With RIM and Apple increasingly becoming two of the biggest mobile phone giants around now with over 30million people worldwide owning a BlackBerry handset and over 73.5million iPhones sold at the end of 2010. But ideally which one is the best? I have been studying the BlackBerry Torch and Apple’s latest iPhone 4 in different categories and here are the results.
The Screen
From first glance the iPhones screen wins straight away. With more pixels than the human eye can distinguish at 640x960 you can see why the iPhone wins this round of a fight from the two phone giants. The BlackBerry isn’t fully dismissed; it still has a crisp and high quality bright 360x480 pixel screen.
Power
In the past some BlackBerrys processing power hasn’t always been up to scratch and at some points ran at a snail’s pace. This is clearly a different story with the BlackBerry Torch, it handles multitasking smoothly without the need of an enhanced processor. The BlackBerry Torch really does shine in this category compared to the iPhone 4’s 1GHZ processor which lacks memory management making multitasking somewhat sluggish.
Web Browser
With the iPhone 4 running Apple’s own Safari web browser you’d expect the same high quality as you’d get on your Mac at home or PC running the desktop version of Safari however we feel the BlackBerry’s new and improved Webkit browser does the job on a better scale. The Webkit browser just renders the websites much better and the tabbed browsing is just superior to Apple’s safari.
Apps
Previous iPhone owners will know that Apple’s App Store is blooming with apps free and paid for at a reasonable price beating BlackBerry’s App World with a limited range of apps with generally high prices and limited generally to business based apps. To RIM there is always time to improve with the release of APIs for developers coming soon.
Keyboard
Everything in this day in age is made of touchscreen technology. Somehow I feel it just doesn’t always work, for instance its winter you’re wearing gloves and you receive a text, you take out your iPhone for example to read the text although the touchscreen will not work with your glove still on, this means you have to then take your glove off and risk your once toasty fingers to read a text. The BlackBerry Torch however has the best of both worlds, an optional touchscreen keyboard or a physical form QWERTY slide down keyboard for ease of use. Touchscreens can take some time to get used where as physical form just works straight away.
Operating System
Both phones have a powerful easy to use OS, the current IOS4 for iPhone is a vast improvement on previous versions of IOS adding multitasking and universal inbox support. RIM has already supported some of these elements so in their OS they have made the BlackBerry experience a bit more user friendly and a universal search tool to compete with Apple’s Spotlight search support.
Memory
Apple have still not realised that people are always going to want to expand the memory on their device for pictures, music and more forms of media. The iPhone still possesses no form of memory expansion like a microSD slot. The BlackBerry therefor wins this battle with microSD support currently supporting up to 32GB memory cards and even more when higher capacity cards become available.
Camera
The iPhone 4 boasts a 5 megapixel HD camera and also a secondary camera for use with Apple’s FaceTime video calling facility making this clearly the overall winner. The BlackBerry also has a 5 megapixel camera but doesn’t record videos in 720p HD, although the BlackBerry image quality has always been great the iPhone just has the crisper edge.
Battery Life
The battery life of a BlackBerry has always been excellent thanks to its in house data management system running efficiently, however Apple have improved with the latest iPhone on battery life but it still doesn’t come close to the mark of the stamina of a BlackBerry.
Overall
To tie it all up if you’re looking for a stylish and practical phone the iPhone 4 is for you. It’s easy to use and the HD recording facility is great to capture them memories on the move. If you’re looking for an all-round performer and great physical form QWERTY keyboard the BlackBerry is for you, with memory expansion and smooth multi-tasking. They’re both winners but at the end of the day it’s what suites the user.
