It cannot go the distance. This is a very good power-user appraisal of the iPhone vs Blackberry at this point. iPhone killer: battery life.
For well over a month now, I have been trying out a 3G Apple (AAPL) iPhone. And let me say right up front, it really is the best mobile device I’ve ever used. Calling it a phone does it a disservice; it’s more like a pocket Mac… At a certain level, the iPhone is simply more fun – by a wide margin – than any other phone I’ve come across. And it does a myriad of things that my aging Blackberry can’t. It plays songs and videos. It takes pictures. It can run some nifty games. It has built in GPS navigation. You can access WiFi networks. And you can surf the Web at reasonable speeds.
But I can’t quite bring myself to give up my trusty Research In Motion (RIMM) Blackberry for the iPhone, at least not yet… For starters, it simply doesn’t feel quite reliable enough as a corporate email device… I’ve also experienced highly variable and inconsistent 3G access… The one over-arching issue for me is simply battery life… I rely heavily on my mobile device to give me the ability to remotely make calls and send and receive email. But I can’t do those things on a device which is constantly in danger of running out of juice.
While corporate is not Apple’s primary target, it is one it will have to satisfy to be a player medium and long term. Otherwise it just leaves a large and profitable market to competitors from which they can fund attacks in the consumer space.