Crackberry!

I’ve often wondered how long I can resist the touch friendly sexiness of the iPhone or the myriad Android based devices?  Well, here are my reasons for sticking to my good old Blackberry!

1. Email—when it comes to email, my berry is still the King. If you want mission critical encrypted email delivered to you, instantly, no other phone comes close to the reliability and ease of use that a berry offers.
2. Keyboard—I’ve never been a fan of touch screen keyboards and when it comes to keyboards, RIM (makers of Blackberry) are still streets ahead of its competitors. Combining the perfect tactile feedback with a very user-friendly layout the keyboard is something to drool about.
3. LED Notification—Not many phones have this feature. My berry has a small LED light that can blink unobtrusively in different colors depending on whether you have a new email, missed call, text message, voice mail, facebook message etc. As a result, very conveniently, from a distance you can decide whether you need to reach out for your phone or not.
4. Bedside mode—Another great feature on my berry is the bedside mode that instantly turns the phone into a beside alarm clock when charging (with a desktop charging pod) and also disables the LED notification so it doesn’t bother me at night.
5. Profiles—My phone allows me to customize audio and vibrate notifications to a very detailed level. So for example, you can make it vibrate twice when you get a mail in gmail but vibrate only once when you get an email in yahoo. You don’t have to take out the phone from your pocket to figure out in which inbox you got the mail.
6. Applications (Apps)—some say the greatest innovation of Apple is not its iPhone but it’s App Store. Blackberry has been late to join the bandwagon but is fast catching up. There are some great apps for Facebook, Twitter, checking weather, storing passwords, turning your phone into a flashlight, sharing your files etc that greatly extend the functionality of the phone.
7. Shortcuts—simple but thoughtful shortcuts that enhance your productivity—for example you can add a quick shortcut to add an email signature, add a pause and wait when dialing extensions and conference call numbers all make the phone irresistible in my opinion.
8. Browser—The new webkit based OS6 browser is much improved over its earlier OS5 version. Its fast, has tabbed browsing, flash and HTML5 support all of which makes it a handy tool for checking the web on the go.
9. Universal Search—another great new OS6 feature allowing me to instantly search my phone to find what I am looking for—no need to fumble around through confusing menus any more.
10. Solid phone—At the end of the day your phone should work as a phone. Period. You don’t care for fancy displays and do-it-all apps when you are in a dead zone and desperately want to call someone. The berry’s radio is as good as it can get with cell phones, no question. My earlier Nokia dropped calls like crazy and I for sure appreciate the difference a good solid phone can make.

So when the next iPhone or the Android device is able to match my berry in at least five of these features, I’ll jump ship, I promise. Till then my berry remains on my bedside.

PS: For those interested in finer details, I’m running a leaked OS 6.0.0.358 on an AT&T branded BB9700.