June 6th, 2007
What would it take for you to switch from BlackBerry to iPhone?
Robb Dunewood, who is a recognized industry thought leader in the BlackBerry space, offers his thoughts on what it would take to get him to switch from a BlackBerry to an iPhone.
On his RIMarkable blog, Robb says he’d go there if these three conditions were achievable:
An incredibly responsive touch screen — I recently had the opportunity to toy around with a mobile device that only has a touch screen for input and I have to say, that after about 5 minutes of getting used to the interface, it really wasn’t all that bad. I was able to thumb out messages almost as effectively as I can on my BlackBerry 7130e. It’s kind of strange typing without the tactile feel of buttons, but so long as the screen is responsive, is absolutely something I could get used to.
Push email, contacts, and calendar — I started to say a Windows Mobile 6-like BlackBerry Virtual Machine, however, email is the killer BlackBerry app for me and as long as I can get it, send, it, and keep my calendar and contacts up to date like I can on my BlackBerry, I think that I would be OK.
The ability to switch back — There is an incredible amount of hype surrounding the iPhone and, although I am probably getting caught up in much of it, don’t see any harm in giving the iPhone an shot so long as I can switch back if it doesn’t work for me.
Robb then ‘fesses up and says he will probably get an iPhone in addition to his BlackBerry.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
