What Makes Blackberry Phones So Great?

I was recently put in a very difficult situation, where I had to make a decision between purchasing the Blackberry Tour from Verizon, or switching to ATT for the ever-popular iPhone. I was very familiar of what the iPhone brings to the table, which was basically web browsing, and apps.. along with phone calls of course.

I have already experienced almost everything that it brought from the iPod Touch which I used to own, until it broke, and from using my friends' iPhones. I was impressed at first, but it got old very quickly.

So after thinking it through I extended my contract with Verizon and purchased the Backberry Tour 9630, and I was not disapointed at all. In fact I should have gotten it on the day the 9630 launched.

The following is a list of great things that make Blackberry devices so great.

I'm bring out all the "guns" right now, the Blackberry Tour has a physical keyboard like lots of other smart phones, but it's not your typical QWERTY keyboard -- no no -- it is the best physical keyboard out there. It is what makes RIM's products and the Blackberry Smart Phones so unique.

RIM just knows how to make keyboards feel ergonomic.

Many argue that the touch screen phones are the future because they contain no buttons, but many people avoid them for phones like the Blackberry and most of the Palm Smart Phones because they have physical keyboards.

Yes one of the the main reasons why the Blackberry Tour is so great is that it contains the best QWERTY keyboard on any Blackberry device to date. I just don't know how RIM keeps on improving on their phones every year, but they do it.

The Blackberry Tour enjoys the one of the newest things to hit Blackberry devices, the Blackberry App World, where you download applications including games and other features from Blackberry, just like how the iPhone has their app feature.

This is probably the only weak point that the Blackberry Tour has when compared to the iPhone, but it's not a weak feature when it's standing alone amongst other phones.

It comes at no surprise that Apple's iPhone enjoys more apps in its app store, mainly because the app feature has been out for the iPhone for a much longer time than the Blackberry App World was out for the Blackberry devices. Which brings great news to Blackberry owners which will bring the 1000 apps on there up to maybe 10,000 in a year or so. I can see it happening, since new apps are launching all the time.

One of my favorite free apps is "Slacker", which is basically free internet radio, where you select whatever genre of music you like (ex: rock, rap, electric, latin, etc.) and they'll play full songs from that genre for you. You have the option to skip songs you do not like, add artists as your favorite artists so the station plays them more often, black artists or songs that you do not like, look up information on songs and band, and when you find a song you really love you have the option to directly download that song to your Blackberry.

Most importantly, apps can be downlaoded not only from the Blackberry App World, but also from third party places like Crackberry and also from regular old sites. For example, the Gmail website contains the Gmail app, where it updates your email status to instantly as emails arrive.

Blackberry and email come hand-in-hand.

Before Blackberry devices became so popular amongs regular consumers, the Blackberry was a business-only thing, and emailing is a vital part of most businesses.

You can depend on Blackberry for emails, for sure.

You have the option of creating 10 different Blackberry emails "ex: YourName@Verizon.Blackberry.com".

With a push of a button you'll have complete control over your emails and contacts.

They great keyboard comes into play here again, because it is too difficult to type a 500-word email on a touch screen.

The camera on the Blackberry Tour is the best camera on any Blackberry device.

The camera is a 3.2MP camera, complete, with flash and auto-focus.

I've taken many pictures with this thing, and every one of them looked beautiful, as good as any $300 digital camera would make.

The iPhone's major downfall is its camera, in fact, not until its latest iPhone did they add the video feature.