Blackberry vs WindowsMobile – battle of the "smart" phones

Any regular readers will know that I’m a Windows Mobile kind of guy. It’s not that I don’t have other phones, it’s just that I prefer Windows over any of them.

When T-mobile had a deal on the Blackberry 8800 last week, I broke down and ordered one. It had been years since I last had a Blackberry (3 years ago, the 7200). How do the 2 compare? When is the Blackberry a better choice? Does "WinMo" have an edge over the Berry?

I’ve gone over a couple of the aspects of things you’d want to know about with a smartphone, and will give my own personal opinion. Not everyone will share that of course…

User Interface

The Blackberry has a no-frills interface. RIM didn’t even introduce themes to their devices till 2005. The look and feel of the Blackberry is very boring, but it gets the job done. Buttons and options are where you’d expect to find them. On

WindowsMobile looks prettier and more vibrant, you also have more flexibility in setting things up, though the interface itself can be quite confusing at times.

I am not a fan of the Blackberry font choices. You get more choices than with Windows (where you can select ONE font in 4 sizes), but none of those choices are easy on the eyes, plus the smallest font setting is still too large (in my opinion).

Winner: tie

Form Factor

It’s hard to compare the form factor of these 2 platforms, since there are so many different models.

All I can compare is the devices I have here. The Blackberry 8800 is smaller and lighter than my Windows phones. At first I missed having a touch screen, but the Blackberry trackball actually works very well. The keyboard on the 8800 is quite cramped but the entire device just feels sturdier. I’ve never dropped my Windows phone, but I’m sure that if I did, it would explode into 100 small pieces.

Blackberry devices come in 2 flavors; with a full keyboard, and with a numeric keypad. The other variations are all purely cosmetic. Windows devices on the other hand come in 100′s of different shapes and sizes.

Both devices come with a nice leather holster, but the Blackberry one is "smart" and can change its profile for when it is in the holster. For example; I have mine set to vibrate when I get a new message, but only when it is in the holster. I really wish Windows device makers would steal that concept.

Winner: Blackberry

Email

The email setup on my WindowsMobile phone is though a third party Exchange service provider. I pay about $5 per month, on top of my data plan. Without a third party service or your own Exchange server you can only use POP or IMAP for email, neither of which is "push", or real-time email.

On the Blackberry I use the "T-mobile Blackberry Internet Service", which does not require your own server (owned or hosted). Setup is simple, you open the browser, and create an email address (xxxxxxx@tmo.blackberry.net). You can then enter any email accounts you want to pull messages from. From start to finish the entire setup only took 5 minutes.

The Blackberry email client is also better equipped. Simple things like "mark all read" and a more powerful search feature make it more efficient than the limited email client on WindowsMobile.

Winner: Blackberry 

PIM

Both devices come with all the information management tools you’d expect on a smartphone; Calendar, Contacts, Memo and Tasks. Both devices can also synchronize that information with your desktop, or "over the air". To do an over the air synchronization you will need access to a corporate server solution or pay for a third party service to host this for you.

I found very few differences between the PIM applications on each device. Both had virtually the same features.

 

 

 

 

Phone

The phone interface on WindowsMobile has always annoyed me. Button presses are often delayed, and it isn’t uncommon for things to crash when you try and pick up a call. On the Blackberry it just works. And it ALWAYS works. To me, a reliable phone application is the most important part of my smartphone.

Winner: Blackberry

Desktop Application

Both devices come with (free) synchronization software for your desktop.

Blackberry devices use Blackberry Desktop Manager, and Windows devices use Activesync (Windows XP and lower) or the new Mobile Device Center (Windows Vista).

Mac users can download a free version of Blackberry for Mac from, but users of a WindowsMobile device don’t have it that sweet. There are solutions to sync your Windows device with a Mac, but none are provided by Microsoft, and (As far as I know), none are free.

The desktop solution for WindowsMobile does "live syncing"; any changes you make in Outlook are instantly sent to the device, without having to press "sync" each time. That said; Syncing under Vista has become terribly unreliable. Microsoft took something that worked fine (Activesync) and tried to make it look prettier. And in doing so, they messed things up badly.

Activesync and Mobile Device Center only work with Outlook. People using other desktop information programs will need to find their own solutions. The Blackberry Desktop can sync with most versions of Outlook, Lotus Notes, Groupwise and the Yahoo! Pim.

The Blackberry Desktop Manager also includes a full backup and restore application, as well as a "data transfer" program which makes it easier to switch to a new Blackberry device, without losing any data.

Winner: Blackberry

Battery life

WindowsMobile is notorious for hating battery life. Both my HTC devices (Sprint Mogul and TytnII) need to be plugged in at least once a day. If I’ve used WiFi or GPS then they sometimes need to get more juice by lunchtime.

I’ve had the Blackberry for 2 weeks now, and have only charged it twice. It constantly amazes me that at the end of the day I can’t even tell whether the battery bar has dropped anything at all.

Winner: Blackberry

Web Browser

This part of my review is quite unfair to the Blackberry. T-mobile only offer EDGE data connections on their network, which means your connection is about the same speed as an old 56k modem, and it shows. Loading pages takes forever.

The Blackberry browser is just terrible. Pages look bad, load wrong, and no rich content shows up. You can load the decent Opera mobile browser on it, which will improve things a little, but you’d still be stuck with EDGE.

On my Windows device the default browser isn’t much better, Pocket Internet Explorer has been mentioned by me before, and I concluded that it was the worst pocket browser in the world. That was till I spent some time on the Blackberry. Thankfully it is quite easy to replace that browser. Windows Mobile professional (touchscreen version of Windows) has a huge assortment of browsers, with new ones being developed every week. Some of these new browsers even support Flash and other rich content.

Winner: WindowsMobile

Applications

Applications for the Blackberry are like it’s targeted users; boring and business oriented. There are a few applications to pick from, but most are expensive and quite limited. I found that programs for Windows Mobile are usually of better quality, and cheaper.

Windows also has a much larger library of programs, with many programs released as freeware. There are just a handful of Blackberry developers, and they take pride in trying to milk their work for everything they can (note to developers: charging $5 for a theme file should be illegal).

Winner: WindowsMobile

GPS

The GPS hardware on the Blackberry is quite decent; I get a great signal without waiting too long. But the big disappointment is the software. GPS doesn’t help much if you can’t actually navigate well with it.

My T-mobile Blackberry came with Blackberry Maps, and a demo version of TeleNav. Both those packages are quite terrible. There are some third party GPS programs for the Blackberry, including some free options (Google maps, Windows Live), but none of them are "real" navigation packages.

My Windows Device has lots of different navigation options, including the same free programs you can get for the Blackberry. GPS is a little quicker to get a "fix" and it works great with the weakest of signals (I still get 8 satellites in the middle of my house).

Winner: WindowsMobile

Multimedia

In short; multimedia on the Blackberry is pants. It can play music and video, but it has a terribly hard time doing so. My 8800 has a microSD card slot, so I outfitted it with a 2Gb card. I couldn’t get my 4Gb SDHC card to work, despite the specifications listing support for SDHC.

Video playback is choppy and doesn’t support full screen viewing, music playback sounds ok, but loading large folders can take ages (just loading a list of 150 songs takes around a minute).

You can’t stream audio over Bluetooth headphones either (at least not on my device with the current software version).

Multimedia on my Windows PDA is amazing. I can playback almost any video or audio format, and my device supports memory cards up to 16Gb. There is support for Bluetooth audio as well as Bluetooth remote control.

The default player (Windows Media Player) supports full screen playback, but adding a third party player is recommended (I use the Core Pocket Media Player).

Winner: Windows Mobile

So… Let’s take a look at the final score:

	Windows Mobile	Blackberry
User Interface	1	1
Form Factor	0	1
Email	0	1
Pim	1	0
Phone	0	1
Desktop Application	0	1
Battery Life	0	1
Web Browser	1	0
Applications	1	0
GPS	1	0
Multimedia	1	0
SCORE	7	6

 

So there you have it. My entirely scientific and reliable survey says that both devices are equally "good" but that WindowsMobile is slightly better.

Of course, you can’t (and shouldn’t) purchase anything like this based on my suggestions. Each device has its own strong (and weak) points.

The Blackberry is rock solid. It just works, but it’s boring as hell. Windows is exciting, and quite like Windows on the desktop; you’ll need to treat it well if you want it to keep working correctly. Mess with it, or press the wrong button, and it’ll crash on you.

Cost of use is also an issue; The Blackberry I tested here cost $99, but that was through a special deal; the retail price for "normal" users is a $279.

My WindowsMobile devices cost $200 (Sprint Mogul) and $799 (TytnII – without contract).

Monthly usage fees also vary; you can get a Blackberry plan for as little as $39.99/month (T-mobile $29.99 voice plan + $9.99 email only plan). If you want email and web access, you’ll need the $19.95 Blackberry plan.

The only advantage of the the slow T-mobile speeds is that their service comes at a lower price, because most other providers charge at least $40 for the Blackberry add-on.

My Mogul only costs me $30 per month (Sprint SERO plan) plus I get access to speedy 3G data. Since the SERO plan is open to almost anyone that wants one, it’s clear that it is the better choice. Of course, you will run into problems if you try using your Sprint CDMA phone in Europe, as they only have GSM networks.