TheBoyEllis Blog

Is the answer out there? Probably not.

Like a jockey tending a football goal, this blog’s web presence is fairly pathetic. Therefore, anyone having arrived here looking for a definitive answer to the question above must have literally trawled through the entire internet. Well, welcome to my take and congratulations on putting up with what must be one of the web’s all time most frustrating searches; every page hit inevitably turns into an entirely inconclusive slanging match between iPhone and Blackberry users. I can’t guarantee this will satisfy you any further, but I’ll try.

I have been in the (perhaps) fortunate position of having run both an iPhone 3G and a Blackberry Bold for the last few months. The latter is used exclusively for my day job, the former an exuberant take on the personal mobile. I say exuberant, as no one on this planet needs an iPhone. I don’t. I am, however, an unashamed member of the brainwashed majority Apple’s marketing leviathan has successfully captured and, via it’s frustratingly alluring e-shot and TV campaign, continued to kick seven bells out of.

So which one is better? Which one should you go out today and buy? Sorry, I’m not sure.

Let’s start with the all important function. Telephony. When all is said and done, these things are phones. They both allow you to make and receive calls and text messages. Sound quality on both is acceptable (why this is ever discussed, I’ll never know – I’ve never come across a phone I can’t hear the other person on and I certainly don’t expect to hear them in DTS Master-encoded 7.1 surround sound). They both store a practically limitless number of contacts with all the information you’ll ever need attached to them. The Blackberry even allows you to store their pager number – do they still exist?

Next: email. Now, any Blackberry aficionado will fall over themselves to tell you how it is the best platform in the universe for mobile email. It’s good, I’ll give them that. But we’re talking emails, here. Strings of text we send people. It’s not hard to get right. The iPhone is a good match for the Blackberry. Both offer integration with Exchange server and both will happily set themselves up with your Gmail or the majority of the other web-based email services. I honestly could use either device for email. Some may favour the Blackberry’s tactile ‘real’ keyboard, but the iPhone’s virtual one is surprisingly easy to get used to. Once again, email is such a simple area and I genuinely do not understand the fuss made over the way each device implements it. People who place significant importance on the ability to file emails, set up multiple redirects, and various other usually desktop-based routines, can’t have much to do while out and about. I receive, send and occasionally forward emails. Both devices meet this need.

Music. Right, we’re getting somewhere interesting now. Whether we like it or not – and I am one of the many who simply does not understand the youth of today’s obsession with playing music out loud from their phone while walking down the street – music is a significant element of mobile phones these days. And you can see why; it’s a great way to reduce the amount of technical paraphernalia you have to carry about with you. The iPhone wins this bout hands down. It’s also an iPod. Granted, iPod’s are only ‘good’ by default, but we’ve learned to live with that fact for years. I haven’t even bothered trying the music functionality of the Blackberry. I just don’t care.

‘Apps’. Yet another Apple-influenced phrase we must all adopt for the traditionally phrased: ‘applications’. As I have written in previous posts, the iPhone’s App Store is at times fascinating and genuinely useful. There is, however, an awful lot of guff you end up downloading and eventually deleting. I find several apps very useful for blogging, Twitter, Facebook and Ebay, but that’s about as far as it stems. Use your shiny iPhone to level up a sawdust-ridden shelf? No thanks.

Blackberry’s ‘App World’ has only recently emerged and I’ve literally had a go with it for about five minutes. Very intuitive from what I saw, and draws heavily on the iPhone equivalent (why wouldn’t it?).

So, in summary (if you’re still reading this, thanks), if you are an Apple addict like myself, want to get rid of the iPod/phone combo and aren’t too fussed about looking a little bit of a dick every time you put your phone to your ear, get the iPhone. If, however, you are put off by the iPhone’s uncanny ability to be mentioned in 95% of all conversations and music is of little interest to you while out and about, get the Blackberry.

So there you have it. Sorry. I can point you in the direction of Google for the next stage of your search for an answer, if you like. Try a different search term. You never know, there may be a blog out there less known than mine with the definitive answer on it.

iPhone 3.0 OS

From the whooping and hollering that followed every announcement, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the demonstrations Apple provided of the iPhone’s 3.0 OS were nothing short of revolutionary.

In reality, however, they were shockingly obvious.  Cut, copy and paste, MMS, landscape keyboards, SMS forwarding… any iPhone owner (and I am one of the 17 million on this planet) will know how those common mobile phone features have been ignorantly disregarded by Apple.  But fear no more, they’re coming this summer.  Great, but I simply had to pause the recording of the conference to write on here – how drastically embarrassing for them to have to backtrack and develop for the needs of the greater public.  Even more embarrassing given the ‘well, what’s new?’ nature of the majority of the demonstrated new features.

I have no doubt that the non-inclusion of said features was part of Apple’s nonsensical plan to influence our lifestyle habits.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Apple products but there is a certain amount of pretentiousness in the way the Jobs-led band of designers and programmers dictate the way we must use their devices.  Why MMS when you can email?  Why would you ever need to copy and paste text when our text input system is so clever it’ll take you half the time to retype whatever it was you wanted to quote?

So, what’s next for the iPhone?  They’ve no doubt set themselves back a stage now that they’ve had to spend valuable development time reinventing old, previously-expected features, and it is therefore hard to see what lies in store for the phone in the short term.  Sure, their new SDK should bring with it some interesting Apps but, as I’ve written in previous posts, I’ve been somewhat underwhelmed by the Apps currently on  offer, even after the initial ‘wow’ factor some induce.

Well done Apple, you’ve finally brought the iPhone into the 90s.  Now let’s see some real innovation.

I’ve just had an App cull.  Like many iPhone users out there, my device was clogged up with iRubbish I’d originally downloaded because it looked ‘cool’ or provoked me to comment ‘wow, that could be useful!’.

iLevel, for example.  Here is an App that claims to be a viable replacement for one of workmens’ most essential tools.  It’s not, I’m afraid.  Sure, it may be pretty accurate, but who in their right mind is going to place their shiny iPhone on a grubby work surface you’ve just spent three hours sawing and smashing with a hammer (granted, I’m not much of a DIY’er).

The cull has prompted me to question the relevance of many Apps.  The word ‘fad’ is perfect in this instance.  90% of the Apps I’ve downloaded have been very faddy.  iFart is funny, for about three minutes. iPity will make your mates laugh like girls at random Mr T comments and the old classic, iPint, never fails to impress at social gatherings.

Dont get me wrong, Apple have done a marvelous job with the iPhone 3G and the addition of Apps is at times genuinely rewarding.  ‘My Football’ for example, is a brilliant tool for quickly checking football scores.  The Facebook App is also very good, if a little too addictive.  The problem is, as I scroll through the few that are left, there aren’t any others that jump out at me.  In fact, I could probably have another cull…