Why I'd Consider A Blackberry For My Next Phone

So leafing through the Blackberry X hype, and I find myself considering that I would seriously consider a Blackberry for my next phone. Yes, I've only had this iPhone for 14 months and I may be stuck with it for another year and a half (but hopefully not -- hopefully only another half year) but it isn't ever too early to consider what I'd do if it was time.

Last time around the choice was pretty clear, and for the most part I have been happy with my Telus iPhone. It does apps, it does GPS, it does mail, it does internet, it does phone. There are problems, of course:

• As a phone for coverage it sucks both in comparison with the Rogers Blackberry Pearl 9100 I had, as well as with the Telus Blackberry Bold 9700 my co-worker has.  So it isn't the network, it is the phone.
• If you use the apps, the battery life is sharply reduced.  So when I'm on call had have to have the phone, I can't play games or surf the web.

But really these are small quibbles.

And really, it isn't so much that "Blackberry is now so good I'll get a phone of theirs", it is more a case of my usage pattern changing.  What's really changed in my life is that I now have an iPad mini.  So for my portable web browsing and app using and movie watching and game playing, I use that.  The mini is great -- it even fits in the back pocket of most of my jeans, meaning I can carry it around the house with me when I'm on kid patrol.  So frankly, running apps on the phone no longer is a huge issue.  I would like some sort of GPS functionality -- and frankly I'm not really happy with the GPS apps I have for the iPhone, I miss the one I had on my previous Pearls -- so over all I'm not tied to the iOS platform as a phone platform.

The Blackberry mail experience was superior to that of the iPhone.  The Blackberry phone experience was superior to that of the iPhone.  And while I do listen to music on the phone occasionally, it isn't very often.  So the fact that I have a bunch of music in iTunes is a bit of a hindrance, but not a huge one.

Put that together, and I just might go back to Blackberry the next time around, depending on what handsets are available at the time.

(It also occurs to me that since I'm no longer tied to iOS as a platform, the same logic could mean Windows Phone becomes a possibility too.  But not Android -- frankly the negatives in the Android ecosystem have not been addressed yet, so Android phones are still not on the table.)