Monday, December 15, 2008

Apple IPhone vs. Blackberry Storm

For some reason, the holidays always make me want to buy some new gadget. Maybe it is the overwhelming amount of advertising by anyone with a product to sell. This year, I set my sights on a new phone. 

Now, I don't actually need a new phone but for some reason I have decided to shop around anyway. So, the two that caught my attention are the Blackberry Storm and the Apple IPhone. I am sure I am not the only one to compare these two, but I figured I would share my observations.

They both offer lots of the same features so I am not going to compare each aspect of them. What I would like to compare is my initial Experience with them. 

First impressions are hard to overcome
I popped into the Apple store at the local mall and immediately was greeted with a bunch of associates that were all younger than me that were very friendly and appeared to know all the ins and outs of the product. I picked up one of the many that were on display and could play around with it. I immediately was able to navigate around and play some of the demo songs that were on it, get online and browse to my own website and the Klok website without a problem. I did notice instantly that the Flash content on my sites did not work. Though, this was expected.

The same night I went over to the Verizon store (I have a Verizon phone now by the way). I waited in line at the counter so that I could take a look at the Storm. When I finally got to look at it, I picked it up and tried to click some buttons. After a few attempted "clicks" it was clear that it wasn't working. So, the woman behind to counter took a look at it. Tried to push a few buttons and resorted to pulling the battery out. When she put it back in the phone "rebooted". I waited about an hour (actually about 3 minutes but it felt like an hour) and then left because it wasn't coming back up. About 20 minutes later I came back and it was working again. I was able to play with it but it was hard to get past the fact that just a half an hour ago I had a terrible experience with it. I navigated around but had a hard time browsing the web with it. I couldn't really type too well on it either. 

My Conclusion
Even though I was eventually able to play around with the Storm, looking back I feel like it was harder to figure out, harder to use and generally not as "fluid" as the IPhone. Feel free to disagree with me as I am sure other people's experiences were different. That, however, is exactly my point. It doesn't really matter if one product is "better" than another, what matters is whether it provides "a better experience for me".

So I have decided to purchase and IPhone and switch to AT&T (which I never thought I would do just for a phone)




9 comments:

metric152 said...

I tried the Storm at a verizon store and was unimpressed with it. I currently own an iPhone 3G and had the 1st gen iPhone. The user experience on the device is tough to match. I wasn't to crazy about the click screen. I thought it was broken at first.

I'm still not big on the idea of a virtual keyboard. I'm still getting used to it.

Rob McKeown said...

I thought I would have a hard time with the touch screen keyboard, but when I tried some of the other phones with real QWERTY keyboards I realized how fat my thumbs are. Those tiny buttons were really hard to hit. Plus after playing the guitar for 20 years, I don't have much feeling in the tips of my other fingers either so I couldn't tell which key I was pressing.

Anonymous said...

I think I agree. I am also with Verizon at the moment, and currently have a BB Curve, but was not impressed with the Storm. There seemed to be a rather long delay between the touchscreen and software (not nearly as fluid as an iPhone), and I could see the reveal around the clickable screen quickly filling with lint and other debris. I must say that I liked typing on the Storm, but not enough to "upgrade". My next step is to decide whether to switch to AT&T for a phone, too...

Anonymous said...

Nice information about them!! I already have Apple iPone... I like this!!

Anonymous said...

I think booth of thouse Handys are awesom, but there are also alot of
"Pull linkage´s". The Display would be the first Part which get broken...
But on the Handy-sector theres only one realy importen question : What´s the Trend, and whats new.
Facts like "what´s reasonable" are an minor matter.
More is less !

Anonymous said...

I bought the Storm Dec. 5th. It's not "bad" but for the $ I'm shelling out, I would expect it to be better than it is. Maybe I should be more patient and wait for more OS upgrades, but with only 30 days to turn it back in after purchase, I am giving in to temptation and buying the iPhone... Sorry Verizon, next time release something only when it's ready, and not just for so called "holiday sweeps".

Anonymous said...

I totally agree to you. It doesn't matter if one phone is better than the other one. The most important fact is that you can handle your own phone and that it is not to complicate. I have never before used the Storm, just the Iphone. When the Iphone was released in Germany I went to a store and tried to get to know the phone. It was very hard for me, because the touchscreen seemed very strange to me. Since a few month my boyfriend owns an Iphone and so I got the possibility to spend my time with it. After a few days, I have to mention, I am a really good IPhone user :-)

Anonymous said...

thanks for this nice information

james said...

I'd still go with the iPhone because the storm has no wifi