I am no expert, but so far, iphone's camera is THE best one I saw on
mobile devices. Very very nice.

Full article is here http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/five-reasons-iphone-v-android.html and I should say it does make interesting points, though, I am not 100% agree with everything there. But, like this block:

"...Apple is moving on to the 4.0 stage of its mobile platform, has consistently hit promised milestones, has done yeomen's work on evangelizing key technologies within the platform (and third-party developer creations - "There's an app for that"), and developed multiple ways for developers to monetize their products. No less, they have offered 100 percent distribution to 85 million iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads, and one-click monetization via same. Nested in every one of these devices is a giant vending machine that is bottomless and never closes. By contrast, Google has taught consumers to expect free, the Android Market is hobbled by poor discovery and clunky, inconsistent monetization workflows. Most damning, despite touted high-volume third-party applications, there are (seemingly) no breakout third-party developer successes, despite Android being around two-thirds as long as the iPhone platform."

Well said. And very clear what is the difference between Android and iPhone users. My personal experience shows the same. Blackberry and Android users don't *buy* applications. Well, incorrect. They *rarely buy*. Blackberry users don't have many at the first place, Android users try to get everything free. iPhone users pay. And usually they don't even questioning the price (some still do), but they just buy if *any* value is in the app.

Frankly speaking, after and while using Blackberry I was pretty annoyed with the fact (exactly the *fact*) that there is no multitasking. It's just our brain, used to the fact that it should be there, complains and grumbles.

Reality check? Well, I do use background apps on Blackberry. IM (beejive). Twitter. Uh-oh. That should be it. You?
The fact that you have N number of applications running in the background does not give you anything. They are just there. Slow sleeping or just doing nothing, keep their chunk of memory and loading your tiny CPU to keep them alive.

So what really happens when you SWITCH to application? (Which is in background). It "wakes up", shows off itself, same data, same status, everything the same.
Hold on - but isn't that exactly what iPhone allow all applications to implement?! You've got an event before shutdown, even after launch, you can save and load all the info about application status you ever would want; restore it properly, restore the UI (views) - here we go - your app will look like it never left the stage, was just hiding in "virtual ;-) background".
I was able to implement basics of it easily, within an hour, being a complete newbie to Objective-C and iPhone SDK. And it works. So, now, I assume, all those developers of all those apps which didn't do that, but instead think that "multitasking saves everybody" - just ignorant of existing functionality. Actually, I think that multitasking is a much more complex and painful thing to properly develop and debug -- than just simple state saving/loading.

There are exclusions always, certainly, in this case, too. Sometimes you may want to run background music app and you want to browse Web at the same time. That's true. Apple putted their foot down and decided it's only their iPod app has this priveledge.
Also, you may want to open Web page and while it is loading, switch to email, and then may be twitter, and then to Web page - which you expect to be loaded already. True. Valid case. Reality check? Does not work that well on Blackberries, neither on Androids. With all the multitasking. You are on *mobile* device, with only EDGE or 3G connection (usually), you have small chunk of memory and CPU isn't big. All that leads to the fact that page probably is not loaded, or half-loaded by the time you switched back. True multitasking? Yeah... NO.

So, this is just my personal take on this problem. Again, I was kind of dissapointed myself with the fact that "no multitasking" on those pretty iPhones and iPads, but by given a look from the different angle, and from the perspective of real use - I do not care that much, really. I have no doubt that once mobile devices catch up a little bit more with CPU speeds and energy use - magically Apple will bring multitasking on board. Till then.. I am fine without it. ;-)

To begin with - I think it's necessary to mention that I am not an expert in Objective-C, neither in iPhone SDK. I had some experience developing for mobile devices (Siemens, to be precise) like 8 years ago, and that was fun, but obviously it was nothing comparing to what apps nowadays can do.

Давно я не писал в блог ничего на русском, и так же давно не писал никаких сравнительно-отмечающих моментов по поводу телефонов; Читателем моего ремарок давно известно что я не могу определиться с телефоном который я использую (между iPhone и Blackberry), посему прыгаю туда-сюда. Платформу Android я обходил, ибо выбор Google -- HTC я не особо люблю, после опыта с нескольими Win-базироваными телефонами HTC. Оно съело мне "мозок", точнее откровенно меня вынудило их возненавидеть. Не уверен что именно это было, но то что я HTC не люблю ни качеством железа, ни софта -- это точно, хотя возможно многое изменилось.

К чем это все -- я недавно наткнулся на "Обзор Nexus One" (в трех частях - №1, №2 и №3) который сделал @alexmak (Alex Patsay), и если честно нашел его достаточно позновательным, и решил опять же прокомментировать его исклюительно для сравнения с Blackberry. Хотя я отлично понимаю что многие не рассматривают этот телефон как альтерантиву iPhone/Android. На то есть причины, и совершенно объективные, хотя, телефон - это не лаптоп, поэтому я его рассматриваю как телефон в первую очередь.

Теперь по моим комментариям и сравнениям с Blackberry. Сразу отмечу, что использовал я несколько моделей, Blackberry Bold 9000 (который и использую сейчас повседневно), Curve 8900 и Bold 9700. Так что более менее могу сравнивать за достаточно большой спектр моделей. И iPhone я использовал с самого их выпуска -- то есть с аллюминено-iPhone 2G, до iPhone 3GS.

Качество сборки и железа -- достаточно высокое у Bold 9700, очень и очень близкое к iPhone 3GS, который можно сказать эталон для меня. Curve 8900 более бюджетная модель, так что качество сборки ок. Не супер, но и не откровенная дешевка. Bold 9000 мне нравится по многим фактором, но "целостность" телефона чувствуется меньше всего -- скорее из за его таковой конструкции. Слишком много слотов воокруг по телефону создают ощущение "lego" :-) Nexus One я бы поставил на уровень с 9700. Те же болезни - хочешь поменять SIM'карту -- будь добр, телефон отключай. Но не могу сказать что это big deal для меня - я их не меняю вообще :-)

Трекбол в Nexus One меня убивает. Его делать было ужасно неразумно, при условии что Bold 9000 имеет такой же, и RIM за несколько лет "наевшись" с ним проблем -- перешло на trackpad'ы. Не понял смысла вообще, а если учитывая несуществующий customer service от Google для Nexus One -- это может быть огромный frustration пользователей через полгода, когда трекболы будут поголовно "портиться".

Опять же не подлежит сравнению клавиатура и кнопки "активации" -- в Blackberry это любая (почти) кнопка :-) -- в Nexus One и iPhone их не так уж и много. Так что сравнивать тут нечего.

По поводу "мигания трекбола" - это отличная вещь, аналог у которой в Blackberry "миллион лет" уже существует отдельный индикатор, наличия почты, сообщений, SMS, и тд -- это то что iPhone из за дизайна выбрасывают, но это безумно помогает. Когда привыкаешь - лишиться этого очень сложно.

Батарея -- не сравнивал на long run Nexus One, но точно скажу что Bold 9000 и особенно Bold 9700 просто супер батареи. Лучше не встречал - и это с моим использованием. Не думаю что на рынке много телефонов способных их "побить".

Программно -- мой Bold 9000 еще "ездит" на OS 4.6, а Bold 9700 на OS 5 -- которая несомненно более улучшенная, и в плане удобства, так и быстродействия. Мне трудно сравнить ее с iPhone, где интерфейс опять же эталон простоты, но Nexus One как и все остальные Android телефоны у меня вызывают неприязнь - ибо их UI весьма непродуман до конца. Ощущение что делать начали хорошо и тщательно, а закончить забыли, поэтому просто добавили все лишь бы где. В девайсах Blackberry по крайней мере как говорится в армии -- "хоть и безобразно, но однообразно". Я конечно преувеличиваю с безобразием, но там ты точно знаешь что сделает какая кнопка. Можно делать на ощупь. И быть увереным в результате. Проверенно УЙМУ раз.

Менеджер задач - в Blackberry есть переключатель, но не менеджер. Обычно все приложения можно закрыть через меню самого приложения, убивать кого-то возможно и есть нужда, но я еще не встречал таких ситуаций хотя слышал что такое было на ранних телефонах RIM'а с слабыми процессорами. Лично я не встречал. Возможно потому что использую по больше части дефолтовые приложения, либо достаточно устоявшиеся (штук 5-6 разных). Опять же отмечу -- мои сравнения очень субъективны, потому что телефон для меня это в первую очередь телефон, которые должен хорошо делать коммуникации, почту, контакты, календарь. Броузинг - это бонус, красота которого меня волнует иногда, но редко, скорее информативность более важна. Игры вообще не волнуют. Так же как и fancy stupid things, как дурацкие приложения и прочее.

Русский язык. Однако это головная боль Blackberry тоже. На Bold 9000 и Curve 8900 оно ставится достаточно просто из Desktop Manager, но для этого понятно надо USB'шкой прицепить к компьютеру, ибо по умолчанию телефоны в Штатах имеют Spanish, и тройку других языков, но не русский. Из плюсов их все можно прибить, и оставить только English и Russian (2 вида input, о них позже) -- и радоваться. Есть два вида ввода - первый это транслит -- смотришь на английские буквы, вводятся русские (пример "qwerty" это "яшерт", или "sdfghjkl" это "cдфгчьк") -- либо когда вводишь и используется их раскладка такая же как на клавиатуре. К сожалению второй метод трудный если не помнишь "на память" что "q" это "й", что "fgh" это "апр" и тд. Правда огромный минус Bold 9700 -- он будучи самым новым не имеет русского. По моей теории это потому что телефон еще не продается в страны где нужен русский и использует новую OS 5, но я могу ошибаться (хотя вряд ли). Поставить его туда можно, но это уже сложнее процесс, поэтому я его даже не рассматриваю.

Blackberry быстрее для обычных задач, Быстрее набрать номер, пролистать или найти человека в телефонной книге, набрать номер броузя страницы или твиты, или же щелкнуть на ссылку или опять же набрать номер или кинуть SMS по номеру в календаре, и тд. В чем прогадывают и теряют клиента (меня конкретно) Apple и Google -- это в том что будучи воодушевлены борьбой они забыли что RIM "выехал" и выезжает построив сначала некрасивый девайс, но сделав почту абсолютным и самым важным компонентом on-the-go. Я отвечаю, forward, копирую и делаю много вещей с почтой на бегу, что iPhone мне не дает. Моя почта может быть объединена в один список писем, я могу настроить звонок для почты (нет смысла в push email если я ее не слышу). Я могу видеть сколько писем новых с момента последней проверки писем. И еще кучу "я могу", которые скорее видимо рассматриваются как "необязательные" фичи у Android и iPhone. Как результат - для меня почта лучше SMS, она может быть коротка в одно-два слово, может быть предложением, описанем, абзацем, картинками, цитататми - короче наиболее используемый (кроме звонков) компонент МОЕГО телефона это почта.

Сервисы Google были более сложны в настройке на iPhone, на Blackberry это же Google Sync, Google Voice. Все, они интегрируются просто и спокойно, вися в background, и вообще не напоминая о себе (если не надо). Контакты, календарь, google voice кстати еще позволяет из меню телефона звонить на номер с помощью него, а так же бросить SMS с его помощью. Тут вообще не знаю что лучше - они прозрачны и ненавязчивы, 

Скриншоты в Blackberry делают нетривиально -- но это даже не 10% от нетривиальности у Nexus One. Просто ставится бесплатно апликейшн (OTA конечно, http://m.thetechmogul.com/) Capture It! и спокойно щелкается.

Настройка звуков и рингтонов у Blackberry самая удобная. Во первых делается во одном месте, во вторых использовать можно какие хочешь файлы, хочешь mp3, хочешь еще что. И настраивать можно почти для всего. (Пишу "почти" потому что наверняка для чего-то нельзя, хотя я на это еще не наталкивался :-)

О приложениях для Blackberry мне нечего написать по двум причинам. Во первых их мало, во вторых мне много и не надо, и все что мне надо есть. Разработка приложенияй для Blackberry это совсем отдельная тема, которая скорее негативная, в плане incentives для разработчиков, а вернее -- их отсутствия.

Вопрос - взял бы Я себе Nexus One ответ простой и даже без сомнения - НЕТ. Если бы я не пользовался Blackberry я бы пользовался iPhone 3GS, это даже без колебания.

I had to retire iPhone 3GS and return it back to my love @bazinia. I think she'll take good care of it. In my turn I am enjoying Blackberry again. (And I know @rwaldin knew this would happen :-) Frankly speaking, I just decided it's not worth it for me to keep it. I will wait until Apple will bring new iPhone which would be less of a game device but at least a little bit more of productivity booster. This time my tipping point was not keyboard (can really get used to touch-typing) or battery life (I have a bunch of wall/car chargers for this), but terribly slow email client and very inefficient access and operation with it and the calendar.
So I either have to wait for Apple to fix it or do it myself the way I want :-) none of those options really seems to be happening in the nearest future so I'd stick to Blackberry for now.

As promised long time ago I am going to do kind of detailed review of my experience using iPhone 3GS and Blackberry Bold. I switched so many times back and forth, so I believe I cannot say that I prefer one to another. I did give up though on Blackberry and currently (and hopefully for a while) on the iPhone, so this is my disclaimer. At the end, this is just my personal experience, so it certainly may be opposite to yours.

So, let's start with the most annoying piece: Reliability and Build Quality.
iPhone had zero problems. Didn't have problems with my old and badly abused iPhone 2G, neither had my wife. No problems with 3GS's. My brother didn't have problems with his iPhone's either. One of my friends got a problem with his iPhone's battery, two days before warranty ended and actually Apple store did replace the phone.
Blackberry gave me some serious hard time. I have used 6 different Blackberry devices in a very short period of time, and 3 (or 4? don't remember really, but it does not matter that much) were brand new, on warranty. They all crashed, rebooted, heated badly (with consequences of being frozen, slowed down, etc.). When it worked it was like a charm. But I actually used "pull off the battery" almost every couple days, and "ctrl+alt+del" used every other day. And you know, it did help. So it reminded me Windows, but heck - I was just thinking it's just a coincidence! Apparently - not. I did dig quite a lot on that, and found out that a lot of people on Crackberry forum were on 2nd or 3rd Blackberry before they found good working phone. Sometimes they had their new phone replaced by refurbished (because these are warranty terms in AT&T) within 2 months.
As for the build quality - I would say iPhone wins hands down. It feels solid and very nicely built, while Blackberry brings some cheap plastic, which is annoying. You can get used to it (comparing to other crap phones like Samsung or whatever else), but it's not iPhone. I do not care about this part too much, but it's just the way it is. Necessary to mention, but it's only up to you if you pay attention to that.
I see the biggest problem here is that RIM is releasing many devices per year, so they know next year you have few devices to choose from, and probably you'll get new one. So there is no need to spend much time and efforts on building nice and solid phone, as customer will get rid of it next year anyway. Apple is not thinking so, that's why you can still see a lot of iPhone 2G around in decent condition, and I wouldn't be alone to say that Apple laptops are living at least twice as much as their PC brothers and sisters :-)

Phone itself. Much happier with Blackberry. It's louder, it heps to dial number faster, you can start typing name and it will go into contacts right away. Very very very much more phone. iPhone still feels like "phone" is just an extra feature among others, not the primary one.

Now, the User Interface. It's very touching and personal, even intimate topic. I happen to like Blackberry UI. It's more serious, if you will, than iPhone's bubbles all over the place. Tired of rounded bubblish icons - but may be it's just me. I did like Blackberry's ability browse through the text with trackball, liked that many things are in text, and that's so easy to navigate. iPhone is very good UI, I just wish I could have customize it? At least some predefined option to make it more "manly"? Or something. It does not affect my productivity with the device, just it would be nice to have something like that.

Keyboard. Like there is much to say here! iPhone has no keyboard. Blackberry has the keyboard. Bold has the best keyboard you can wish for. Very comfortable, very nice feeling, very crazy cool nice keyboard. iPhone has no keyboard -- did I say that already? Yes, I did. But heck, when you are comparing this fact to Blackberry Bold -- you want to say this again. Clearly Blackberry wins for me. And this was couple times a deal breaker for me. It was almost painful to get from Blackberry to iPhone. It literally hurts my fingers ;-)
However, I would not lie -- With landscape keyboard on iPhone you can type really fast. Really comfortable. Relly really an improvement comparing to portrait mode; however, missing real feel is a huge miss for me :-(

Flexibility of Settings. Blackberry wins here again. Very customizable devices. Can do this and that, and also can do this with that. Nevertheless, it failed to support different "From:" for the email accounts (as well as iPhone), and at some point I realized I don't need even half of those customization options. I am stupid, and I am just using what I am using. I don't need too many options. They make me think I missed something. I am pretty fine with what iPhone gives me. Happy that Blackberry does more, sometimes tweaking some minor thing easy makes you feel powerful :-) But I could care less about it. I did like I can use any MP3 track for Blackberry as a ringtone, while for iPhone it's more work. That's the only thing, I guess.
 
Internet and Tethering. Tethering is crazy easy and simple and nice working for Blackberry. iPhone does not have tethering. Well, I remember it did have it in 3.0? But with more recent OS's it does not. You can jailbreak, but I am not going this route.
Internet browsing and Internet apps (like SSH) are much more powerful on iPhone. Everybody knows that, and I am not going to repeat it again. Blackberry, you look like Motorola in 1992 comparing to iPhone for the Internet browsing.
Now, BIS and BES. What the crazy, terrible thing is requirement to have BIS? Why would I need that? Why, no really? Why can't this be an option? RIM is doing this the way -- they are requiring mobile carriers to keep their BISes... weirdo, just another point of single failure (and outages happen) - why would not make it an option? You bring this shit on yourself, so...

E-Mail and IM, and SMSs. I do not use MMSs. They do work on iPhone (finally). But it's not what I care about, so it's not an argument for me. And BBM. I do not use it, and I don't have much friends who are using it. After all, we all can use SMSs, they are not that expensive. And we are using emails. And IM. So BBM -- it's cool, but limit yourself even to big, but still limited Blackberry community - thanks, no.
Now, e-mail and IM and SMS. What I did love that everything goes to one "place" on Blackberry - one folder called "Messages". Yes, there are separate other folders for SMSs, and email accounts, but they all are combined in one. Awesome idea! And the LED indicator -- I can just take a look of my phone and see if I have new email, SMS or IM message... that's worth a lot of me. Really love this, and miss on iPhone. iPhone shows unread counts for every separated entity. Not too useful. Need to remember how many unread emails I had before. Or unread SMS. And I need to "unlock" the phone before I even can understand if I have something new. One tiny indicator would save thousands of my finger swipes :-)
However, the winner is not obvious. Right, Blackberry does push e-mail, but iPhone with MobileMe or GMail (through Exchange configuration) does it too. HTML messages on Blackberry? Save your eyes. iPhone renders them beautifully. Blackberry still does not support just IMAP folders. It does not support two-way sync for GMail (that means if you do something on Web, it does not reflect on your phone). By the way, if you do want to star/archive message from your "Messages" folder - it's not going to happen. To do that you have to go to the separate "email account folder". That's a bummer.

Multitasking. Ahhh, Apple. You suck here. and the iPhone sucks. Because Blackberry's multitasking did work very very very nice. And it did work. And there was multitasking. And, you know, you could never imaging how nice is to have multitasking abilities before you get one (with Blackberry) and then lose them (getting back to iPhone). However, here is my shit to Blackberry's yard. RIM guys. If you do multitasking, why the hell your browser supports only one open page at a time??? What the hell? How crazy is that? My UberTwitter opens page, I want to open another page -- and voila - only one is there. Where are others? Don't know. Neither does Blackberry. There is an option of using Mini Opera 5 beta which has "tabs" feature, but I found it too heavyweight as a browser for my Bold.

Battery Life. Blackberry wins. First, I can change battery. Second, it lasts longer. Only fraction of time, but this fraction is large and powerful enough to show the difference.

Applications. Like Blackberry has them! Just kidding, of course it has, and frankly speaking I am enough satisfied with Blackberry's selection. I did miss couple. Dropbox, online banking apps, Flickr (Blackberry has one, but it's not even close to what iPhone does), SSH.. and games? I do not play them, but for many peope - it's a great "wow" factor.

Media. You can play video and music on your Blackberry. iPhone does it nicer, but still, it's possible on both devices. Comfortably enough. However, when I were in the gym - I couldn't use Blackberry as media device. Unless I just set up playlist and do not touch it. With iPhone I can easily switch/jump/play from song to song, artist to album, and whatever not -- very easily - during working out. UI for media for Blackberry sucks big time, reminds me Windows Media Player.
Photos suck in quality on Bold comparing to 3GS, but "flash" really works nice and in many cases very useful. Video recording - it's cool, but I didn't use much though. And not much sense. With iPhone I can upload my video to Flickr right with app, with Bold it's much more complicated - you either have to email yourself the video in 3GP format, and then do some magic, or you have to download it from your SD card... None of them are natural and simple.
GPS is much snappier on iPhone, it geotags every photo always; comparing to Blackberry when it has to "figure out" something. Using Yelp, Google Maps - those "on the go" apps are much easier and actually bring much value on iPhone, than on Blackberry (besides the latter does not have Yelp :-)

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I guess I covered everything. At least all those moments were important to me, and may be important for you. Ask questions if you have any, I'll try to answer. Would I want Blackberry again? Yes. Or, if given an option of iPhone with keyboard, I would love to have iPhone with keyboard instead. But I guess this not going to happen any time soon :-\ Droid eventually may be an answer, or may be something else, I don't know. We'll see. I am open to what technology can give me.

It really didn't make it through the fight with iPhone 3GS. As much as I loved the phone, concept, design factor, message management - I could not find it superior to iPhone. And trust me, I really wanted to see it. As much as I need email management to be perfect on my phone, but I also need all those minor things like maps with GPS, browsing, terminal, etc. which it simply cannot do good enough. RIM rolled out recent BIS update in Northern America and still no two way Google mail sync. Still poor contacts sync with Google. And not only Google, but any Exchange -- you are so limited with what you have there. And even if I was closing eyes to many of it's disadvantages, I found myself much more productive with the iPhone.

I am really hoping RIM will come up with changes and will resurrect. Until then, I am afraid that even Android (which I do not like too much due to the lack on good hardware vendor, as HTC is just "trying", but this is obviously not good enough) has more chances than Blackberry devices.

Don't get me wrong. I am loving Blackberry Bold. It's actually the phone which raised my personal interest and requirements to the phone to the very high bar. It did make me want to handle my emails more effectively, and especially to require more from the phone to actually be *the phone*, not just Internet device (yes, I am throwing this one to you, iPhone!).

Nevertheless, if you line up cons/pros iPhone 3GS wins. However, I cannot stress strong enough that I am waiting for action from RIM. Like really waiting. Rumor has it that Blackberry 9700 (Bold 2 or Atlas or Onyx) is coming in November, and Blackberry may bring some software updates which will be very interesting to accompany it as well. Also there is a rumored Blackberry Magnum or Dakota which may be a hybrid with touchscreen and still QWERTY-keyboard next year. Nobody knows if this will be failure or resurrection. I hope they create nice competition to Apple and Android, so we can see some progress going on.

So, I got myself Blackberry Bold 9000 (AT&T) to check it out. Needless to say that I was really itching to do so, and I was really happy to get it in my hands for the "real life" use. By the way, I found out that there are quite few phones selling on Craiglsist for 450-500 (w/o tied to contract), but there is no really sense in buying those as Amazon and Wirefly sells for exact same money (new, in boxes, and with warranty).