Surveying the mobile landscape: RIM

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	Home / Cell phones / Consumer messaging phones

	Surveying the mobile landscape: RIM	By Philip Berne, 28 December 2007

BlackBerry phones are catching on with the in-crowd. Will hipsters be a bad influence on the business messaging king? We look at recent rumors and what we'd like to see in the year ahead.

To us, RIM is something of a survivor type. The company has a few key skills that keep it ahead in the smartphone game, and looking at the year ahead, we hope RIM remembers these core values. BlackBerry phones offer the best battery life of any smartphone on the market, hands-down. BlackBerry devices have solid messaging capabilities, with some of the best keyboards in their respective classes. BlackBerry phones are models of efficiency, with bare bones, yet easy to use menus, and no-frills features packages. You can have GPS or Wi-Fi, but not both, because both would drain too much power.

Touch what?

So why on earth do we keep hearing rumors about a touch screen BlackBerry phone? Why would RIM involve themselves in touch? Touch is messy, and complicated, and unreliable. We were skeptical when RIM went from their iconic clickwheel to the trackball, but quickly the Pearl won us over. We’re not as excited about touch, and we would hope that RIM has a firm understanding of the touch market before they jump in. See, most touch phones don’t work like we want them to work. They aren’t responsive, they aren’t intuitive, and they aren’t very reliable. The iPhone is an incredible exception, and there are literally no other phones that come to mind that rely on touch but provide the same level of satisfaction. Perhaps a manufacturer like Samsung or Sony, with years of touch experience on a range of devices, will soon come close to the iPhone experience, but we would be cautious about jumping in.

Besides, why give up the keyboard? Touch keys are getting better, but that just means they are nearly tolerable, not good. Even RIM’s most contentious keyboard, the SureType keys on the BlackBerry Pearl, are easier to use, faster and more reliable than any onscreen keyboard we’ve encountered. Messaging is much easier with hardware keys, not to mention scheduling and calendar apps. We just don’t see touch as a good fit for RIM’s best qualities.

Hanging with the right crowd

RIM’s best qualities are finally being noticed by the consumer crowd, probably thanks to some nice hardware design in the Pearl and the Curve. Even the 8800-series is starting to look cool. For the next year, we would be satisfied to see RIM let the hardware team take some time off, and really focus on the interface. The BlackBerry business interface needs an overhaul. The design should be classy, colorful, and easy to use, without having to rely on endless textual lists and menus.

But what RIM really needs is a consumer interface. It can be an overlay to the larger BlackBerry OS, like HTC’s Neo interface atop Windows Mobile 6 on the T-Mobile Shadow. But it should be very appealing to consumers, who want e-mail and better messaging on their phones, but not all of the deep enterprise-level options. Make the device slimmer, shinier, curvier or sharper, and a few more colors, please. But most importantly, the OS could use a new coat and new pair of kicks for the new year.