iPhone Here I Come
For those individuals following me on Twitter this blog post will come as no big surprise. However, others may be shocked and possibly brazen enough to brand me as a ‘traitor’ after reading this post, lol. Whatever the case may be, let it be known beforehand that these are simply my opinions about the current state of the smartphone market and so on.
Cutting to the chase, my love affair with BlackBerry smartphones has come to a bitter end. For the past several months RIM’s stale hardware and software offerings to the otherwise booming smartphone market have left me wholly unimpressed. In retrospect, it was the [poor] release of their BlackBerry Tour 9630 that proved to be the last straw for me. The honeymoon period with my Tour lasted a grand total of four months before I became utterly bored, not to mention frustrated, with RIM’s very dated devices and operating software. (In comparison, the honeymoon period with my first BlackBerry, an 8830, lasted well over a year’s time.) Subsequently, my disdain towards BlackBerry devices grew tenfold with each passing week until I finally reached a point where I honestly felt that I wasted my money on the Tour. Warranted buyer’s remorse is the worst feeling for a consumer to experience, especially in this sort of economy. To make matters worst, people around me were upgrading from their dated BlackBerry devices to shiny, new Android-equipped smartphones—serious jealousy ensued on my part.
Quickly after its launch last summer, it became apparent that the now defunct Tour 9630 was not ready for its much publicized release on various CDMA carriers. Plagued by numerous reports of defective trackballs, LED screens, battery doors and so on, the Tour will arguably go down in history as the BlackBerry-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Moreover, RIM’s announcement of the Tour2 …err Bold 9650, mere months after the Tour’s launch, left many once loyal BlackBerry users (like myself) seething with anger at the company’s apparent greed over customer satisfaction. RIM’s fragmented (read: half-assed) device and OS ‘updates’ for the past few years definitely haven’t garnered them many cool points within the tech world and their customer base. They are simply moving much too slowly to release an über modern device powered by an innovative mobile OS. In my opinion, RIM has yet to offer something truly worthy of competing with the likes of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android mobile platforms that are currently dominating today’s smartphone market.
Now for the big reveal: I plan on switching to an iPhone 4 sometime later this summer.
*gasps*
I’ve had the opportunity to play around with my sister’s old, deactivated iPhone for the past few months and I’m sold. I truly love EVERYTHING about this smartphone platform. It also doesn’t hurt that a vast majority of the websites that I frequent and companies that I do business with have [good] apps readily available in Apple’s App Store. I’m basically using this deactivated iPhone in the same capacity as one would use an iPod Touch (i.e. connected via Wi-Fi). However, even in its ‘crippled’ state, it is quite apparent to me that the ‘iPhone experience’ supersedes my nearly three years as a BlackBerry user.
The tech world’s been abuzz with speculation over whether or not the iPhone will finally make its way to additional carriers in the U.S. sooner than originally anticipated. In truth, this feverish debate between market analysts and tech enthusiasts alike isn’t new to the discussion of the iPhone’s ‘limited’ availability here in the States. Even still, I can only hope for this device to make its way to another carrier, like Verizon, this fall—one of the more popular rumors surrounding the iPhone as of late. However, all rumors and speculation aside, I’m adamant in becoming an iPhone user by end of this year. While I’m aware of those BlackBerry users who’ve switched platforms only to return for some reason or another, don’t count on me contributing to that small statistic. Simply put, BlackBerry is not the smartphone platform for me anymore.
Obviously my decision to switch smarthphone platforms will ultimately affect my future in BlackBerry theme development. For the time being I still plan on developing new BlackBerry themes for select devices running OS 5.0 only and with the screen size resolution of 480 by 360 pixels. However, I cannot guarantee my continual participation in the BlackBerry theme community once I do finally switch to an iPhone.
UPDATE: I am no longer designing BlackBerry themes, sorry.
