I’ve been pondering this for the last couple of days now. The new BlackBerry Torch has obvious shortcomings. For example, the lack of HD video recording is disappointing for me. For others, the lack of a dedicated GPU or the low resolution screen (compared to other 2010 smartphones) might be the deal breakers. But despite these shortcomings, I can’t wait to get my grubby little mitts on one. Why am I such a dam crackberry addict??
A more fundamental question, probably, is what do I want in a smartphone? So I started listing off features that I am looking for in a smartphone and came up with a semi-random list. I then made it less random and sorted the features in order of importance (to me) and marked which of the three main platforms (sorry Pre) have what I am looking for. Here’s the table that I came up with.
Just a note – although I don’t own an Android device, I do have two iOS devices and develop apps for iOS. Absorb those details as you will.
Now perhaps I’m biased because I do like RIM and I like BlackBerries, but more than the top 10 items on my list score perfectly for the flaming berry and not so much for the other devices. Although HD video is something that I’d definitely like, it is not as important to me as chatting, voice quality, social networking, the integrated inbox, a good browser and battery life. By chatting, I’m of course referring to BBM (other IM apps or SMS just don’t even come close to that level of message communication). Video is just something that I don’t use enough. Same with most of the other features near the bottom of the list. Those features are neat, novel, slick for sure, but just not things I use on a daily basis.
Side note – last week my father’s Yahoo email account got hacked. Password changed. Emails were sent out to contacts asking them to send him money to a location in London where he was apparently stranded. He wasn’t in London, but he uses an iPhone… Just sayin…
back on track…
It turns out that with a smartphone, I really just care about being social – talking, messaging, tweeting, facebooking, etc… I like reading my news feeds; I like staying on top of things. In these categories, I really believe that the BlackBerry platform shines. And the level of integration between the BlackBerry’s social features is beyond anything that I’ve seen elsewhere.
Isn’t that what a communication device should focus on? Shouldn’t social networking be a core and integral part of a communication device’s operating system? I think so. Maybe this is whyI’m a BlackBerry addict… But maybe you just have to buy into the BlackBerry platform to really get it.
Oh look! Red led blinking…
