After looking through your overly simplified and ridiculous slideshow I went ahead and read your “in-depth comparison” and you should be ashamed. It states that you used each of the devices for a month before writing this, but did you actually do any research on the devices beyond your simple testing? Also did you spend a month with each device or did you spend the same month with both devices? If it is the later, then did you really actually try to use the blackberry all that much? After reading your “comparison” I doubt that you did. Just to set you straight on a few things that you decided to omit, didn’t actually research, were misinformed on or completely lied about let me offer up some information.

Deathmatch: E-mail, calendars, and contacts

Honestly I am at a loss on your email comments. You may want to take a harder look at your IT department if you were having this much trouble with BES. It isn’t that hard to deal with and you should not have been getting the reconcile problems that you were. BIS is a walk in the park for most users having your email synced up perfectly with most email accounts that are available. As far as the contacts go, why in God’s name would anyone scroll through all of their contacts? All you have to do is type in part of a name (first, last or company name) and the device will jump to the contact you need. If you have several hundred contacts in your phone, like many people do, scrolling is just a waste of time. This doesn’t even really touch on the fact that the Blackberry will allow you to simply start typing in a phone number or contact name while on the home screen and bring up the person you want to call even easier. This of course is a huge benefit of actually having a keyboard on the device. It is very obvious that you based all your comparisons on what you as an individual prefer. Just a little bias thrown in for good measure I guess.

Deathmatch: Applications

Unlike the iphone, almost all of the apps for blackberry are available outside of app world. They can be browsed via a computer and even purchased, downloaded and installed via a computer. Most of the companies that design these apps have full featured website that offer detailed descriptions and screenshots. The big difference is that iphone requires the use of itunes to browse these apps and with blackberry all you need is an internet connection. Many of these apps are available free and are actually useful. So, yes there is an app for that.

The fact that you think that most blackberry apps are “pale, pathetic imitations of iPhone apps” is simply ludicrous. Maybe some of the apps that you chose to look at happened to also have an iphone counterpart, but they are not imitations if they are both being developed by the same company, get real. Also apps for “managing your Amazon.com orders, or translating foreign-language terms” are just as available for the blackberry and they are free.

You mention “Blackberry has DataViz's $70 Documents to Go, which is capable and straightforward, letting me do basic text edits in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, and simple formatting such as boldfacing text. You can cut and paste as well.”, but failed to mention that Blackberries now come standard with Documents to Go and it is free and you completely sidestepped the fact that the iphone won’t allow a user to cut and paste.

The generalized statement that Blackberry apps are all pricier and less capable or harder to use is simply an outright lie. You have obviously never really looked at the selection of apps provided for blackberry devices. Many of the most useful apps are actually free and they are all pretty easy to use. Which is harder to use when using any app that requires a keyboard? Is it the blackberry that has a full QWERTY keyboard at your fingertips 100% of the time or the iphone that has a miniscule keyboard that comes up some of the time?

Deathmatch: Location support

Once again you are 100% without a doubt totally and completely WRONG! Blackberries come with a native program called Blackberry Maps. Most people have never even heard of or used Gokivo. Google maps is also a free download form m.google.com and has the same functions as the app for the iphone. There are also several gps navigation programs with spoken turn by turn directions available for the blackberries that are 100% free too. I cannot imagine a more biased comparison that this one. Also, I have never seen anyone have trouble getting a gps lock indoors with a blackberry or an iphone so your statement is just foolish.

Deathmatch: User interface

Blackberries use themes. The type that you display is a zen theme. This allows for a small number of more commonly used icons to be on the home screen and reduce clutter. There are also today themes that can show a number of combinations on the home screen such as calendar events, new mail, sms and mms messages (the iphone can’t send mms by the way), etc. There are also themes called icon themes that give the user a more “unified interface”, as you put it, just like the iphone. This is all designed to allow the user the ability to customize their experience to their liking. To understand or view more, simply do a google search for blackberry themes. This would have taken only a few seconds for anyone really trying to do research on a subject and allowed them to write a more informed article.

You can also move apps around on the blackberry. They are not required to be in a folder and they can also be set up on the home screen for easy access. This is another glaring falsehood in the supposed “deathmatch” that you put together. I would suggest that you actually try to do something with a device before you state that it can’t be done. Also, you failed to mention if the iphone even has the option of creating folders or hiding icons. If the iphone doesn’t allow for creation of folder to organize the supposed hundreds of apps that a user might keep on their phone, then I would say that it is falling quite a bit behind most of the other devices on the market.

After reading through everything it is painfully obvious that you didn’t come close to giving the Blackberry a fair shake. You leave out or try to direct attention away from the iphone’s inability to do simple tasks like cut and paste, send multimedia messages or take video with the camera. Sorry, but you need to take a little time and learn to use an actual business tool and quite fooling around with that overpriced toy.

I think the iPhone is a very nice and useful device for individuals and SOHO's. It is a fun toy, that is for sure. I think they are way over priced, but then so is every single thing made by Apple. I would not pay more than $200 for an iPhone and I would want it to have at least 80GB of storage or more. Honestly their pricing is offensive to the educated techie guy. When you think about Mobile devices and their storage what they are using is Flash Drive chip sets - some of the cheapest storage products in the world today.

This is a heavily biased article, couple of misconceptions though and a lot of very significant omissions, that in my opinion, are essential.

In fact they are so glaringly obvious I would have to declare the writer of this article a completely incompetent non-technical person that obviously has never had a "real job" in IT.

Windows Mobile or Blackberry Devices:
No Enterprise management solution exists. This is OK for a SOHO, but any business with more than a few hundred users it is unmanageable.

No centralized Enterprise device Encryption products that meet HIPA, SOX, SEC or any other form of compliance requirements. In other words I cannot prove beyond my word that a device is encrypted if it is stolen and contained sensitive information. This leaves most US Corporations liable to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and potential jail time.

No self Destruct Mechanism if a lost or stolen device is activated. We can send a kill signal that will wipe the device and render it as useful as a brick forever, The device can only be restored to functionality and service by the company that owns it. There is not reset, no reformat. It is DEAD to the thief and useless to a pawn shop.

No imaging or standards solution exists for iPhone. We can plug any of our blackberry or windows mobile devices into a controller and instantly load a company standard of software and features. This lowers support costs.

We can allow and disallow particular functions and features from a central management console controlling what is called a desired state. In other words we can say a machine can only have a proven stable configuration and deny unauthorized "freeware or software" that may compromise reliability.

We can remotely backup data and information for users which makes turn around for replacement or damaged devices quicker and practical because it also restores it to the last state a user had their device.

Our in house software developers have developed custom sales and workflow automation software that allows our personnel to make multi-million dollar deals and submit orders to manufacturing from their mobile devices. They can even track the progress of every single order in real time along the assembly line anywhere in the world from anywhere in the world while monitoring and updating information in SAP.

Let's see you do that with an iPhone.

The iPhone:
It is so cute that even a Republican will love it.

The bottom line is that the iPhone 3G is a very slick looking and impressive, yet over priced device. Anyone would have to admit that of the 35k apps the vast majority have absolutely nothing to do with productivity. The iPhone is a geek toy that can have some business applications. What the iPhone is not is an Enterprise Class solution.

Gee, could you write a more biased comparison? What a joke.

There's also the fact that office email is encrypted in transit when running against a Blackberry Enterprise Server. Oh and with BES its easy to remotely disable a lost Blackberry, and apply IT policies. These are the sorts of IT related topics one might anticipate reading about in an IT magazine. Some of these features are making it to the iPhone, but its been slow going.

So, what's with the consumer focus?

I realize that the iPhone has changed the game so to speak, and its a great device in many ways, but you sir have compiled a poorly researched mess of information that I hope no one reads and takes seriously.

#1 - "The BlackBerry comes with no map navigation, but the free Gokivo Navigator..." This is completely untrue. First of all Blackberry Maps comes on MOST devices, and Google Maps is easily installed from m.google.com, and has the same functionality as Google Maps on the iPhone.

#2 - "The BlackBerry's cramped display (right) makes you work harder to scroll through contacts" - Again how can you make this statement when most anyone would start typing the name of the contact and allow the Blackberry's auto complete find it for them. Much more efficient and something you neglected to point out.

#3 - "The BlackBerry (right) places apps in multiple folders, so they're harder to find." - This is a matter of opinion. Organization vs. a clutter of icons.

#4 - "BlackBerry apps are pricier and either less capable or harder to use." - Are you kidding? Why not just make the article 1 slide and type "Forget Blackberry, Buy an iPhone" on it.

#5 - The iPhone does blow away the Blackberry in terms of web browsing - mostly thanks to specifically designed iPhone websites. So much for web standards.

All in all this article does a dis-service in informing readers about the real differences between these devices. And is completely biased.

Why not mention that the iPhone is incapable of sending or receiving MMS messages, or capturing video? No copy and paste, or application switching in the iPhone either...

You left off Phone functions. For example if you get an email on the Blackberry you can quickly dial the emailers phone number without leaving the email screen. Can you do that with the iphone?