The Roundtrip Tour of Smartphones

Just over a year ago, I left Blackberry after being a loyal user for over 7 years.

It was a tough move for me because Blackberry had taught me how to be mobile.

The first Blackberry I got, back in 1998, was a life changing experience for me and I was very loyal to them as a result. Over the years, I used almost every Blackberry model they made.

For a number of reasons, some related to standardizing on Goodlink in our office, and some related to a curiosity about what else was out there, I switched to the Treo 650.

The Treo is a really good smartphone, probably the best one on the market.  The Gotham Gal switched along with me and she has stayed on the Treo and generally loves it.

But the Treo wasn't a good solution for me. First, I am really rough on these devices. I drop them, I bang them around my desk, I use them constantly, and I put tons of software on them if I can.

I put so much stuff on my Treo that it would crash all the time (I mean every hour or so).  With my reader's help, I diagnosed the problem and was able to fix it (sort of).  But when I broke my Treo for the third time and had to think about sending it back and getting a fourth one, I decided to see what else was on the market.

That led me to Windows Mobile and the MDA Vario. I did my diligence and asked my readers about the device before getting it.  Most said it was great, but a few said it wouldn't work for me.

The naysayers were right. I lasted about a week on Windows Mobile.  Windows Mobile is going to get there, I am sure of it. But as of last winter it was too fat on a device that was too underpowered for me. I synched my 9800 contacts with the device and it stopped working and that was that. The MDA Vario went into my growing collection of failed mobile devices on my office  bookshelf.

So on the suggestions of my friend Brad Feld, I picked up a Sidekick II. It doesn't really synch with Exchange so I had to kluge together a scheme to make it work for me.  Brad and his colleague Ross were particularly helpful to me in hacking together a way to make the Sidekick II work for me.

I used the Sidekick II for about five months. It is a tremendous device. I liked it way better than the Treo and the Vario. I love the keyboard.  I love the screen. I love the mail client, the AIM client, and the OS. Basically, it rocks.

And my kids would always ask to borrow it so they could play games or log onto AIM and chat with their friends. That never happened with any of my other smartphones.

But Sidekick II just doesn't cut it for me as a business tool.  It would only let me keep 1000 contacts on it.  Every day there would be two or three email addresses and phone numbers that I needed (and never the same ones) that weren't on the phone. If I deleted an email on the device, it would still be in my inbox.  Calendar additions made in the office weren't instantly added to my Sidekick II.

It became an irritation over time.  So I decided to give the phone to Emily, my AIMaholic thirteen year old daughter, and go back to Blackberry.

I've been using the Blackberry 8700g (g is the T-Mobile version) for the past week. It's like going back to the girlfriend you wish you'd never left. I am so happy.

I am sure its because I learned to be mobile on a blackberry and that's where I developed all my habits. But Blackberry fits me like a glove.

And best of all, it comes with bluetooth so I can use my bluetooth headset again, this time with my beloved Blackberry.

That said, I feel greatly enriched by my yearlong tour of the smartphone market. Here is what I've learned.

Treo is the mass market smartphone.  It's the best general purpose device.

Windows isn't ready for prime time yet, but it will be.  Windows on the Treo is going to be the mainstream solution.

Sidekick is the killer solution for the next generation. They don't want or need email. Sidekick is for them.

Blackberry is for me and everyone else who wants the killer mobile email solution and needs that over everything else.

That's my view of the current state of play.

Of course, it will change over time. The Motorola Q may change things pretty quickly.  I saw it for the first time yesterday and its very slick.

But I am not leaving Blackberry to try it out. 

I spent a year away from Blackberry and I am not doing that again any time soon.

Comments

[Tony Alva]

I wish I had wagered on it. I knew you'd be back and your assessments are spot on. The blackberry is ugly and bulky, but it's reliable and can take a punch.

[Charlie Crystle]

My Treo 700w works great, and I like it because I can easily build what I need for it (even though I can buy apps too). Good geek phone. It's decent out of the box, but it takes some serious config to get it to love, but then again, it's easy to config.

I especially like the hi-speed EVDO broadband network through Verizon, the company I love to hate. Browsing is fast, email is fast, downloads are fast. Logging ontot the network is slow, though, and should be seamless and fast.

[howardhoward Lindzon]

Funny, but after switching to the new crackleberry, I removed Palms stock symbol from my watch list. reading this, it goes back on. If it is truly going to work with Microsoft - I doubt it, but you know better than me, the stock may still be alive.

[P-Air]

After a long love affair w/the Palm series of devices, Sprint, my carrier at the time, tried to pull a fast one when I went to upgrade to the Treo, so I pulled a switch to AT&T and the Blueberry (affectionate name for my blue Blackerry) and really liked it. Liked it even better when AT&T was acquired by Cingular. However, when the 8700 came out and I saw it's browser, it's Bluetooth support, speakerphone capability, and the fact that they had fixed some of the basic glitches, I had to make the jump. Most important for me was the fact that they included search across most apps (which was standard on Palm but never on the crackberry). Given that I write notes on every one I meet when entering them as a contact, searching through notes fields is critical to my existence (saves me several gigabytes of mental memory ;-). The 8700 handles that flawlessly where the previous RIM devices didn't even contemplate this.

I should also mention that Bloglines on the device is really nice and 90% of the time I catch your posts it's on the device while I have time to kill. You and Brad Feld fortunately provide full feeds of your content which makes it nice when using these devices. Other blogs that require that I read their full posts on their blog make this more challenging since their pages do not really consider their appearance on handheld browsers, so the navigation can be painful.

Suffice it to say, I too love my 8700.

[Don]

I am a strong Treo 650, and want the 700 (but it's not available with Cingular yet, and still not overly impressed with the Blackberry's I've "played" with. The 650 does everything that any of the Blackberry devices do, has more software support (as near as I can tell) and is just a better looking device...

[AndrewM]

I've had my 8700g for two weeks and love it. It's small and lightweight. I can throw it in my pocket and not have to wear the geeky clip. I don't need to download lots of software because I can access the Internet and find what I need. My favorite is Googlemaps mobile. I can access my Google mail, Outlook mail, and Yahoo mail on it. The screen is big and brilliant. I don't know how much better it can get.

[Jeff Clavier]

Even though I ranted about my Cingular 8125, it still is the best compromise for me as a powerful email/phone device that I can also casually us as an MP3 player and low quality camera.
I am afraid that the Q won't fulfill its promises.

[Ken Berger]

I've had the privilege of analyzing all these devices and more, and have come up with the following conclusions:

- 8700 is an awesome machine, miles ahead of anything RIM has ever put out. EDGE is not as fast as EVDO or HSDPA, but Bberry has done a great job optimizing perceived speeds and usable data.

- Fred, with the MDA and the Sidekick software, it was your fault to enter the tempting world of kludge! These things are always bleeding edge and you don't want to go more than a few baby steps into unsupported realms here. My fav device (and the one I'm keeping and using constantly) is the Verizon XV6700. Similar to the MDA, but it's EVDO and >twice the processor speed. Both factors have made major differences in my testing. The device came out a couple months after you did your MDA hack, I bet you'd have a noticeably diff experience with the Verizon device or w/ the next rev of the GSM versions when they get HSDPA and faster chips. I really love the solution coupled with MS Exchange and am seeing remarkable performance on the Verizon xv6700.

- WM5 vs Palm: I sold my last company to Palm, so have an affinity for them. Yet I predicted WM would jump past them, as you are implying, and I think that has already happened w/ WM5 at least on the robustness/performance trade-off. 1 major factor w/ WM5 is the push email. Full support depends on the device but with this, there's now NO reason to have and pay for Blackberry Ent server. I'm not raving that MS now has a super-solid platform, more that in traditional MS style the new version "sucks less". But it's such a useful platform, if you're really already MS vertically-setup, the calendaring, email, contacts, etc, are just way richer and better looking IMO than Blackberry. Yes this is MS koolaid speak, and if you're mac-centric that edge goes away. The clincher that I think pushes WM over Bberry is that it also is still a much more open platform than Bberry and you can run cool things such as GPS software, etc. Battery life WM vs Bberry can't compare but I simply dock it every night and I'm fine.

- Treo 700w: for *now* (being that it's so far only avail on Verizon), this device is seems compelling, since you can have the xv6700. The Treo has dramatically smaller screen, tiny keys, and yet is slightly BIGGER lengthwise than the xv6700. Plus side on the Treo is it has hard keys for dialing and slightly better phone call sound though that last point goes away if you use a BT headset.

- Moto Q will NOT hit the professional mark. It is windows smartphone and not full WM5 and will be just dumbed down enough to frustrate a professional user.

Ken

[J.D. Falk]

I've always found it odd that there's such a common expectation -- especially amongst techy businesspeople -- that if a device doesn't sync with Exchange, then it doesn't "do" e-mail and thus is only suitable for children.

Those of us who aren't locked into Microsoft's proprietary vision don't need the proprietary Exchange protocol. Does that mean we're children?

[Adam Kalsey]

For a minute there I thought I was reading one of Chartreuse's posts. His style's rubbing off on you.

[mark pincus]

fred, i just went through the same odyssey. i was excited about the treo 700w with windows but it sucked as a phone.

finally, i decided to go back to a phone for my phone (little LG) and a blackberry 7290 (old school) for email. i'm happy with a phone for phone and berry for email.

[nonobeez]

I have a 650 with T-mo and I am very happy with it. I might leave to Sprint just to get the 700P.

For you Fred, you should look at the Nokia E61... it's optimized for mobile email. Case made of metal, has bluetooth and WiFi, VoIP, and works with Blackberry Connect and Goodlink among other email solutions.

Here is more info:

http://www.nokia.co.uk/nokia/0,6771,84093,00.html#

[Brouhaha]

Conversely, my recent purchase of the 8700c with Cingular was my FIRST BlackBerry and I absolutely love it. I had resisted BlackBerry for a long time due to the lousy screen and poor browsing capabilities, but this device is fabulous and my uber-geek friends with other divices can't hide their jealousy when they see the clarity, color and size of the screen.

[wampad]

I'd be interested to hear about your experiences with mobile web browsing.

[Ted]

Hi Fred:

I am about where you were a year ago. I just picked up the T-Mobile MDA (I think it is slighly newer than when you had, but then again I may be mistaken). My first impressions: it is Microsoft. It is convoluted and not intuitive. Basic settings are buried beneath numerous window options. I have read some blogs that have hacked the MDA to make it more user friend and I intend to try it. I can return it in 14 days. I am not sure it is what I want or what I need, but a bit more playing around will tell. I am not tethered to email as many are, I have tried to make it a point where I can go 48 hours without checking my email and the world will not end. However, I need a very detailed calendar and sophisticated to-do list. I try to put all of my cases out into the future so it looks as if I have 100's of present to-dos, when I only have 10% of them at any given time. On my Treo 600 using DateBk6 I was able to filter such items out. I am still trying to replicate that on the MDA. Looks promising however.
My biggest gripe is that so far I can't get it to synch with my case management software, Time Matter 7.0, whereas I had no difficulty with my Palms.

Like another comment above, I eagerly await some of the new products from Nokia. My all time favority phone was my old 8890. While not blessed with business capibilities, it was a brilliant phone and was very stable. I wonder with the urge of integration that it may, in fact, be simpler to have two separate devices? I am certain if my family heard my utter such lines they would be falling over in their chair, but I have been giving it some thought.

If the MDA does not go better, I plan on moving to my first Blackberry on T-Mo.

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this. For example, it appears that your contact list and email were the major factors in your decision. What about calendaring or to-dos? How, in your opinion, do they compare?

Ted

[Warren Cohen]

Would you mind posting the Sidekick/Exchange workaround from Brad and Ross? (I searched his website with no luck.) I'm in the same boat - can't part with the Sidekick despite never fguring out how to make the corporate email flow (right now, its an email writer rather than reader!) Sidekick III coming soon.. (Thanks in advance)