Dear Blackberry people...

[graymulligan]

I get it...you're comfortable with what you have. You really, truly believe that the droid sucks at email, and that it's clunky, and that the OS isn't customizable, or whatever else you want to talk yourself into. I loved my blackberries, loved em. I enjoyed my email, and what browsing I could do on them.

However. The droid really "does".
Browsing? Better. This is indisputable, and not my opinion.
Overall processing/speed? It's faster folks, the tour was pretty quick, but the droid's faster.
Email? It's almost on par. If we're talking exchange and gmail, it's just as fast. Yeah, the yahoo thing, but if you're making decisions based on yahoo email, maybe it's time to move to a better email provider.
Looks? Meh, I love the droid's looks, but I get it.
Hardware? What's the return rate on storm1's for every conceivable issue, and the Tour trackball nightmare? RIM is putting crappy built phones out lately.

In 2009 (or 2010 depending on when you read this) it is unacceptable to have to reboot the phone to uninstall an application. Worse? Rebooting the berry still takes 6-10 minutes depending on the phone/OS version. Really RIM? Really?

When the BIS goes down? I still get my mail.

I can even move my icons around without having to download a theme to change them. If I want some space between them, I move them. Not just move them around in little grids.

Yeah, it's a rant, and I sound anti-blackberry, but I'm so sick of people sitting back and talking about how they're not going to switch because the blackberry is a better phone. I loved my tour, liked my storm and loved my curve. And all three of them are far inferior to what I'm using now. (and I'd take the Eris over all three of them too)

[/soapbox]

 

[nick125]

I believe that the BlackBerry does some things really well, such as messaging. If messaging is your life, then you might be disappointed with the messaging capacities of the Droid. With that said, I think that the Droid meets (and does so very well) the needs of most consumer users that would otherwise look at a BlackBerry device.

BlackBerry still excels in messaging and "enterprise"y things, just not so much in what the consumer user wants.

Just my $0.02.

 

[hydrogenman#AC]

I believe that the BlackBerry does some things really well, such as messaging. If messaging is your life, then you might be disappointed with the messaging capacities of the Droid. With that said, I think that the Droid meets (and does so very well) the needs of most consumer users that would otherwise look at a BlackBerry device.

BlackBerry still excels in messaging and "enterprise"y things, just not so much in what the consumer user wants.

Just my $0.02.

Blackberry was far superior for messenger programs

yahoo messenger, AOL messenger, MSN Messenger, BBIM...I used all of them


Running them on my droid it works, but it's not nearly as good of an experience and I've had issues with it.

Email? I agree, I just created a Gmail account and started migrating all of my personal use from Yahoo mail to it...and I haven't been disappointed.

It's taken some changing of things I'm used to, but I agree with the original poster....the Droid is far superior, and I was a huge blackberry fanboy.

I've owned a Curve, Bold, iPhone 3G, Storm...and now a Moto Droid, and none of them are close to the Droid except the iPhone (but count me as a 100% virtual keyboard hater, I love the moto's flat ass keyboard, because imo it's still better than not having one

 

[Kage87Z]

I was a BB type for quite some time. But the things I needed from it were never quite right.

On the Storm 1, in everything from the browser taking forever to the media type apps to the bluetooth never working right to the frequent battery pulls... the droid is the shiznit.

Droid isn 't perfect. It should have come out with an app that enables plug and play synch with outlook. But the rest of that makes up for it.

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

Different? Yes.
Better? No.

/thread

 

[mclarryjr]

Both are great phone is just depends on what you want.

 

[terpitude71]

i loved my blackberry as a business person, but i needed a phone that had more multimedia functionality, and much better web browsing, hence android. the messaging works fine for me (after d/l'ing a few choice apps)

 

[tealturboser]

Eh, email on par? No not at all not even close. The only downfall for Blackberry email is if there is a problem with BIS or BES then no email. But to be honest it doesnt happen all that ofter to be complaining about. For using a BB for about 3 years I have to say there havent been more than a handful of outages.

The email on the Droid is OK, but it needs a lot of work. Here is why:
Non Gmail accounts:
1. Signatures? Where are they?
2. Opening attachments? Fails on a lot of newer file types
3. Folder sync. Yes it will display your subfolders but then you have to manually sync when you want to look at them. Also no notification of email that gets directed to subfolders.

Gmail accounts
1. Works well actually, just needs some minor tweaks. No issues here.
So if they can port over the functionality then it will be better but not match BB

These are just items that should be in email for any SmartPhone for these times, I havent gone over the benefits of BB email

But overall I love this phone for my uses better than the Blackberry

 

[dland69]

My first Blackberry was the Storm 1 and the software made it the worst phone ever, though I loved Blackberry for e-mail. I have to say that the corporate e-mail set up with the Droid is just totally lame. You have to be kidding me that there is no place for my signature at the bottom of my outgoing mail, as I sell commercial real estate for Prudential on the east coast so there is no way in hell that I could use a g-mail account with my clients. The G-mail is full of options, and that makes it even more of kick in the balls.

E-mail aside, the Droid kills the Storm out of the box and will no doubt put a dent in the BB following if someone wakes up and gets the emial options up to speed.

 

[mjesenovec]

I definitely understand your rant. I am currently a Tour user, and have had 4 blackberries over the past 3 years. I do love them, but between the constant unstable OS releases, months and months between releases, horrible reboot times, etc. i think it's time for me to try something else. i'm a techie by nature, so it's not a problem for me to install/configure hybrid OS's, troubleshoot issues, etc. The point is, a company with proprietary hardware and software should be able to make them work seemlessly. It shouldn't take over a year, 2 dozen updates, hybrids, hacking, etc. to make a phone do what it SHOULD out of the box. Is android perfect? not at all, but every time so far a newer version of it has come out, it has been better than the last. When a new bb OS comes out, your bluetooth might not work, or the camera, or signal quality might suck. It's still beyond me why RIM can't just make an OS for each phone that WORKS, and then gradually release updates and patches over time to make it better.

I've been very impressed with my brother's Droid, and I am going to purchase one in February when I can upgrade.

 

[SSHGuru]

I had a Curve before the Droid. The Curve's keyboard KILLS the droid - not even close. The email on the Curve was better - pushed rather than pulled and the notification system was better.

However I have downloaded K-9 Mail which makes the email just about on par with the Curve.

So that leaves ONE thing... the keyboard. The blackberry keyboard just kill when it comes to typing fast. The only advantage to the Droid keyboard is the symbols that are native on it like the @.

I am also getting used to typing on the screen when it's just a word or two. But when it's something more than that the keyboard opens every time.

I would have bought an IPhone years ago if it had a keyboard. Stupid Apple.

But overall I would not trade my Droid in for ANY blackberry - it's 10,000 times better.

 

[luniboy26]

I knew it would only be a matter of time before a thread like this started. IMHO the droid is better than my BB was but don't think for one second I don't miss my BBM I had too many friends on there not too many people I know have an Android phone so it kind of makes me have to take extra steps to get in contact with people. I mean that isn't the only thing I miss from BB another thing would be RIMs Facebook client although I complained about it for lacking things,(who didn't?) it is a far cry better than the official facebook for Android. There are other things but when we get down to it I love my Droid better because of the things it has to offer, 1. Better Customization 2. Better browser 3. The Big A** Screen and Keyboard combination 4. The fact that google addresses things faster without screwing things up in the process(I really don't like waiting 6-8 months for an update to an unstable OS just to find out I get a lower signal in my house or bluetooth or camera etc.) 5. The whole google experience which I seeing being more generous to me in the near future. Because of these things and more I can't see myself going back to BB until they do some serious work on the whole user experience not just adding a better browser and eveyone celebrates so RIM can sit back on their OS for another 10 years while everyone else continues to move forward. Other than that I love both platforms they both have their strengths and weaknesses and whenever one does better hopefully the other learns and meet/tops it. I just hope the droid forum doesn't turn into the mess the storm forum turned into with a bunch of immature kids fighting over nothing that benefits their life in the Real World. Also I hope that the BB owners don't become what Iphone owners are on Crackberry because as we all know BB users are "SUPPOSE" to be more mature and grown-up and would never turn to trolling in another forum just to make people mad........lol sorry couldn't resist

 

[mrwashy#AC]

There is nothing on my storm that I miss. While I liked my storm a lot when I was using it, there's no regret for me with the Droid. Sure the Droid has some limitations, but overall it's vastly superior.

 

[Click]

Hey guys,
I've had a berry since '01 and have been a moderator on CB for the last 2 years. When the Droid launched I knew it was only a matter of time before I jumped ships(that and I had to wait for my upgrade to come). Well the upgrade was yesterday and let me tell you, I've reached the promise land.
Now I've had the iPhone, BB, winmo, Pre and now the droid and I have to say that 110% that this is the phone for me. It feels good to be on a winning team!

 

[milesmcever]

Coming from a blackberry I can say the only things I miss is being able to select multiple emails to delete them and also seeing peoples free busy on the calendar, and thats really about it. I have to say my move from the blackberry to the Droid has been the best move I have made since owning a cell phone, but that is my opinion and everyone has theirs and what they are confortable with.

 

[ericatomars06]

I dont think comparing a Blackberry to the Droid is a fair comparison..

I've had a Blackberry, I don't think their all that... It was nice, cool I had one but other then that I'm way happier that I've moved on!

 

[clozer]

I had a bad run over the past year with BB. It started with the Storm and ended with Tour. If there was a bad unit out there I got it. Prior to this I had been happy with BB. I absolutely loved my Curve but then I saw what I was missing with the added features on the Storm and I couldnt go back. I am very happy with my Droid. It works the way I wish my Storm would have. I do miss some of the same BB features discussed earlier in the thread. But the good outweighs the losses.

 

[mjesenovec]

I dont think comparing a Blackberry to the Droid is a fair comparison..

I've had a Blackberry, I don't think their all that... It was nice, cool I had one but other then that I'm way happier that I've moved on!

That's true. You can say "I like X over Y because..." but neither is better than the other. It just depends on your priorities and what you are looking for in a device. The reason there are so many brands, and so many models, is to cater to everyone. If everyone was looking for the same things in a phone, every person on the planet would have the same one. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[TaeKwonDonkey]

My first smartphone was the MyTouch and I loved it but I wanted to try BB so I switched to the 9700. After a week I ended up returning it and not getting another phone. BB email support was great but I felt like I had been spoiled by Android when it came to web browsing and apps. Having just come from Android, I thought all the apps for BB were in the BB app world but boy was I wrong. I was shocked when I found out that you had to download Google maps from the website itself. How is a new user supposed to know where to get the good apps if they are not in the app world? Web browsing was also a pain in the butt, on my 9700 EDGE and 3G were the same speed and each took about 30 seconds to load a webpage which is unacceptable to me because the Mytouch only took 10 seconds to load the same page on EDGE, on 3G it was even faster. The web browsing was enough to make me realize that BB was not for me.
However, I decided not to go back to the MyTouch because there are some basic features that are missing like a 3.5mm head phone jack. Also I despise both the portrait and landscape keyboards, I wish a successor to the G1 would come out on Tmobile. The biggest reason I returned it was because I had just heard about the Nexus One and I'm willing to take the risk that it may or may not be released and that it may or may not come out past the first quarter of 2010. I just didn't want to be stuck with a phone like the MyTouch if the possibility of better of phone was just a few months away.

 

[paradox460]

In terms of TEXT messaging, Blackberry is far worse than the droid, in my opinion.

No EMS (Extended message service, lets you send more than 160 characters in a single text, or send multi-texts) is the biggest thing.

That and, with OS 5, you still have to leave threaded text to send a picture message. Droid, it just shows up inline, and is sent inline.

Anyone saying on BB opera/Bolt compares with the droid really needs to check themselves. Little things like javascript are nice to have.

Also, one other thing. HTML Mail. Droid is infintely better at rendering it than the blackberry. If its bigger than the viewport, you can pan around it, just like the browser. Blackberry wraps it, and makes it look like poop.