Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Blackberry usability really blows
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 
[grain of salt: yes, I am a fanboy]
I'm holding on for July 11th when the iPhone drops, but my wife was shopping for a Blackberry at Verizon to replace her current phone for personal/work use. She knows I'm all about the iPhone, but I went to the store with her with an open mind. Honestly.
So we had a few models to look at, and the form factor of these things were okay. Not great, but they seem attractive enough. The models we saw were the kind with devoted qwerty and another with doubled-up ascii per button (yuk).
Diving into one (I don't remember which... Pearl, Curve?) I was immediately presented with about 20 icons on the home screen. I had to navigate around with one of those old IBM-like thumb ball controls. And the list of icons would scroll around on me when I hit an edge. Okay. Hard to use, but let's check out some messaging and email.
The font was ENORMOUS and ugly, and I tried using the settings to change it to something modestly attractive. All the fonts began with a "BB_" so it looks like these were custom fonts. Cool... maybe they spent the time to make some good ones. Yuk. None to be found.
Okay font ugliness aside, let's see how easy this thing is to use. After 15 minutes I came to the conclusion that I honestly felt like I was fighting with the phone to do anything. No, I didn't read a user manual, but should I really need to? It's a freakin' phone.
I picked up a Win Mobile phone and it was MUCH easier to use. I actually kind of liked some of it, probably only because I still have an ancient Toshiba PDA whose software looks like Win Mobile (even after all these many years).
Blackberry? I wouldn't take one if it were free. Too bad.
I have an N95 that suffers the same for me... sits unused because it's a freaking nightmare to use. Looks awesome and has tons of features. But right now it's main feature is preventing dust from settling in a 99 x 53 mm area on my desk.
My wife came to the same conclusion on her own after we met back up to talk about which model we liked the best. She had every intention of walking out of the store with a Blackberry of some flavor.
Unless the iPhone gets sweet Notes integration (Notes... yuk), she will probably pass on an iPhone. She could always use the browser to view emails, but that's lame. My suggestion without switching carriers and giving the iPhone a go would be Win Mobile.
My prediction though... when I get my iPhone, she's going to want to use it a lot, and probably snap one up too.
I'm holding on for July 11th when the iPhone drops, but my wife was shopping for a Blackberry at Verizon to replace her current phone for personal/work use. She knows I'm all about the iPhone, but I went to the store with her with an open mind. Honestly.
So we had a few models to look at, and the form factor of these things were okay. Not great, but they seem attractive enough. The models we saw were the kind with devoted qwerty and another with doubled-up ascii per button (yuk).
Diving into one (I don't remember which... Pearl, Curve?) I was immediately presented with about 20 icons on the home screen. I had to navigate around with one of those old IBM-like thumb ball controls. And the list of icons would scroll around on me when I hit an edge. Okay. Hard to use, but let's check out some messaging and email.
The font was ENORMOUS and ugly, and I tried using the settings to change it to something modestly attractive. All the fonts began with a "BB_" so it looks like these were custom fonts. Cool... maybe they spent the time to make some good ones. Yuk. None to be found.
Okay font ugliness aside, let's see how easy this thing is to use. After 15 minutes I came to the conclusion that I honestly felt like I was fighting with the phone to do anything. No, I didn't read a user manual, but should I really need to? It's a freakin' phone.
I picked up a Win Mobile phone and it was MUCH easier to use. I actually kind of liked some of it, probably only because I still have an ancient Toshiba PDA whose software looks like Win Mobile (even after all these many years).
Blackberry? I wouldn't take one if it were free. Too bad.
I have an N95 that suffers the same for me... sits unused because it's a freaking nightmare to use. Looks awesome and has tons of features. But right now it's main feature is preventing dust from settling in a 99 x 53 mm area on my desk.
My wife came to the same conclusion on her own after we met back up to talk about which model we liked the best. She had every intention of walking out of the store with a Blackberry of some flavor.
Unless the iPhone gets sweet Notes integration (Notes... yuk), she will probably pass on an iPhone. She could always use the browser to view emails, but that's lame. My suggestion without switching carriers and giving the iPhone a go would be Win Mobile.
My prediction though... when I get my iPhone, she's going to want to use it a lot, and probably snap one up too.
Comments:
There are currently 2 Comments:
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Jeni said...“I do not understand why people compare Blackberry with iPhone, where we all know that these are two diffrent kind of devices. Blackberry is totally professional and hard care device, designed for professional users, where iPhone is an entrainment series devices.”
