I’m an iPhone AND I’m a Blackberry
Recently, I was out with a friend, who whipped out an iPhone to map our next destination. Considering the pervasiveness of the iPhone in Silicon Valley, nothing unusual there. However, 30 minutes later the same person pulled out a Blackberry to check his work e-mail. Wait, What!? I was thinking that my friend was the ultimate geek.
Evidently, my friend is not so alone on his matter. Om Malik in his review of the Blackberry Storm mentioned that he also carries both a Blackberry and an iPhone: “The reason I carry both an iPhone and a BlackBerry 8800 is because I use the first one for browsing and talking, while the other is for everything that involves text: Google Talk, Twitter, Facebook messages and of course, staying on top of a steady torrent of daily email.”
For personal computers, Apple with its “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” ads has done a great job in creating a brand that distinguishes work from play. But in the mobile phone world, most people expect that people will only carry one mobile phone and that a single device should be able to bridge this gap.
I sampled The Storm and the GPhone to see if they could satisfy my voice, Internet and e-mail needs in one device. The keyboard of the GPhone was not very good and it did not support my Microsoft-based work e-mail. As for the Storm, I agree with Walt Mossberg who said “neither I, nor any of the several BlackBerry addicts I asked to try it out, considered typing on the Storm’s keyboard to be very similar to using the keyboard of a traditional full-sized BlackBerry.” In other words, the Storm’s virtual keyboard is not really a substitute for a real keyboard.
In the future, perhaps one of these companies will make a phone that accommodates both work and play. Over the weekend, I bought an iPhone, which is more like having a notebook in my pocket. But when I am out of the office, e-mail on my mobile device is my primary means of communication. Is the iPhone keyboard good enough for me power through the over 150 non-spam e-mails that I get per day? Right now, I am contemplating what I thought was a unthinkable: supplemenitng the iPhone with an older Blackberry with a data-only plan. So it turns out that I may be an iPhone, Blackberry and … a geek