I bashed up my old phone down in Baja, and so I had to replace it with something new. My friend Des showed me his BlackJack and said it was the best phone he’d ever had, so I got one once I got back up here to SF. After using the BJ for a week or two, I took it back and swapped for a Blackberry Pearl. Why? The BlackJack is impressive, it’s thin, light, does a lot, and the Windows Smartphone OS works fairly well… …but, there was no pleasure in using it, and, well, I also had one other major gripe - see below:

• The menus and dialogs are very inconsistent - sometimes you need to use “More”, sometimes “Menu”, sometimes something like “Applications”, and then “File Manager” or whatever. Typical Windows bullshit, really. Poor UI design overall.
• Impossible to set different ringtones per profile
• Cannot filter the task list to exclude already completed tasks, without a third-party app. Why would I want to see tasks I’ve already completed??!? Idiots.
• Very slow to load some applications, even ones that are built-in. The Picsel Viewer used to view, ahem, photos from the camera phone is especially disappointing. Weak!
• Sending an SMS takes 7-9 steps. Feh.
• No built-in way to copy & paste text. Jeez, guys.
• Proprietary connector: sucks. Just use mini-USB.
• The controls are only just fair. The scroll wheel is a nice idea (and I can see where they got it from) and sometimes useful, but would need to be better integrated into the OS to be really helpful. The trackpad is tiny and too close to the other buttons on the face of the device.
• And, worst of all — the RF performance SUCKS. I can roughly 50% of my calls dropped - 50%!!! Also had no reception over New Years in a location where two other friends on Cingular (two different devices) both had coverage. The Cingular store swapped out the SIM card (it was already a new one), and that seemed to improve the RF, but it still wasn’t up to snuff.

So, the BlackJack went back, for a Pearl:

I’ve never had a BlackBerry device before, and I have to say, well done!

• Great, consistent, intuitive UI. Most of the time, the options are what I expect them to be, and the one I want is pre-selected.
• Great RF.
• Good built-in PIM applications.
• Keyboard shortcuts!!! wow. love it.
• Tiny (quite a bit smaller and lighter than the BlackJack).
• Mini-USB!! I can use the same cable to connect the Pearl to my PC that I use for my Canon digicam. Amazing!!
• I can’t really find anything wrong with it - the screen could be brighter and more colorful, but, well, I’ll wait for the iPhone for that.

Sayonara, “SmartPhone”!

PS - did I mention that Cingular gave me a $150 *refund* when I swapped for the Pearl? A final bonus is that the battery life seems excellent.