First off OMG! A non-employment related post!!!!1!1one!!oh-en-ee!!!
right? where was i?
Ah, yes, so regular readers of this blog may note, i have strong feelings toward Apple. Said strong feelings are not what you'd normally call "positive". Kind of like saying how being dragged through salt encrusted broken glass before being thrown into a pit of lava may be a tad "uncomfy".
That sort of feeling.
So, needless to say, i wasn't exactly thrilled to read that Helio (my current provider) is headed the way of the Newton. This means that should the contract die and i'm stuck with something less appealing, i could very well be shopping for a new phone and contract.
Which leads me to a rather annoying possibility.
If i were to get a new phone, it'd be a smart phone. Ideally not something the size of a small table. That means deciding between a blackberry or a (sigh) apple iphone. Granted, a blackberry has wifi (for both of the times that, you know, you can find an open access point), already has an SDK out (for quite some time), works on nearly any network, has a killer battery life and frankly, who cares if it can play music? It also features a less than adequate browser (well, until one loads Opera on it, i suppose) and is the size of a small table. (Ok, the Bold is only slightly "tablely", but still, none of these aren't "slip in the pocket and go" type devices.) It also features a standard USB miniB connector and not some hell-spawned proprietary evil and some models can take mini sd(hc) cards and have replaceable batteries.
Vs. the iPhone, which is the current geek wet dream of a device which, will eventually have an SDK, may actually let you load programs to it, has an ok battery life, pretty darn good browser, proprietary hellspawn connector, thinks mini sd Cards don't fit with Steve's View, and have replaceable batteries, provided you replace the attached phone as well.
So, pragmatic logic vs. sheepish cultural following?
decisions… decisions… mixed with cursing. Lots of that.
Ah well, who knows. Perhaps the impending demise of my current carrier isn't quite the looming iceberg off the port bow i believe it to be, and, a year from now, there will be a plethora of time travel enabled devices to select from. (or not).
Looks like more cursing.
Ah, the Newton wasn't bad, for a stone-age PDA. But then, it came out back when I was crazy for HyperCard and a total Mac Zealot (I got better), so that could just be the nostalgia talkin'.
I've been using (shock horror) Windows Mobile devices for years now and love them. Something to maybe look for is the Touch pro which looks like it ticks all the right boxes (WiFi, 3g and stuff, standard mini-usb connector, proper internet [theres a WM app whose name i've forgotten that uses gecko 1.8 but is still in beta] has micro-SD, and an SDK [if you don't mind .net]) Plus it has killer battery time (my 2-3 yo one still goes 3 days between charges while providing me with a mp3's for 3 hours a day and all the rest of it)
And it looks as nice as an iPhone!
iPhone may look pretty but it lacks some pretty basic features (MMS and copy/paste), plus its kinda big (I have an iPod touch.. that thing is big and its thinner than the iPhone).
If I had to pick I'd probably just get a newer Blackberry. They aren't really that big and have tons of functionality, like tactile response ;)
The dev world of blackberry is more of a commercial one than a free/open source one. For example, i couldn't find a single free (cost) app that utilized gps on the blackberry except for rimm's Blackberry Maps, which isn't open source. So there are no examples i could use when i was looking for blackberry gps code. From what i've seen, there's very little interest in third-party blackberry apps.
As far as web browsing goes, the primary browser is fine for mobile web browsing. Opera works, but is slow and is a pain to use on such a small screen–I've used it less times than i can count on my fingers.
My blackberry is good at being an evdo modem for my computer and has a decent email reader, but that's about it.
For mobile development, i think it's a no-brainer to go with the iphone.
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FWIW, I've had my iPhone for a year, and still get away with charging every other night, so the battery life so far hasn't been much of a concern. It could degrade quite a bit from here, and I'd be forced to charge nightly instead of alternate nights. I figure that by the time the battery degrades to where you have to replace it, it'd be time to buy a newer and spiffier device anyway.
I also expect that within a year, the supported third party software for iPhone is going to be way better than anything for Blackberry. The Apple SDK is just plain nice for developing apps, and their was a LOT of iPhone interest at WWDC. The device is overall more capable than a Blackberry, and the iPhone SDK (for which the beta is already availible) is more like what you'd see for a full computer SDK than a mobile one (in fact, it's very similar to what you'd do to write OSX applications).
However, I should point out that you need a machine running OSX 10.5.3 and to be a registered developer to put your own software on the device… you obviously don't need to register to download stuff from the App store.