I bought my BlackBerry Bold 9000 in the fall of year 2008. Liked it a lot. Used it for like 14 months. Then sold it just last month. The reason I sold it was because I became obsessed with capacitive touch screen phones like HTC HD2 and Apple’s iPhone 3GS. I now own an Apple iPhone 3GS and have used it for like a month now.

Having been a BlackBerry user that made the switch to Apple’s iPhone, I am in the position to give my opinion on the pros and cons of both devices, and comment on which device I like more.

BlackBerry Bold 9000

It is a magnificent device. It has an incredible display. While the resolution (480x320) is slightly less than the newer BlackBerries (480x360), the screen gives better display than them. The reason is that in the newer BlackBerries the size of the screen is smaller and the resolution is larger so the pixels look a little crammed up. It’s speakers were also excellent. Texting on this device was an incredible experience. The sound of ‘new email’ and the flashing LED were gorgeous. Every time I typed, the moment there was a typo, BlackBerry used to underline the typo. So it was easier to spot the mistake and correct it. Auto-Text was just so helpful. I had created shortcuts like if I typed ‘sd’, it used to expand it to ‘Stardeveloper.com’. Selecting text to copy/paste was also much easier. All I had to do was to keep shift key pressed to select the text using trackball. Multi-tasking made it fun to run and switch between multiple applications simultaneously. Facebook and Twitter applications running in the background notified of new messages immediately. Copy files between BlackBerry and PC was easy as connecting the cable to the PC and simply copy/pasting it to and from the BlackBerry.

What I found frustrating with BlackBerry Bold 9000 was that its browser was very slow. Scrolling too much with trackball wasn’t too great. It wouldn’t play Youtube videos on EDGE. And even when it did on Wi-Fi, the experience wasn’t too pleasant. The video had much lower resolution, wouldn’t play full screen, one could even see boxed pixels on the screen, and the connection often broke in the middle of the video. Restarting the video made the video stuck. I had to restart the device and/or the router. BlackBerry Bold 9000 was a heavy set. Carrying it inside the pocket wasn’t easy. The trackball was very delicate and often durt/dust would settle on it making the fingers slip over it. I had the trackball changed yet the newer one started to give problems only after 1-2 months of use.

Apple iPhone 3GS

It is a beautiful light weight device which is easy to carry in the pocket. The capacitive touch screen works very well. It’s browser is the best among the rest. Tapping and pinching to zoom in and out rule! Configuring Gmail on it wasn’t too difficult. Watching full screen high resolution videos is a real charm. Youtube rocks on this device. Buffering and video resolution aren’t that bad on EDGE either. Yeah, one can watch videos on EDGE and that too without much interruption or buffering. Facebook and twitter applications give a better user experience because of bigger and better screen.

What it lacks though is a physical keyboard. No matter if the keyboard is in the landscape mode, there are still plenty of mistakes to correct before sending the message. The typos are not underlined. There are more mistakes made typing on iPhone than BlackBerry Bold. It is just so frustrating to type on this device. The small collection of tones to select for emails and SMS messages is also quite irritating. And it has no LED, so I have to open it and check again and again to see if new emails or messages have arrived. No LED makes it so user-unfriendly.

Verdict

There is just no replacement for BlackBerry. I hate myself for selling this device for cheap. I will love to have a BlackBerry (Bold 2 9700?) again. Keeping in view the video and browsing capabilities of iPhone, I will prefer an iPod to go with my BlackBerry. That makes a perfect combination.

Without a contract, one can get an Apple iPhone 3GS on ebay at around $750. A BlackBerry Bold for $500 and iPod for $250 will cost the same except that the experience in texting and watching videos will be unparalleled. (All prices given are approximate values)

So my advice is to get yourself a BlackBerry and if you need to watch videos and browse, get yourself an iPod.