It seems like lately everyone is talking about the touch-screen bearing BlackBerry 9000 series devices that are supposed to be coming out in the first half of next year. Don’t get me wrong, the BlackBerry 9000 will undoubtedly be a popular device, however, an iPhone killer it won’t be. (It doesn’t really need to be, however that is for another post…)
Touch screens aren’t anything new. Granted the iPhone’s interface is revolutionary and is actually pretty usable, however, the tactile feel of buttons when pounding out emails is far superior. Simply ignore anyone who tries to convince you otherwise.
RIM is absolutely pushing into the consumer market and success here is critical to the long term success of the company going forward, however, RIM doesn’t have the luxury of putting out a device so targeted to consumers that less than one tenth of one percent of the people who buy it do so primarily for business reasons.
Although the trend is changing, the majority of BlackBerry users out there use their devices because they really need them, in addition to them being cool phones. How many iPhone users truly need an iPhone to support their livelihood? A third of BlackBerry users think that SureType is evil. No keyboard at all will be perceived as “Michael Vick dog fighting” evil for many.
A BlackBerry with a touch screen will be pretty cool. I will surely get one. It will, however, undoubtedly be my other device. Kind of like my iPhone is now.
If they did it as a combination of the iPhone and Voyager, where you have the option on the front screen or flip it open to a keyboard, that wouldn’t be so bad. I myself prefer the keyboard, but if it’s designed in the same fashion as the Voyager or Tilt, it may not be so bad. I can view what I need on the front display, and if I need the keyboard, open it like the Voyager or Tilt. I’d have to see it and use it in order to determine if there’s any great advantage I guess.
Most flip anything on wireless devices are poor designs. When the devices are flipped open it upsets the balance of the device, takes more than one hand to hold and operate the device, and makes typing while in motion almost impossible. Which is why RIM got it so right with suretype as a solution. Suretype might have it’s drawbacks to full qwerty keyboards but there is not a phone out there which can touch the Pearl when it comes to power and usability in that small form factor.
“The skeptics told you Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone isn’t a business device. The skeptics said the iPhone isn’t for business applications. The skeptics were dead wrong.”
http://www.seekingalpha.com/article/50378-iphone-s-new-business-apps-just-what-the-market-needed
Can iPhone Do Business? Business May Not Have A Choice
http://video.crn.com/?fr_story=a685887fbc3f38bc0f5e979ba52ea5ec1e9a8523&rf=sitemap
I don’t buy it….it will be many years before the iPhone – as cool as it is – will be adopted in the enterprise space. Too many “toy” functions on a device to be considered a business tool and no support for enterprise Email and IT support. Give it a few years and possibly it will change.
In the here and now, the iPhone is not an optimal business device nor will the existing model ever be. I am not saying that you can’t use your iPhone for buisiness just like I am not saying that you can’t use a Sony PSP running Home Brew for business.
What I am saying is that RIM doesn’t have to worry too much about the iPhone as we know it today intruding on their turf as far as big business is concerned. Anyone who tells you they are a hard core business user of the iPhone that they just bought back in June and that they couldn’t do their job without is either lying to you or to themselves and really needs get a subscription to Handheld Computing.
The iPhone is not a business device. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you do…”
I don’t think we’ll see a touch-screen blackberry for a while (a few years). While the 90000 series will have a larger screen and advanced functionality, I can’t see it including a touch-screen just yet. I think people are addicted to Blackberry’s just as much for their QWERTY keyboards as for their push email, and I would hope the company realizes that.
A few BGR posts state that he’s heard of them developing a touch-screen device (or something that incorporates a touch screen but keeps the keyboard – similar to the Tilt), but I don’t think those have been linked to this new rumored device for the first half of 2008.
I agree. One of the main selling points of a BB is the keyboard; eliminate that and you get a weak imitation of the iPhone. Unless RIM is developing some totally awesome new touch screen technology, such as a viable virtual keyboard with effective haptic response, then I don’t see much reason for this device.
I’d be happy with an 83xx series with 3G and a few other tweaks…
Robb,
“A BlackBerry with a touch screen will be pretty cool. I will surely get one. It will, however, undoubtedly be my other device. Kind of like my iPhone is now.”
As is my iPhone at the current time.
Not sure if I’d get a touch screen Blackberry, which does what the iPhone has been doing, or a BB which doesn’t build on or solve some of the iPhone’s miss’s. More IMAP email providers are certainly helping the iPhone as is the iPhone’s ever growing market share. The question is can a RIM BB ever do media as good as it does email?
The iPhone has shown the industry what technology, functions and features have been overlooked. Apple with v1 of the iPhone has raised the bar for the entire industry which no handset maker has been able to top even after almost a year after the iPhone was announced.
Thinking I might just dust off the iPhone and start using it again as my primary phone. With more and more IMAP mail and more app’s things seem to be getting better and better. Some of us know there are functions of the iPhone which RIM and it’s current BB’s can’t come close. Though that is expected as the iPhone is a handheld computer. What do you say Robb? We both go cold turkey back to the iPhone and make it work? I miss the iPhone UI, there is a bigger world out there besides our BB’s based on text.
I HATE HATE HATE touch screens! The entire reason I am considering switching from my MDA (TMo) to a Blackberry (Sprint) first & foremost is to get rid of that crap touch screen interface they force upon you with Win Mobile devices. I do a lot of traveling and the Blackberry fits the bill, but what about a camera / video capability in the next international version ? Then it would be the complete package for me. (So much so I would pay out of my own pocket for business use.)
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting! Look for some my links:
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well.