Smartphone vs Blackberry

Smartphones have begun to gain greater market share compared to traditional mobile phones. This is because of their more advanced capabilities that you would not find in a standard phone. Aside from the basic functionalities of a mobile phone like calling and text messaging, smartphones also add the functionalities of a PDA along with email handling, note taking, and a whole lot more. Blackberry is the brand name of a collection of smartphones from Research in Motion or more commonly known as RIM.

RIM develops their own operating system to be used in all their blackberries. This allows them to create optimize their software and hardware with each other. On the other hand, most other smartphones utilize different operating systems; the most popular at moment are Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Google’s Android. These operating systems have the advantage of greater application availability as a lot of programmers like the fact that there’s a wide audience for their product.

The biggest advantage that Blackberry has over other smartphones is the superior email delivery system that RIM has put into place. It is equipped with a true push capability where the email server would ‘push’ the email to the mobile phone as soon as it arrives on the server. Other smartphones utilize a pseudo push technology by querying the server for new messages every once in a while to check if a new message is present. Email handling is the primary factor why most big companies provide blackberries to their employees.

When using a blackberry, the user is charged an additional fee for the data plan that is aside from the basic mobile phone charges. The plan is quite limited in maximum bandwidth cap that is imposed and the cap is used regardless of whether you use the telephone network or WiFi hotspots. Other smartphones do not have this data plan fee and users are not hindered with a cap for browsing the internet. For those who have unlimited internet browsing included in their mobile phone, it’s just like you cable broadband at home.

Summary:

1. A smartphone is a device that is more like a handheld computer combined with a cellular phone while a blackberry is a type of smartphone from RIM

2. Blackberries have their own distinct operating system while other smartphones run a variety of other operating systems

3. Blackberries have the superior email delivery system compared to other smartphones

4. Blackberries require a data plan for email and internet surfing while most other smartphones don’t

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