The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/4983
www.iltanet.org 52 Peer to Peer be held to for clarity and size. Users are just plain spoiled by the large display and crispness. But the lack of keyboard is a factor. I used one for more than a month and never really got used to the touch keyboard. I was able to use it, but I never got the muscle memory that I have with any QWERTY or standard phone keyboard. I know there are those out there who will argue about how fast they are with the touch keyboard, but I have seen very few iPhone victories in texting showdowns. Most of the attorneys who tested for me were quick to hand the iPhone back because of the keyboard. One gave it back to me in less than four hours stating that it was impeding his ability to be productive, but another attorney begged me to let her keep her iPhone. The addition of copy and paste, corporate e-mail support and universal search all bring the iPhone to an enterprise level. The Ion lacks ActiveSync … sort of. There is a problem with Google and ActiveSync. Apparently Google doesn't or won't allow ActiveSync on an Android product with the Google name attached. Needless to say, this was a deal breaker for me. If you cannot provide basic functionality for the user, then it doesn't matter what all the bells and whistles will bring you. I am impressed that the native address book allowed eight phone numbers, four e-mail addresses, Instant Message names, postal addresses, company names and notes for each contact. Battery life was average, as well. The Pure is Window Mobile. Enough said. It integrates with Exchange effortlessly, and the mobile Outlook app shows the same view that you would have sitting in front of Outlook of your desktop. However, WM had the same drawbacks that I found with all the ActiveSync devices. If you have subfolders in your Inbox and then create rules to move new messages to those folders, you do not get a notification of the message on your device. This could be a big deal to some, especially if it is client-related. Otherwise, the battery life was not spectacular, but it outlasted the iPhone by several hours. The screen could have been better. The Pre has very good performance, although it suffers the same ActiveSync limitations. At the time that I tested the Pre, one of the biggest drawbacks was the lack of universal search. Sure, you could add multiple mailboxes, calendars and address books, but you could not search through them. I understand that this has been remedied, according to the creepy Pre commercials. This brings the Pre up a couple of rungs on the ladder. The webOS really gives a lot of functionality that the others lack. I didn't realize the true meaning of multitasking until I experienced it in the Pre. The ability to compose an e-mail while downloading an app, listening to music and keeping a document open for reference was incredible. While the iPhone offers the ability to listen to music concurrently, each selection of a new app cancels the last. Not so with the Pre. Of course, with all good things come the trade-offs. The battery life on this thing is atrocious. Lasting only about nine hours with moderate use, it was the worst performer of the bunch even though the battery is removable and a separate battery charger is an option. The BlackBerry devices were solid performers all around. Everything is okay. But that is the problem. It is just okay. The screen is okay, but the screens on the Pre and iPhone are better. The available applications are okay, but the App Store can't be beat. In fact, the only areas where the BlackBerry excelled were battery life and PIM operations. The battery life of a BlackBerry has always been good. From the 950s, where the battery lasted two weeks, to the Storm, which lasted nearly 30 hours. In this day and age of power-hungry mobile devices, anything that lasts more than a day is fantastic. As for PIM, the BlackBerry was created for e-mail, contacts and calendaring. That was the focus from the very beginning. It is this focus on business support that sets the BlackBerry apart from the rest. Just as BlackBerry tries to catch up with the iPhone for the consumer market, the iPhone and others struggle to match the BlackBerry's business case. Look at the administration of the device on the enterprise level, or even the SOHO capabilities with its "BlackBerry Professional Software," and you will see an attention to detail for businesses. The consumer products have been added as an afterthought. From my perspective, and on a business level, the clear winner here is the BlackBerry. While I believe the iPhone is gaining fast on the BlackBerry and might even surpass it in the near future, the BlackBerry is still the clear choice for the business professional. The best way to judge this is from the base software package for each device. Try to open a Word document from an e-mail attachment on the iPhone, Ion or Pre coming straight out of the box. The WM device can do it; it is Microsoft after all. But the BlackBerry does so much more out of the box. As a business person and an IT professional, I don't want to have to have to buy a bunch of third-party applications to get me to where the BlackBerry picks up on first use. Apps, Apps, Apps Yes, there's an app for that. Anything you can think of, there's probably an app for it. That isn't necessarily a good thing, mind you, but it is amazing what you can get an application to do for you. This is usually the metric that every iPhone user goes to when another device comes out and promotes applications. You can hear the mantra, "But they're nowhere near the 85,000 apps that iPhone has!" Of course, iPhone started out with just a handful, too. And never mind that 9,000 of those apps are flashlights. But to be fair, there are some very useful and powerful apps built for the iPhone. The Palm Pre and Google Ion also have applications. Again, they don't have anything like the iPhone's huge catalog, but they are working to build on a decent start. Palm did a big, almost unforgivable, disservice to their core customers. There are far more applications for legacy Palm devices out there than for iPhone. You would think that a new Palm device would be backward compatible to woo all those Treo users out there. Alas, no. Oh, you can use them, but you have to purchase a third-party application and run the app inside an app. It's kind of like buying a car without a radio. To use your old radio, you have to put it inside another radio. While it is perfectly fine from a functionality perspective, it gives the impression of a big stink eye to the legions of loyal Palm followers out there.