Blackberry Curve 8310 vs. iPhone 3G

[SuperFly03]

SuperFry007 explores the Curve and the iPhone 3G in an attempt to answer the question: Which is a better corporate email device?

http://tinyurl.com/6ktkwb

 

[pm]

It's a bit of an odd "review". Very few large corporations are encouraging the use of iPhones on their secure internal networks, and there are no large multinationals that - to my knowledge - are allowing employees to choose an iPhone instead of a Blackberry as their corporate email/cell phone device. So the premise that the iPhone could be the better corporate email device is a bit deceptive - just try showing up at Microsoft or Toyota or Kraft and telling IT that you want them to pay for your iPhone as your corporate connectivity device. Whatever it's capabilities, it doesn't have much support.

There's no encryption, sync'ing is through iTunes - which no one except Apple has control over, it's password system is simplistic, there's no capability for corporate disabling of the camera (have fun carrying your iPhone into a secure lab), the browser security is lacking - particularly for custom corporate apps. Beyond security concerns - which are the big hinderance at my company - there's no way to edit Office application documents. There's no voice dialing, and user profiles are limited. There's still some weirdness in sync'ing Outlook calendars on the iPhone and sometimes appointments on Outlook never appear on my iPhone. It's gotten better, but it's still occassionally frustratingly buggy.

Probably most importantly - most people consider the iPhone to be a toy, and the Blackberry to be a serious business phone. Asking for a corporation to buy you an iPhone for business use is a bit like trying to get them to sign off on a conference in Hawaii.

 

[aphex]

http://www.businessweek.com/gl...index+page_top+stories

 

[pm]

HSBC May Ditch BlackBerrys for iPhones

We'll see. I expect - with a few firmware changes for various issues - to see more companies swing towards the iPhone. But it'll be slow.

In the meantime, I still think talking about talking about which is the better as a corporate communications device misses the point that the iPhone isn't accepted in corporations at all yet.

 

[SuperFly03]

Originally posted by: pm
HSBC May Ditch BlackBerrys for iPhones

We'll see. I expect - with a few firmware changes for various issues - to see more companies swing towards the iPhone. But it'll be slow.

In the meantime, I still think talking about talking about which is the better as a corporate communications device misses the point that the iPhone isn't accepted in corporations at all yet.

You are right on all accounts.

Most corporations don't but if you never seen them put side by side how will you know if the iPhone can do the deed?

I wouldn't expect corporations to fall over and just support it. My company has no idea I'm actually on an iPhone nor do they care (of course if they don't know how can they care?). The guys help us connect Blackberry's, BlackJacks, iPhones, he doesn't care. You can make the argument for security but frankly if you look at some of the workers allowed on computers, they are more of a security risk than an iPhone imho. I had a partner who couldn't setup an iPod for his kid. Some don't even know the word trojan, phishing, port scan, etc.

The iPhone isn't a magic bullet by any means but it is more functional, at least to me (to each their own).

 

[pm]

Most corporations don't but if you never seen them put side by side how will you know if the iPhone can do the deed?

Good point. Maybe I'm just a bit bitter that I can't hook my iPhone up.

My company scans for MAC ID's. If it's not an allowed device, the shut down the device over the switch by stopping the routing of it's packets. They are not quite as impressively good on wireless nodes, but they'll know that I hooked an iPhone in if they decide to go look for it. And they've sent mail that iPhones are not approved devices - primarily due to the lack of encryption. Besides which, they are running certificate-based 802.1x... I'm not entirely sure how I'd try to hook an iPhone into the WiFi network.. if I dared to try in the first place.

As far as user's being the problem - I agree with that... but where I work the security and IT guys have extremely tight control over the PC security too. The same capability that they use to scan for "rogue devices" is used to shut out machines that aren't running the standard IT build and/or that isn't up to date. The main problem the company seems to have with the iPhone is that they can't fully control it.