Fruit of choice

If you're in the market for a new cellular phone, the most talked about devices are undoubtedly the Apple iPhone or a Blackberry smart phones. Sure theres 100's of others to choose from, like the Sony Ericssons, Nokia's , HTC's & Samsung's but the top 2 best sellers are the ones that share their names with fruit. Now if you're like me, the most important features to the phone must be:

• Fast internet
• Good camera
• Processing speed
• Good screen resolution
• Easy to use but not too childish
• Oh and make phone calls of course!

Now if you have to go through all of those key facts, one can easily find any other phone on the market that fits for what I need. It get mores technical as choice varies and so does price, plus with call rates differing from various networks it makes things even more complicated! I had the Nokia 5800 express music, and it served its purpose. The 3 megapixel camera was a major down grade from my previous 5 megapixel I had on my N95 but I learnt to live with it. The build quality is what got to me on the 5800, within a week I already started experiencing problems with the slide keylock function on the side, it worked at times, and didnt. That and the back cover clips are more flimsy than light bulb glass, the first of those broke off within the first 2 months. It did how ever hold on with the 3rd clip being more solid. The touch screen interface was simple and easy to use, it did how ever lack good app's and struggled when you installed a lot of them.

Apple iPhone4

Seeing that I already was used to touch screen one would have thought the iPhone4 would have been the obvious choice. Yes it is pricey but at the time Vodacom offered a pretty good bundle at R250 per month with 110mb data, while it had all the quialities I needed I just found it pointless as I am in the market to get the 4th Gen iTouch iPod, which is basically the same thing as the iPhone but without the phone. When I travel I like to listen to music instead of the boring crap certain airlines choose to show. So by me having this one, I couldnt make use of the mp3 player since South Africa Airline Safety regulations require all cell phones to be switched off despite what ever mode it is in. So I'd be wasting a good mp3 player. There were other factors too that weighed in, like is 110mb enough for uploads, downloads, and app use? Then there was the usual worry of my clumsiness and the durability of the LCD screen, I tend to drop things a lot. I was extra careful with my Nokia but some how that stopped but the phone it self still lives on.

Blackberry 9800 Torch

The Blackberry on the other hand meant going back to buttons, and not the kind I was used to, tiny flippin things that when first gazed upon you feel like you might smash 10 at once. There were 2 options I was looking at, firstly  the Torch which is both touch screen and has a keypad. The new OS6 it comes with is pretty good so I've heard, and it comes with a 5 megapixel camera so I could take decent pictures again. The other option was the 9700 bold, which is a fairly old model on the market but still has features that would make some of the latest androids look like a toy. The downside for this model was the size of the screen and camera being 3 megapixel. Cost wise getting the a Blackberry worked out the best in terms of internet use. With BIS I have unlimited internet, so I can tweet all day long with out wondering how much my bill is going to be, plus there major plus is BBM. Yes its a glorified instant message chat service and the iPhone has whatsapp but by my god it is brilliant! I now know why most of my friends forced me to get this phone, just for BBM. 

Blackberry 9700

Well as per that last sentence you would have made out I have settled for a Blackberry, the 9700, like I said its practical and I love how the internet integrates with most things on the phone. The tiny buttons look daunting but believe me you really have to try to press more than 1 button. The design of the keypad is brilliant with each button at a certain angle so that when pressing it, you press that one alone. The build quality is pretty good and it looks great, there is the cheaper 8520, which some say is the modern day Nokia 3310, but there is a major difference between the 2 phones besides having 3G and Edge, the 9700 has the new OS and a 3 megapixel camera. The screen resolution is much sharper as well. The camera doesnt take the best pictures, even when compared to my old Nokia but I've gotten used to carrying my cybershot around for proper pictures so it doesnt bother me that much. The internet services are quick and the trackball is very responsive. So far the phone seems like a winner in my books, there are certain bugs I've picked up like certain app's freezing from time to time but no major problems to report of as yet.

People who get these phones do tend to take sides, so you're either an Apple or a Blackberry person, I on the other had seem to be partial to the both. They both are remarkable phones and if I had the finances I would have gotten both but for now the Blackberry will have to do.