Hasta la Vista Blackberry. It’s been good.

Well about a week and a half ago I did the unthinkable. I almost feel bad writing this post, we have so much history.

I first used a Blackberry back in 1999, it was the 850 model. And back then, damn it was cool. You still had to carry around a phone... the blackberry was strictly e-mail or you could also add paging capabilities. It was an oversized pager with e-mail. But e-mail in real time, and you could reply, and synchronize to your computer. Best of all, it worked.

Over the next few years I managed a fleet of about 250 of these devices for a company at one point. Since this was a company tool, I got to test out the new ones all the time and I had the latest. You know I had to because I needed to support them.

It was a breeze maintaining them. Especially considering the other ugly alternatives at the time, --all things considered, RIM & their Blackberry were awesome.

That was 1999, now fast forward to 3 years ago, the "pda" market was pretty much defined by Blackberry, maybe a little bit of Palm, but mostly Blackberry; especially on the enterprise.

Anytime anyone asked me or advice in regards to a do-it-all device, I would recommend the latest blackberry. I had it. I went from model to model up to my beloved Curve which I bought last summer.

Then the iPhone came out, and it pretty much earned a top spot in innovation and design. In usual Apple style, the launch of iPhone and the iPod touch opened a whole new market. Quietly Apple also became a top player on cell phone devices as well. See what they do? Those sneaky bastards!

They make a new product, which develops a whole chain of new markets to support it, enhance it, and ultimately profit from it, but at the same time they enter already established markets and quickly take a significant slice of the pie. That's why they're genius.

Six months ago, hell, six weeks ago I would still think to myself how the Blackberry "can do that too" or "pssst, blackberry has been doing that for years... zzzz" in response to blurbs I would read online about how great the iPhone is, or I would hear someone rave about the latest update during the usual water cooler conversations at the office, or Starbucks, or Wahoos, or on the radio, or on the web, seriously WTF! Something was up with all this buzz about the iPhone.

Seriously, the blackberry Curve, is probably one of the best phones ever made. It works, it kicks ass and I know it inside out and can make it do great things, why would I need an iPhone?

Then the iPhone 3G came out, and as their commercials says now... "This is going to change everything" it began changing everything. I still didn't buy in, I thought, whatever.

Blackberry has Thunder (that name deserves its own discussion!) coming out and all this "new" stuff is in the works; due out soon. Surely they will have a great answer to the iPhone. But the new blackberry isn't due out just yet, and Apple has now taken the mobile device world by storm.

One day, a few weeks ago my blackberry began having problems. It would go into this SOS mode and not receive or send anything. I tried it all, the usual backup, wipe, reload, start over. I went to the store, no help. Called support, they sent a new SIM card; same problem.

After a long bike ride a few weeks later, I thought I had lost my phone, I must have dropped it. The following day during lunch, I decided to go and buy a new one. So I did, I went out and bought a new phone, I got a new iPhone, shinny 16GB of pure awesomeness in a little tiny box.

The contents of the box, simple as usual, a power "lego", a usb cable, the phone and the headphones.

I couldn't be happier about my phone now. Like I said earlier, I almost feel bad that I no longer use the crackberry. If you're a hardcore Blackberry fan, as I once was, trust me the iPhone is worth a look.

It does all that the Blackberry did, and it does it better, faster and more elegantly. The one thing that is a shortcoming is the battery life. If you're a heavy user and keep the 3G constantly on, the battery will not last very long. seriously.

The iPhone is not quite ready for the enterprise for this one reason. The need to charge it so often. This prevents any true road warrior from being able to ditch the trustworthy 2+ days of Blackberry battery life.

Otherwise, you have it all... GPS, camera, a full Qwerty keyboard, in which I can now type as fast if not faster on it than I did on my Curve. Over the air sync for calendar and contacts. Enterprise e-mail, your personal e-mail, the list goes on. Not to mention the full universe of apps available out there.

Trust me, they nailed their current marketing campaign. "this is going to change everything." It will. I highly recommend that you take a look at this phone, its not just a phone though.