Hi, my name is Terry Smith and I'm a developer and aspiring entrepreneur.

This weekend (after my wife upgraded from her 3GS to an iPhone 4S and I got jealous), I upgraded my phone.  As with most users, I had three major options for what OS/device I wanted to move to: BlackBerry, iPhone or Android.  Windows wasn’t really an option as I’ve never been a huge fan of Windows Phone, and after Microsoft really botched rolling out their major update, their fate was sealed for me.  As a starting point, I previously had the BlackBerry Bold 9700.

When I first got my BlackBerry Bold, I loved it.  I wanted to tell people and show it off.  I previously had a track ball, and the new track pad was fantastic.  It did push e-mail for all of my accounts, while everyone else needed a separate app to push e-mail.  Overall, it still felt like I was using one of the leading phones on the market.  But now… it felt antiquated next to my wife’s iPhone 3GS.

So I spent an hour last week in the store looking at different devices and what I saw was pretty much what I expected: iPhone was still iPhone: pretty, Apple-y (redundant), and with its iOS lock in, while the Android devices were fragmented, each with their own quirks.  After testing and playing with a bunch of different devices (a lot of them 3D — what a shit show), I chose the Samsung Galaxy S 4G.

But what surprised me were the BlackBerrys.  What happened to you RIM??  After using the Galaxy S for a couple days now, I feel like I’m free of the shackles that was my BlackBerry Bold, and I am reinvigorated by my phone.  I wanted to talk about a few of the things that I love that I feel like BlackBerry is really missing out on.

The Browser

This is absolutely #1 on my list of things RIM needs to get a handle on.  Maybe this is better in their newer phones, but just before I got my Galaxy S, I upgraded my Bold to OS 6.  The browser just plain sucked.  Before I upgraded to OS 6 (I was on OS 5), many sites that relied on JavaScript and/or AJAX simply didn’t work (this included Twitter).

After upgrading to OS 6, those sites did work, but holy shit was it slow on the JavaScript execution side. I would compare some of the B5Media sites (that have a ton of JavaScript for ads and post-loading non-essential content) and those sites would load exponentially faster on my new phone or on my wife’s iPhone (both the old 3GS and the new 4S).  It was slower on almost every front: SSL content was slower, JavaScript was slower, rendering was slower, zooming was slower… while our new phones are quite a bit farther ahead in the processor department, their new phones that I tested were using the exact same engines; in my opinion, this isn’t an issue that’s going to be fixed at the hardware level, it’s just bad (feels like legacy) software and it is in serious need of a reboot.

Apps

App availability specifically. I’m not sure what the solution is here because app developers have stopped releasing apps for the BlackBerry platform in their initial mobile release.  And the apps that are available are not even on the same level as apps for Android and iPhone.  The Twitter and Facebook apps for BlackBerry feel just as old as the system they’re running on.  RIM needs to get back in the game on app development; maybe they should use some of their cash horde to start promoting incentives.  Since I haven’t developed a lot of mobile apps, I can’t really offer much input onto why this is (other than the obvious falling market share), but it was a huge motivator for me to not get another BlackBerry because most companies released iPhone, Android and then BlackBerry apps, in that order (if for BB at all).

App Links

There isn’t much I wasn’t expecting about Android, but this was unexpected and surprised me in a very good way.  Links between apps like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are so seamlessly integrated into the system; when I open a YouTube URL, it asks me if I want to open it in the YouTube app or use the web, and it works similarly for Facebook and Twitter links (and others I’m sure).  This is hugely powerful, and means I can choose the best experience for myself (and so far the apps have won every time).

Contact Management

This has become one of the biggest tools our phones are used for, and it’s not just for managing the basic information like e-mail address and phone number anymore.  This also seems to be exclusive to Android, because iPhone isn’t as in depth, but Google has this down pat.

Add the Facebook app, it scans your contacts and adds profile pictures, info, etc. for matching contacts.  Same with Twitter, Google accounts, Skype, and others I’m sure.   It also allows me to search and join contacts from all of those apps into my existing contacts, to do it manually if I wanted, and to merge contacts together where things might not match perfectly.  It’s a seamless experience that has been of huge benefit to me already (for example the Skype app let’s you choose whether you want to call or Skype call anyone who you also have on Skype).

This seems like such a natural fit for RIM in both the consumer space and the enterprise space (think LinkedIN, getting social updates on contacts, etc.) that I would be extremely disappointed if they didn’t try to mimic this feature in the future.

Touch Screen

From a consumer point of view, I am probably 80/20 on touch screen versus a physical keyboard (I do not think RIM’s idea of having both is a long term solution).  The touch screen just makes sense nowadays, even if the keyboard takes some getting used to.  RIM really botched this with their attempt at tactile feedback on the early version of the Torch where you actually had to press the screen to press a key.  For a long time one of the major reasons I would not get a touch screen was because I loved my physical keyboard.  But after using it for two days, I’m getting used to it (and it to me if there’s some intelligence there), even with my fat fingers.  RIM needs to ditch their physical keyboards, and just go all in with the touch screen.

E-mail (Push/Pull/Etc.)

The last feature I really wanted to touch on was e-mail.  This used to be RIM’s bread and butter, but now everyone has e-mail.  They still have a leg up with the ability to do push from any e-mail account (Android natively only pushes Google accounts, and while the iPhone pushes all sorts of e-mail now, it’s not just any IMAP/POP account); but it’s not enough to make a meaningful difference.  That said, reading HTML e-mail on the BlackBerry is painful, and so is designing HTML e-mails that may or may not look good on it (depending on device, OS, and the general mood of the phone).  Even our daily stats e-mails from B5Media, which have a simple table in them, wrap around to fit the space and scroll through each table cell. I would put this right above the browser on a usability scale; this issue needs some serious love and attention.

Conclusion: Reinvention v. Repurposing

RIM is supposedly working on their QNX operating system, but early reports assume that it will continue to underwhelm.  In my opinion, RIM made a mistake trying to create phones that were oriented to both consumer and enterprise alike, and now the reality is that they have a hold on neither of them.  I would even argue that it’s because of this that consumer phones are now making their way into the enterprise.  More enterprises are allowing employees to use Androids and iPhones; it might not do everything they want from a technical enterprise management point of view like BlackBerry does, but it’s what the employees want, and it’s pretty clear why.

RIM has tried repurposing their phones and has tried differentiating themselves in the stupidest ways (press touch screen, the Playbook as an extension to your phone…); it’s time to go back to the drawing board and reinvent and completely rethink their strategy; and in my opinion they need to start creating consumer phones with an easy to use and highly configurable enterprise layer on top.  They have a lot of things they need to fix to get there; maybe they should use Android as a base, maybe QNX will be a step in the right direction.  Whatever they do, they need to do it soon, because they’re falling further and further behind in developers’ minds, and that’s a really crappy cycle to be in as people move to other platforms because of the availability of apps.

I wanted to like you guys so badly, but you’ve fallen so far behind I’m not sure if you’ll ever catch up.  The community, your customers, and your developers are telling you what they want.  If you listen to them, it’s a step in the right direction, but you need to start fixing all of the things that are broken before you can make people pay attention to any real innovation.