Arthur Freydin’s Blog

Online marketing, gadgets, business, and thoughts.

I was a huge iPhone fan since the first one came out and owned one since firmware 1.0. Unfortunately, however, I’ve never been able to use the iPhone for business since it had no enterprise features to speak of.

When word of iPhone 3G and firmware 2.0 leaked out, I was ready to hop on line (I had given my girlfriend the original iPhone and bought a BlackBerry almost a year ago) to pick one up. So I bought a white 16gb iPhone 3G. I loved it and had played with it non-stop for 3 days, completely draining the battery twice.

Once the initial novelty wore off, however, it was time to get to business. I hooked up Exchange and was off and running in no time. My contacts, calendar, and email synced up as promised with no issues. Right away, I noticed an immense battery drain. I also noticed all the things lacking on the iPhone that I have become to rely on in the Blackberry.

Now, I know what you are saying: “If you love the Blackberry so much, why did you switch?” It’s because I had faith in Apple. I believed that if they were to tackle a new enterprise market, they would do it right. Well, I was wrong. I know that Blackberry has had years of experience in the enterprise market and that Apple can’t just leapfrog all of that and introduce a superior enterprise level device. But why not? Isn’t that what Apple fans expect? Look at what they did to the consumer cellphone market after they introduced the original iPhone! Surely, Apple wouldn’t falter this giant step.

Well, they did. No inbox folder push. No capability to setup meetings. No way to see meeting responses. No folder collapsing. Abysmal battery life. No copy & paste. No capability to create folders. No auto-shutoff. No way to dial extensions embedded in phone numbers. The list goes on and on and I’m sure there are things that I have forgotten about.

I understand that an iPhone is not a Blackberry. But come on, the Motorola Q had better business features! I love the many extras that the iPhone has that my Blackberry didn’t, but it just isn’t enough to keep me on it. So, it is with great lament that I will be returning my iPhone and turning back to my Blackberry.