New to me, that is. I recently adopted an iPod Touch from a friend who had upgraded to a Pre and didn’t want the Touch anymore. It came with me on my recent trip to NYC and I had a chance to put it through its paces pretty thoroughly along the way.
I like it quite a bit — for games, web browsing, and of course music. Battery life is decent (a cross-country flight didn’t even drain half the charge) and the screen is lovely. But I am still glad that I didn’t get an iPhone. The iPod’s virtual keyboard does not even come close to being as good as a real keyboard and I’d go nuts trying to manage my email with it.
I do feel a bit silly carrying an iPod Touch as well as a Blackberry. I think it’s the size. I’ve had an iPod Nano for ages, so I shouldn’t feel different about the Touch, but it is bigger than a Nano and that seems to matter. Even so, it’s not a showstopping issue.
I really hate the lack of a decent web browser on the Blackberry but its superb email handling still makes it the winning smartphone for my needs. Unless an AT&T Palm Pre comes out and utterly blows me away, looks like I’ll be staying a two-gadget gal for the foreseeable future.
If you’re managing a ton of mail, I can see how the Blackberry is a hard tool to give up. There’s no better e-mail machine out there.
However, I made the switch two years ago and I had zero issues moving to the virtual keyboard. If anything, my typing got faster. Plus I can easily manage multiple e-mail accounts on one device, which is nice. What’s funny is that the iPhone is what I was looking for from Tapwave all those many years ago. If they had been able to combine a phone with there next version, I might still be using a Palm today.
My business partner just upgraded from a WinMo device to the iPhone 3GS and is completely smitten. It’s like he just got out of an abusive relationship and is just discovering that love doesn’t have to hurt.