Friday, August 29, 2008

Blackberry vs. Apple iPhone 3G



So I've decided to join the 21st Century and get a decent phone. For the past two years, I've had a Virgin Mobile, pay as you go phone, which has been okay, but its kind of crappy. I resisted jumping on to the cell phone bandwagon as long as I could until the day I had to cave in because it is impossible to find a pay phone in this city, and I hate to be running late and not be able to call the person who might be waiting for me. So I did it, I bought a cell phone, but I'm cheap and I knew that I wasn't going to be using the phone to talk to anyone (I personally find it rude when people walk down the street yakking on their cell phones and don't get me started on people who use them on the bus or the subway!)


But now, I really need to be able to check my personal email and my yahoo loops while I'm at work, which I can't do because my company has cut off all access to any outside email or anything that smacks of email, like yahoo loops.


Which brings me to one of the most important decisions of my life: Blackberry or Apple iPhone 3G?

In terms of cost, they both are pretty much the same. The Apple iPhone 3G is $199.00 plus the two year AT&T contract. The Blackberry is a little cheaper but once you add on the unlimited texting and the internet usage, it comes to about the same. My company has a deals with AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, as well as Apple, so it's going to cost even less. However, I just don't know which one I want!


With the Apple iPhone, I can also use it as a mp-3 player, and I can download fairly easily off of i-Tunes and the screen is bigger in terms of reading emails vs. the Blackberry. I'm figuring that in order to pay for the monthly charges, no matter which one I buy, I'm going to cancel my home phone service. That will be hard since I've had the same home phone number since I arrived on this planet (apart from college and the times I lived in London).

I seriously think this decision is harder than the one I made about which college to go to!

Sigh! I know I'm going to chew and mull this over for a few weeks. And then I'm going to have to start cutting out all the extraneous stuff out of my life to pay for it, like US Weekly, People and bubble tea.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a Blackberry Curve. Love it. (Leanna also just got one.) I just added a 4 gig smartcard and voila, it's an MP3 player. I think it comes down to whether you are more interested in getting business done/communication (great texting keyboard on the blackberry) or pretty media (iPhone). Depending on your carrier, you can get the Curve for about 99 bucks...both Blackberry and iPhone have a pretty hefty data plan cost, though.

Leanna Renee Hieber said...

Crackberry all the way. As you can see, Liz has already cast my vote too. :) It is theeee best and while I was holding out too, it has changed my life for the better. (As far as typing, yes, the Curve is definately #1.)

kyotic said...

You must get a BlackBerry CURVE... the best and believe me it will become your new best friend!

Elizabeth Kerri Mahon said...

You guys are making a credible argument for the Blackberry. It's making it really hard for me to decide! I have an iTunes account, and if I could download that music to the crackberry CURVE, that would be awesome.

kyotic said...

YOU CAN!!! with desktop manager 4.6you can download music from itunes, I'm doing it now :) see there's no excuse --- time for you to become a crackberry addicted.

Elizabeth Kerri Mahon said...

Wow, you are making a persuasive case, Shy, I'm going to have to crunch the numbers and see which is the most cost effective. I figure if I cut back on the gossip rags and my Starbucks addiction, I should be able to afford it.