Jason Bryant Blog

Some thoughts about tech…

I recently decided not to wait for the iPhone to come to Canada, instead opting for the iPod touch and the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition. I have now used both enough to weigh in on how good they are.

The iPod touch is similar to the iPhone with the exception of the phone, camera, and productivity applications like mail and maps. It is thinner than the iPhone and has all the iPod functionality of the iPhone. Watching videos is fabulous, podcasts and music playback great, and the Safari Web browser is the best way to experience the web on a small, portable device.

A warning however, turning on Wi-Fi and browsing really sucks up the battery so beware. YouTube and iTunes are built right in (provided you can access a Wi-Fi signal). iCal synchs with the iPod touch and the display is elegant, however, you can’t add events from the iPod, you can only sync with your Mac. I’ve heard this is just a bug and will be fixed with future software updates.

Contacts are also synced from Address Book, and you can add contacts from the iPod touch using the on-screen keyboard. Speaking of the keyboard, it works fairly well, but there is no way you can type as fast as you can on a device with buttons (i.e. BlackBerry), but I’ll touch on that later. I have very skinny fingers, and even I had trouble hitting the letter beside the one I wanted. I can’t imagine how someone with fat, stubby fingers would fare. It’s also not very good at fast forwarding quickly or pausing, or adjusting the volume. With the Nano, you could pause it or adjust the volume without even taking it out of your pocket. Skipping past a 30 second ad was a simple 3/4 rotation on the scroll wheel. I didn’t even have to look. With the touch, you have to take it out of your pocket, unlock it with a swoosh, they pause or adjust the volume. The fast forward on the time line is very cumbersome, if not impossible. You can’t jump ahead by seconds or a minute, it seems to jump in 3 or 4 minute chunks. And as I said, I have small fingers, I can’t imagine how much it would move if you had big fingers.

Another problem, I can’t seem to view show notes on podcasts. On the Nano, you just click the center button once for album art, twice for the show notes, three times to rate it. On the touch the fist click show you the time line, the second click gives you a list of tracks in that Album, and the rating bar. It comes in 8GB and 16GB versions, and you just know that in six months they’ll have a 32GB version for the same price. So if storage is an issue, you may want to look at the updated iPod Classic. I do like that the touch uses flash memory instead of a hard drive. It’s very fast accessing big video files and I’ve heard about some lag issues with the hard drive based iPods. All in all, the iPod touch is the best iPod ever made and is great for video and web browsing.

I decided on the BlackBerry as my phone because, next to the iPhone, it’s probably the best “smart” phone out there for my needs. I essentially wanted a device that does push email and text messaging well. I wanted a full keyboard for faster typing and I have not been disappointed. All my Gmail goes to the BlackBerry automatically, even faster than my mail program fetches new messages. I tested it while at home and the second you hit send, the BlackBerry beeps with the new email message. Very cool. The only problem I had was yesterday when Gmail seemed to revert back to POP (I had enabled Google’s new IMAP on the weekend) and began pushing all my emails to the BlackBerry. 200 hundred were downloaded before I deleted Gmail from my BlackBerry account (using my iPod touch Wi-Fi by the way). When I got home, I re-added Gmail and it’s been fine ever since. I think it was a problem with Google services, not BlackBerry.

I love how efficient the BlackBerry is for all communications. For example, I found a business associates phone number enclosed with an email. I wanted to phone him, so I clicked on the number and it began dialing. The cool thing, is the number contained an extension so it dialed the first 7 digits and waited for an answer. Then a menu popped up with the 3 digit extension and as soon as the prompt came, I pushed the button and it dialed the extension. Very cool. Writing email and text messaging is a breeze. I find I’m using SMS and even email more because it’s so easy. I’ll never use T9 predictive text on a regular phone again.

The other important thing for me is battery life. I have really long days working on film sets and I would hate to run the battery down on my iPhone watching videos or surfing and they suddenly you don’t have a phone. That would suck. So I actually like having two devices, the iPod touch for entertainment, the BlackBerry for email and phone. Yes these devices are expensive, but you get what you pay for. I know so many people who opt for cheaper smart phones, only to have them crash all the time. If you want the best, you have to pay for it. It’s that simple.

Oh and a quick note on Apple’s new O.S., Leopard. I am waiting to upgrade. Partly because I don’t have time right now, but also because I want to make sure all my applications will work after the upgrade. Some people report no problems with the upgrade, but other have had days of problems. I don’t see the need to rush. I am interested in iLife and iWork so even if I don’t upgrade to Leopard right away, I will be ordering those products.

And that’s whats going on in my tech life.