Thursday, October 18, 2007

The evil temptress



There is no hiding it, I've been pretty obsessed with the iPhone since its announcement earlier this year. Its pretty much the Holy Grail in portable media devices for me, allowing me to carry just the iPhone instead of my Ipod and phone every day. Since its launch I've purposely avoided going into the Apple stores to play with it too much, and had to listen to all my buddies from Solarc tell me how great it is. Well all except Jake, which is maybe the most shocking development.

Well today was to be the day, or so I thought. I was given the opportunity to switch my cell phone to the MarkWest corporate account, a nice surprise, which is on Cingular. I had it all worked out how I could get our Network Manager to allow me to use the IPhone, even though its not supported. He gave me the thumbs up (it helps he is a mountain biking buddy of mine), so I was just going through the final stages of "Do I just buy it and then transfer it to the MW account" or "Should I just buy it through our corporate agent?"

Well after a quick email to our corporate agent crushed all my hopes and dreams. Evidently iPhones are not allowed to be added to corporate accounts. What? I didn't believe it, so I googled it. Yep, pretty much screwed here. With that revelation, I thought through a couple of other options before realizing its probably just time to conform to corporate policy like everyone else.

So that leaves me with two choices: Treo 750 on the Verizon Network or the new Blackberry 8820 on Cingular (shown below).



After spending about 30 minutes playing with both phones today in the office, I think I like the Blackberry better. All 3 people I asked about the Treo pretty much said uniformly they hated it, especially with the Windows Mobile OS that apparently locks up a lot. I've never been a Blackberry fan, but from a corporate phone stance it really makes more sense. Perhaps with the next iteration of the iPhone it will be "corporate approved" and then I can switch over, but if not maybe I'll just buy myself a new touch iPod at some point. Besides all those visions of watching movies or The Office on my iPhone on the bus ride to/from work are just pipe dreams, I like sleeping too much...

2 comments:

Rob Volpe said...

Verizon came out today with the Samsung i760 with Windows mobile 6.0. Windows Mobile has been running great on my Motorola Q for a couple of years and it has never crashed.

Buy a new Zune on Nov 13th. You can sync with Windows Media Center, so anything that you record can easily be watched on your Zune. (Why pay for the Office episode from Itunes? Actually, you cannot buy from Apple anymore.) Plus, the Zune screen is bigger than the Ipod and I find touch screen annoying, especially when you want to quickly change volume or advance tracks.

Anonymous said...

JoelWhite: I have the Blackberry 8700 through Cingular and I love it. It does everything I want it to do except take pics (no camera, since it's apparently intended for the business user). It is reliable, has a great speakerphone, and reception is strong in Tulsa (even on the big hill at 71st & Yale, near my office.) Simple to use, large screen, QWERTY keyboard, and doesn't shatter when repeatedly dropped on concrete. I bought mine for 1 penny on Amazon. Just had to sign up for an extension on my Cingular contract, which didn't bother me at all since I've been with them for 10 years already. I say go for the Blackberry!
Jennifer Brandt