I have an iPhone and really like it. There’s no point in talking about what’s good about it, as this has been discussed over and over. I can offer a couple of insights based on my experiences.

Firstly, if you’re a Blackberry user, there are two things to consider. Typing on a Blackberry is much faster than on an iPhone - at least that’s my experience. Of course, I totally buy in to the idea that the additional screen space compensates for the lack of physical keyboard - looking at photos and videos on the iPhone is great with its large screen. Also, if you are a Mac user, then it is so easy to make movies and sync them to the device.

On the sync side, I’d like to see Apple make it a lot easier to sync with contacts in Gmail, although Gmail itself has an annoying problem of combining first and surnames into one field, which is not a problem if you have mega-search capabilities, but adds an additional complexity to address book handling on phones. I’d also like to see better integration with Google Calendar. There are ways to bring these together (using subscribe in iCal etc.) but a more seamless experience would be nice. Of course, these aren’t Apple’s services, so they might not want to be so tightly integrated, although they’ve already done a good job with YouTube.

Secondly, in terms of data roaming (abroad - which costs money on either device), then I think that the Blackberry wins here because it can use a lot less data for email due to its push mechanism. I will check this in more detail. When I went abroad recently, I simply switched the data roaming off for the iPhone, which is a nice feature, especially if you can find an open hotspot nearby.

So far, the only problem I’ve had with the iPhone is the WiFi connection - and there are various similar postings on the net. I had no problem connecting to my 2Wire modem, but the iPhone seems to crash the WiFi router on a regular basis. I have repeated this several times and I am now convinced that the iPhone is messing up the WiFi router. If I reboot the router and leave the iPhone off, then my other WiFi devices run fine. Once I let the iPhone connect, then other devices get booted off and then can’t find the network again or can’t connect. What a nuisance. Of course, when out and about, Edge coverage is sketchy.

I would still say that if you want a no nonsense and completely reliable email device, then the Blackberry can’t be faulted. The newer curve devices have cameras and better multimedia support, as well as GPS, so the are really great devices. Blackberry email just works and on newer devices (at least on O2) such as the Pearl, you can also have multiple email accounts handled differently on the device so that you can manage multiple “From addresses”, which is simply the norm these days for a lot of small business or SOHO users. Of course, iPhone handles multiple email accounts too, but there is a larger data overhead with checking them (if you are worried about data roaming costs).