackBerry Phones: 10 Things You Should Know](/video/cKMpLezl/)

### New BlackBerry Phones: 10 Things You Should Know

[Family Tech: Palm Pre vs. iPhone](/video/ZYUSIKiI/)

### Family Tech: Palm Pre vs. iPhone

---


## Transcript

A lot's been written lately about the new iPhone about what a revolutionary new device it is, a mobile computer for the masses. I've been using one for the past couple of weeks as a business user because that's a market that Apple's identified, and I wanna see really how it stacks up against my favorite old Blackberry, which I've used now for the better part for a year- and- a- half. Here's what I've found out. The iPhone was really amazingly easy to get up and running. The I. T. guys back at the time they had to deal with the hard stuff of course. But on my end, all I have to do is go to set- up and then mail, and then add a new account.

You see here where it says Microsoft exchange, you just hit that button and enter your name and password and you're good to go. What cool thing about the iPhone is, it readily connects to your Wi- Fi network. So, I could all the syncing of e- mail, contacts and calendar items that way. I was actually able to start working within minutes. By comparison, the Blackberry, which doesn't do Wi- Fi, takes forever to synchronize. The process on the Blackberry is painfully slow and takes many hours. For set- up then, the iPhone was the clear winner. Another thing I love about the iPhone is how it handles attachments, file formats like Word documents, and PDFs are gonna show up on the iPhone exactly the way the author intended for you to see it.

By comparison, the Blackberry's presentation is bland and ugly and attachments take too long to download. The iPhone doesn't do cut and paste, and to tell you the truth while I thought I would miss it, I don't. What I do miss however, is the ability to search thru e- mail. You just can't do it on an iPhone, there's no search blank that allows you to look for messages back in your archives. By comparison, and if I want to search for something, that's very easy to do on a-- on a Blackberry and I can search thru them as easily as I can use Google that's a big advantage that the Blackberry has over the iPhone.

Another thing that the power user of e- mail, what really appreciate with the Blackberry is that your e- mail messages not only show up in real time, the device last two days like that without a recharge. The iPhone however, has some real power problems, if you keep all the new functionalities activated and set it to continually grab e- mail throughout the day, the battery will last about a half a day. That's just not acceptable. For e- mail and synchronization the advantage definitely goes to the Blackberry. The iPhone, of course, elegantly tries to solve the whole user input problem by getting rid of a buttons- based keyboard and instead using a clever touch screen.

The Blackberry still relies on a track ball, it's the way they do just about everything. Trackballs, as Apple weren't with its powerbook laptops many years ago are prone to malfunction. They get dirty. They break down and I'm just about ready to trade in this one for the same reason, I hate trackballs. Likewise, my iPhone holds 16 gigabytes of memory which is more than enough room for my music collection, my favorite movie, The Big Lebowski, oh, yeah and all of my work documents. So, on the hardware side too, I'm gonna say advantage iPhone but with a big asterisk. The asterisk is this, while some people love typing on the iPhone soft screen, others hate it.

I don't exactly hate it, but I do find it far harder to use than the Blackberry keyboard. I've notice that it in the end composing and typing messages definitely takes way more time for me anyway on the iPhone than on the Blackberry. Apple told me that their philosophy is one phone for all people, a dad, a worker, a kid should all be able to use their iPhone. It's a great idea. I just don't really think we're there yet. The iPhone is a tremendous amount of fun that's only gonna get better. So, I guess what I'm really gonna have to do is learn how to give up e- mail on the iPhone until it gets better.

Luckily, there's a lot of other really cool stuff you can do.

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