Which device is right for you?

BlackBerry or Windows Mobile?  A question I am asked almost every day by customers wanting to know which device is right for their business.  I've always been a Windows Mobile device user, and in particular PDA versions of Windows Mobile devices.  One of the downsides of the the PDA version of Windows Mobile devices though is that they are not great phones, and so I still have a trusty Nokia phone for making all my voice calls.

Increasinghly I keep thinking to myself that I need to sort this out and get a new device which combines the two.  A couple of things have happened in the last week which made me look at this question from a different perspective.

First Toshiba very kindly loaned us 2 new Windows Mobile 6 devices the G500 and G900.  Both have a certain quality feel about them with the sliding keyboards "clunking" just so when you open them and the weight is just right too.  Trying the G500 first was a real eye-opener for me as it took me nearly 10 minutes to configure ActiveSync using old "triple-tap" text entry - very painful.  I've tested SmartPhone versions before but the G500 brought it home to me the benefit of having a QWERTY keyboard on my current device.  The G900 is a really powerful device and has a great screen and the fingerprint scanner is a great addition for secure mobile email but it still isn't a great phone.

Second Dale Vile of Freeform Dynamics a customer and IT analyst emailed me after he had tried a new Windows Mobile 6 device compared to his BlackBerry device he was used to.  One of the big things he noticed was how verbose the Windows Mobile devices are when synchronising your email - giving a novice user far too much and often confusing information.  From a simplicity point of view BlackBerry really do seem to have the edge still.

So what am I going to do?  Probably carry on for a while using both my Windows Mobile PDA and Nokia phone.  I'd love to hear your experiences of different mobile devices and which one I should try next...

Comments

[Dan Germain]

I've got one of the new HP IPAQ Voice Messenger smart phones - no qwerty keyboard but I don't miss that. It's a Windows Mobile 6 device, battery life is very good it connects using my wireless at home and has internet phone clients too. Best of all - it reads your emails out to you... great when you're in the car. There's a voice activated command interface for most functions. One downside so far - you can't change the voice on the phone, she's sounds a bit metallic ;-)
We can get these on eval from HP if anybody is interested in using one of these with one of the Cobweb Hosted Exchange mailboxes?

BTW, there are some great mailbox search features with WM6 where you can search your mailbox on the server, not just the content on the phone, and Directory searches can be used to find people using any of the attributes in AD now.

[Jenni Phillips]

Being the current loanee of the Toshiba G500 after Michael, I'm actually quite impressed yes not having a QWERTY keyboard is a pain but I'm used to using mobile phones not smart phones so it wasn't really an issue for me.

I'm not a power user, I don't need a mobile office I'm just someone who likes to see when they have mail and to see if the is something urgent I need find a PC and log on to OWA although I would be quite happy to compose replies on the G500 using T9 if I had to. And having access to my calendar on the move is helpful.

I agree with Michael about the build quality, and I love the fingerprint scanner, one less pin I have to remember.

The only fairly minor thing that I think could be improved on the G500 is the battery life.

So far think I will be a little disappointed when I have to give the G500 back, but I don't think I would spend my own money on one quite yet but the longer I have it the more it grows on me.