Moving from Blackberry to iPhone?

Here are some pointers to help you move from Rim's Blackberry Smartphone to Apple's iPhone.

• I get plenty of text messages, many of which are presented with just a phone number. I cannot identify the sender because they are not in my address book. I add a signature to my texts so that my recipients know the text is from me, in case I am not in their address book. There is no easy way to do this on your iPhone. Try creating a shortcut and name it sig which expands into your signature. At the end of your text, type sig to get your signature as part of the text message.

• Want your ring tone to stand out from the crowd of other similar phones? If your ring tone is already in your iTunes library, syncing your Blackberry via Blackberry Desktop Manager gets the ring tone onto your Smartphone. On your iPhone, getting anything other than the stock ring tones provided by Apple can be a little more tricky. If you don't want to pay for a ring tone from the iTunes store, here is a link that documents the process to use an existing song you have and convert it to a ring tone: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/10/26/ios-5-how-to-create-custom-ringtones-and-alerts-for-the-iphone/

• Battery life on my Blackberry Smartphone got me to the end of the day without charging my phone. My iPhone is charging via a cigarette lighter adapter in my car when I'm driving. Without this charge, the iPhone is dead before 8pm.

• I was unable to print from my Blackberry, but  I can print from my iPhone using the Print Central app. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/printcentral-pro/id426362921?mt=8 I will warn you that the installation is more involved than you would think, but it does work. An easier way to print from an iPhone is buying an ePrint enabled HP printer. Using ePrint, you create an unique email address with which your HP printer is associated. When you want to print, send an email to the printer with the content embedded in the message space of the email.

• In a nonscientific sampling, I have not come across a shattered Blackberry screen. This is not the case with the iPhone, for which the screen cracks much more easily. I never bought a protective case for my Blackberry and all three of my Blackberrys survived without being serviced for breakage. For the iPhone I spent the $50 for an OtterBox. http://www.otterbox.com/apple-iphone-cases/apple-iphone-cases,default,sc.html

•  The Blackberry was always a work in progress to get it to sync with multiple Windows and Mac laptops. Syncing is a breeze with iCloud for your iPhone. The only glitch is that the iCloud control panel does not run on Win XP or on Mac computers that don't run Lion.
 

• Blackberry never had a very wide selection of apps. It was tiring to read about an app that I wanted and then find out that was not available on the Blackberry. I have not had this issue with the iPhone. Apps for the different devices are written in this order: iPhone, Android and then Blackberry.

• Rebooting by pulling the battery out was a daily occurrence with my Blackberry. Every time the Blackberry froze it required a reboot. The iPhone has not required turning it off and on due it freezing.

• The browser on the Blackberry was non functional. You did not browse the Internet on a Blackberry because of the slowness displaying web pages and the small size of the display. The iPhone addresses both these problem, making Internet browsing much more practical.

Find your old Blackberry a new home by selling it to Gazelle. http://www.gazelle.com/sell/cell-phones

Carl Thorne

Expert Computer Consulting 

voice: 404.229.0839 email: carlthorne@hthcatlanta.com
web: hthcatlanta.com blog: hthcatlanta.blogspot.com

Posted in: