I recently decided to go for the Tour over the Palm Pre. The reliability and battery life of the Blackberry is tough to beat. It took me years to accept the Blackberry over other phones, I think that maybe as I get older I have less patience for “problematic” devices such as the HTC Touch Pro (Grr).

A few years ago, I never would have thought of leaving Windows Mobile, it had everything I could ever want – push email through exchange, Slingbox support, good PIM apps, RSS readers, a nice browser (at the time). I found myself getting more and more frustrated with the plagued devices that WM was on.  In the last couple of years I went from the Palm 800w, HTC Touch Pro, Treo Pro and finally submitted to the BB Curve. My switch from Exchange hosting to Gmail for my domain did cause problems with my syncing of data to WM, the BB on the other hand has great support from Google with Google sync and BIS access to Gmail’s IMAP protocol.

The final nail in the coffin was when I was with my Gpa in Phoenix for a spring training game.  We had to drive from Tucson to Phoenix. I was armed with a work Curve and personal Touch Pro. I had been using the Curve like crazy for SMS, voice calls, and Google Talk to my co-workers for flight information. The Curve battery was holding strong. The Touch Pro that I had barely used was down to 60% when we landed in Tucson and I was dependant on it to get us to our hotel because I was using Sprint Navigation. I found that I was stressing out about the battery. I would check the GPS, it would tell me to drive for 30 miles to the next turn and I would turn off the Touch Pro only to turn it on 28 miles later. I decided this was crazy and finally threw up the white flag in surrender.

I went to the Curve temporarily waiting for the “next” Sprint BB device to come. A couple of weeks ago, Sprint released the 9630 or “Tour” model and I have been very happy with this device. It has its quirks but I expect that they will be resolved soon via a ROM update. One thing is for sure, I like that I can answer a phone call unlike the Touch Pro that I previously had 🙂

I have been surrounded by a Blackberry boom lately. Carolyn, my Mom, Cousin (and wife), and about 10 people at the office have recently moved to either a Curve or a Tour and all are very happy users. I will say that I’ve had some influence on a few of them but these things sell themselves when someone sees them.  Coupled with Sprint’s “1500 data everything family” plan for $129 that includes BIS service, it’s a no brainer!

Like the irony that this screen cap has a low battery?  🙂 I’m getting excited for football season and this screen is beautiful!

I failed to follow-up with a Pre review a couple of weeks ago. Anyhow, I really enjoyed using the Pre, I think that Palm did a great job on WebOS and the device performs very well. I agree with many that the battery life isn’t what I prefer. The real fun will be when the SDK is available and senseless apps start rolling out. It’s always fun to play with silly little applications.

For now, I wait for the Blackberry Tour to be released on Sunday. That will be my device for the near future. I can’t give up the battery life that the Blackberry provides. One other thing is that the Pre reception isn’t up to par with the Curve. This will hopefully be resolved with upgrades in the future.