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iPhone 6 vs BlackBerry Classic Review: The Past And Future Smartphones Fight

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If you want to get mythical over it, at one point BlackBerry was the future of mobile computing. Now Apple's iPhone is the future. The two manufacturers have seen wildly different levels of success over the last few years. While Apple sells an iPhone to one in every one hundred people in the worldBlackBerry is fighting to retain its niche status and cater for its passionate fans.

Is it really fair to put the two latest handsets side by side and let them duke it out to find a winner?

Yes it is.

While the obvious answer to the question of 'which is better' will be the smartphone that has sold (slightly) more units, the iPhone 6 itself is general purpose computer, set up to do as many tasks with as many apps for as many people as possible. That's not quite the case for the BlackBerry Classic. It is aimed squarely at a specific user-base... fans of on-the-go messaging, who are heavily biased to text input, and who are looking to stay connected to the modern rush of notifications and incoming alerts.

Given that, this comparison piece is focusing on the model of said business user. This is in contrast to my reviews of Apple iPhone 6, and the BlackBerry Classic. Those assumed a user base with regular smartphone requirements. Here, we're looking at the business and enterprise side of things.

Design

Well, the iPhone looks like the sheet of glass that it always has been, and the BlackBerry has its 35-key physical keyboard, along with a touch sensitive mouse and action key, four soft keys, and a touch screen. If you're looking for a design that calls for a lot of text input, then at first sight the BlackBerry Classic is the winner.

I'd argue that the on-screen keyboard situation is not as crippled as it once was. With additional keyboards for the iPhone such as SwiftKey, and predictive text with autocorrect part of iOS 8, there's not a huge amount of difference in terms of input speed once you get used to either option. Both keyboards have quirks, so while the BlackBerry keyboard does feel antiquated, it is perfectly suited for its purpose. But it's not as easy a win over the iPhone as it would have been in 2007.

The Classic is a hefty phone, and the texture plastic at the rear of the handset isn't a patch on the stylish metallic back of the iPhone 6. Apple has continually updated the Phone design since it was launched, while the BlackBerry Classic is, by intention, meant to be almost anachronistic and locked in a past where the BlackBerry Bold was the pinnacle of design.

I'm calling the design section a draw. Apple has kept its design updated and modern, while BlackBerry has deliberately looked into the past. Both approaches work and the benefits are finely balanced.

Hardware And Performance

This is actually a bit of a tough category to find the right measurement. The iPhone has a bundle of custom chips designed around iOS to make the best use of limited resources that any smartphone has. It runs a 64-bit OS which has a higher draw on battery that BB10, and the larger screen also draws more power. That tight integration means iOS flows naturally and rarely stutters or hangs.

It can happen though, multiple tabs in the web browser is an issue for the iPhone, and the multitasking is more like 'pausing each app' when it is not in the foreground.

BlackBerry's hardware  is pretty much off the shelf components, and a generation back from the current leading edge, presumably to keep the costs down as BlackBerry has very little power to buy in significant bulk. It does mean that BB10 can become too ambitious and start to stutter and exhibit the occasional hang time of a second or so, but the BlackBerry Classic suffers far less effects than the earlier BlackBerry Z10 or Q10.

The bulk of the BlackBerry allows it a basic and defining advantage over the iPhone 6 - the battery. At 2515 mAh, it's almost fifty percent larger than the iPhone 6's 1810 mAh. Couple the extra battery endurance with a smaller screen and components that draw less power than the iPhone, and you have a phone that should reach two days of usage, more than enough to outlast the iPhone 6.

The iPhone's components do allow for more long-term expansion, and offers the better environment for apps; meanwhile the BlackBerry's strength is in lower energy requirements and a larger battery. Given the focus of this comparison, the battery life has to be the key factor, so the BlackBerry Classic will edge the hardware victory, but again with the caveat that if you are stepping outside of the Enterprise space, you're going to want all the potential that the iPhone has to offer.

Display

There's no real comparison between the 720 x 720 square screen of the BlackBerry Classic, and the 1334 x 750 screen of the iPhone 6. The iPhone can show more information on the screen for a start, it has better viewing angles, and it provides more flexibility in the UI. The keyboard for the Classic, which provides more benefits in terms of user interface and operations, hampers the usefulness of the screen.

On a general point, the fonts used on the BlackBerry are very basic, and while it does keep a certain level of clarity, it feels old-fashioned and not at all fresh and exciting. That's not affecting the score, because this is a business-focused comparison, but a bit more love and attention to the chosen font would not go amiss in an update to the BB10 operating system.

This is a clear win for the iPhone 6.

Operating System And Native Applications

There's no doubt that iOS offers a much more rounded experience for the general user. Even though this is a business focused comparison, a user is going to spend a lot of time in the OS and with the UI, no matter where their focus is with a device. But we're not here to look at the general user, we're here to look at the devices from the enterprise viewpoint.

Don't get me wrong, iOS will get everything done, but Apple's UI is built heavily around data being available in siloed applications. You go into an app, you do what needs to be done, you come back up to the home screen and go into the next app. The clue that an app was an actionable event is in the red alert number that is added to the icon. It's a system that gives you a good overview of each application's needs, but no more than that. Even with the bolted-on notification system, you still need to go into each app to find out what is going on.

Where this works well is with new web services. It's relatively easy for a new service to show up on the iPhone and have a red spot appear. Because of the lack of third-party app support, it's much more unusual to find new services in the BlackBerry store and offering an extension so it can show up in Blackberry's notification system (called the Hub). If you are sticking with more established services, then this won't be a concern.

BlackBerry's contributions to a modern UI are twofold. The first is the gestures based navigation, and the second is 'The Hub.'

On the former, gestures are swipes in from the sides of the screen to perform a specific action. Swipe down from the top and you get the settings screen, from the base you get the home screen view, and left and right can call up menus on pan through views. When BB10 first launched gestures were not unique to BlackBerry, but had not made it on to mainstream smartphones. Now they can be found in iOS with a swipe down for notifications, a swipe up for quick access controls, and (in the web browser and a few supported apps) a swipe from the left hand side of the screen acts as a 'back' command.

Gestures are a different way of replicating a home button - and in the case of the iPhone 6 the home button also doubles up as a fingerprint scanner for security. Gestures maximise the utility of BB10, but they are no longer unique. The advantage they do have is that they are native to the design of BB10, where the swipes were added to the vision of iOS. This gives them a more natural feel in the BB10 OS.

BlackBerry certainly attempts to do something different with its OS. The Hub, a glorified notification system if I ever saw one, does allow for rapid triage and interaction with messages in a more compact environment - but it does sacrifice flexibility and context to force messages and notifications into the common format of name/date/subject that the Hub demands of every incoming bit of data.

For the normal user, the BlackBerry Hub is overkill. It's far too complicated in use, and it has issues with syncing read status on anything other than emails. It has such a narrow window of operation that it is clunky and restrictive in use. Put it in an environment where email is king, where the latest Web 2.0 technology is put aside for older and more prevalent communication methods, and the BlackBerry Hub shows its worth. That niche is not everybody in an Enterprise environment, but the niche is there. That's where BlackBerry's biggest win is, in any category, over the iPhone.

It's a win for the BlackBerry Classic (with the caveat that if you are outside of the heavy email enterprise user, you should really mark this one down for the iPhone 6).

Third-Party Software

There's no real contest here at all. Apple's App Store has pretty much every application you could possibly need, all instantly available over the air with one click. Developers know and understand iOS, and it's likely that iOS will be the first to receive any new software or service.

BlackBerry on the other hand... struggles. You can code natively for BB10, but the choice is very limited. BlackBerry has moved to negate this issue with support for Android applications, but BlackBerry is missing a key component... Google Play. Without the support and APIs of Google Play, the vast majority of Android apps are not available to the BlackBerry Classic.

BlackBerry has bundled the Amazon App Store in the handset, but the selection is populist at best, with a strong focus on leisure applications.

An easy win for Apple's ecosystem.

Value For Money

With a SIM-Free price of $450, the BlackBerry Classic is significantly cheaper than the equivalent 16 GB iPhone 6 at $649. Although network support for the handset is not brilliant, it can be found on one or two networks in North American and the European Union with a network subsidy. The good news is that the handset is easy to find through online retailers such as Amazon, although you lose the ability to try the handset out in your hands to get a feel for it

As for the iPhone 6, it's available pretty much everywhere, and I doubt you'll have any issues finding one to try before you buy.

On the day of purchase, the BlackBerry Classic wins value for money. But value for money is also about how long these devices will last and remain current. There has to be a question mark over BlackBerry's long-term survival as a company, and if BlackBerry does fold, then your warranty is worth nothing and spare parts for repair will be an issue. There's also the lack of developers and drive for software expansion. The iPhone 6 is going to continue to receive the latest third-party software apps from developers around the world, and that should continue for many years in the future. With the best will in the world, that's not the case with BlackBerry,

This may not matter right now if you are buying the Classic as a corporate handset, but the Classic's value and functionality will depreciate far faster than the iPhone 6.

The decision here is pretty clear-cut - do you want short-term or long-term value for money? Short-term the win would go to the BlackBerry Classic, but long-term would hand the victory to the iPhone.

I'm going for the iPhone. In an Enterprise environment purchases can be amortized over many years, so the initial cost is less of an issue than the ongoing costs of support and maintenance. The BlackBerry Classic is part of a much smaller hardware ecosystem, and is going to receive less long-term support than Apple's handset.

The Scores, And Some Final Thoughts

With a score of three wins to two in favour of the iPhone, the result was probably not in doubt, but the BlackBerry Classic does challenge the iPhone right up to the finish line. There are definite circumstances where the BlackBerry Classic should be recommended, but these circumstances are very narrow.

And this illustrates the strength of the BlackBerry and why the titular company believes it will be around for many years. Much like a boutique sports car or a Swiss watch-maker, there are times when a general purpose mobile computer will be trumped by a device that is designed to do one task supremely well. Although I discounted the 'Design' category from the scores above because it was a draw, the design of the BlackBerry is perfect for its use case... i.e. the constant texter who must handle older forms of communication at speed while on the move.

I still question whether the subset of this group that is happy to sacrifice the flexibility and versatility of the iPhone is a large enough pool of users for BlackBerry to survive as a company, but I've no doubt that after careful consideration, those well suited to the BlackBerry Classic will decide to buy the model.

As for everyone else, the BlackBerry Classic is a specialist handset for a specify use case. If you don't think you are part of that use case, then you're probably right, and the flexibility of the iOS platform is going to trump all the thoughts of a physical keyboard and niche operating system issues.

Disclaimer: This review BlackBerry Classic was provided by the UK 4G network EEwho have the Classic available for its business customers. The iPhone 6 was purchased privately SIM free by myself for review purposes.

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