Smartphones/Blackberrys

[swerb]

My contract on my Blackberry is up in a month. I've been a Crackberry loyalist since day one. I'm thinking of dumping it, as clearly many others have (see chart below) over the last year.

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=RIM. ... O;range=1y

I use my phone mainly for email, text, Twitter, the calendar, and for taking pictures. My Blackberry is really fine for all that, but as I begin to use it more for the web ... it's just unbearable how bad it is on the web and for browsing. I'll only use my phone more and more for web related things going forward.

All year I've been hearing that Blackberry is going to be unleashing a new OS and a new suite of phones around it ... but I'm sick of waiting.

New Consumer Reports just did a thing on smartphones, and they really like these three Droid phones for Verizon:

HTC Thunderbolt
Samsung Droid Charge
Motorola Droid X2

My main reasons for being leery to switch are that I like a depression keyboard and I'm terrified of losing my contacts, apps, and photos on my BBerry. Sure I can have some of that electronically moved over.

Anyone have either of those three phones above? Any other thoughts?

[pup]

Not much help, but just wanted to stop in and say:

Blackberry is the biggest piece of garbage I have ever used in my entire life. If it wasn't required by my company I would throw it as deep into Lake Erie as I could.

Thanks. I fell better now.

[gotribe31]

I have 2 blackberrys for work, and I use them for e-mail and e-mail only. BB are more secure than most other phones, so I don't ever see companies getting away from them entirely, but I echo Pup's feelings above. If I had to use it for anything more than e-mail, I'd get pretty frustrated pretty quickly.

I actually like my iphone, find it very user-friendly and I've never had a problem with it dropping calls. I got used to the touchscreen keyboard pretty quickly, although when I'm sending anything longer than a few sentences I definitely prefer the BB. I have the 3GS, and will probably upgrade to the 5 or whatever it is going to be called when it comes out in September (if it comes out in September). I'm not a crazy apple loyalist hipster or anything like that, but I've never used any of the phones you mentioned above so can't really speak to them.

[pup]

Only thing BB did right was their e-mail security. And everyone is sold on how great that is, so companies will continue to push these pieces of garbage until anyone else can provide the same level of security.

Sorry for the hijack Rich.

[e0y2e3]

Meh, my company will either give you a BB or pay toward your smartphone.

And to keep the security you just have to enter you password far more often on the smartphones.

And BBM is also a huge thing for Rimm. Free international and safe as hell.

That said, BBs suck and you couldn't pay me to use one.

[Orenthal]

RIMM = TIMBER

I don't really have anything substantive to add as usual.

[Cerebral_DownTime]

Fuckin phone nerds. I have some sort of HTC touch screen nonsense, I don't even know what model it is..... nor do I care. It makes calls, text messages, and i can check my e-mail..... that's all I need. I don't get a new phone every year like a 16 year old girl either. If it works I keep it until it breaks. iPhone people make me sick with their smugness and Prius driving. Anyone who would wait in line for a stupid ass phone should be hit over the head with a pipe and tossed into a river. Plus none of the phones on the market a made to be used by a guy with banana fingers, if you saw me trying to text you would probably laugh hard.

NERDS!!!!!!!

[Orenthal]

^What a fucking dick.

I agree with the whole post. I saved the Errrrrf by buying a car that uses huge amounts of nickel.

[e0y2e3]

I wonder what that tall dufass CDT would say if he found me on a random weekend day sitting at Starbucks sipping coffee and typing away on my Macbook Pro.

[Cerebral_DownTime]

Nothing would happen. I've never been in a Starbucks. For me it's like sunlight to a damn Dracula.

I got no problem with Macs, might get one myself.

[Rat_Tail]

I need to upgrade soon. I've had my enV2 for like 4 years.

Haven't really been pressed to upgrade since I have an ipod touch which pretty much does everything the iphone can except call, text, etc.

From what I've looked at online, I'm really digging the HTC Trophy aka Windows Phone. I like the layout and it seems like it would be easy to use. There's supposed to be a software update (mango) by like October which should fix any of the current problems.

[JJN]

I own a HTC Thunderbolt, and absolutely love it. Several of my friends got one at about the same time, and they feel the same way. Coworker has the DroidX2, and I'm not really all that impressed. HTC's interface is way better, and the Thunderbolt is 4G capable while the X2 is not. I'm not familiar with the Charge, but Engadget says that it is very similar to the Thunderbolt. Play around with both for a bit.

As far as the keyboard, once you get used to it, it isn't an issue. I'm faster on the touchscreen keyboard on my Thunderbolt than I ever was on the keyboard on my last phone.

Also, don't get a Windows phone. The Droid operating system is so much more intuitive than the Windows OS.

[CAVSTRIBEBROWNSin07!]

Thanks for posting this Swerb, I'm due for an upgrade this week.

I've been using the original Droid since its inception, and its gotten progressively slower and shittier as time goes by. There's times that it takes a full minute to load my homescreen. I recently met someone who has had a Droid for about as long as I have and is experiencing the same issue.

I'm assuming its because the computing power of the original Droid cant handle the amount of data I'm trying to run, but for all I know its a typical Droid issue.

My initial thought is to go with either the Thunderbolt or the Droid 3.

[That_Guy™]

Upgraded from an OG Droid to a Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt is just flat out bad ass. Battery was kinda shitty until I rooted it. If you like customizing your phone and having open access to just about anything it can do, go with an Android phone. Since Android is open-source, you have developers all over the place able to tweak it and make improvements. You can check out droidforums.net for help and info on just about any Android phone.

[motherscratcher]

Damn, I was pretty much set on an iPhone 5 in a month. Now you guys are making we waver on that.

[Lubber]

Hi Rich

I have tried out the iPhones and Droids. Not the best business phones (email, text, etc). I have been using Blackberry (current the Bold) for several years now and if you do a lot of email and text, BB is the way to go. I managed 8 emails account with ease on the BB. The only drawback of the BB is the web browser as you pointed out. However, for myself, if I want to browse the web, I would rather do it on my laptop or desktop computer.

But you are in luck as OS 7 will be released very shortly which has improved overall speed of the BB including the web browser speed. You can read more about it here: http://phuketnews.phuketindex.com/lifestyle/blackberry-7-smartphones-186498.html