Tricycle to a Ferrari is as Blackberry is to an iPhone

Three weeks ago the moment that I had been waiting over 12 months for arrived. I put down my Blackberry  and picked up my new phone. It was a great feeling to get rid of a phone I had wanted to throw in the skip for so long.

The BlackBerry Curve was the first smartphone I ever got and back in 2010 it was up there with the best and most popular devices out there. It was fast and reliable, had great access to emails, the internet was good and most of my friends had this device. Building on that last point, BlackBerry was the ideal phone for contacting your friends, notably through the BB Messaging service. If I'd had my BlackBerry for a year, then the first part of the post would have been a lot different, but sadly it was a 24 month contract and the second year was where the problems started.

The most notable issues were the almost constant freezing whenever I tried to do anything which the phone considered 'too fast' and separately the 'white screen' that appeared suddenly without warning. Add to this the back falling off, along with parts of the sides and the top, then you get a picture of how the phone was operating towards the end.

So with my contract coming to an end I was faced with a choice, which phone should I get next? There were many options out there, go with Nokia who are trying to fight their way back in to the market or possibly Sony or HTC. As I really looked at this it became an obvious battle between Samsung and Apple. Do I plump for the Galaxy S3 or wait for the iPhone 5, which was expected late Sept/ early Oct, to come out?

Both phones would have been great choices, they are fast, have great apps, produce perfect pictures and generally make your life easier. The differences between the two are minimal and in the end it comes down to preference. Some people will buy an iPhone simply because it is an Apple product, whilst others will choose anything but an iPhone in order to be anti-Apple.

I will admit I was leaning towards that first group, wanting to have an iPhone because of how good the previous models had been. Plus having a friend tell me how amazing his iPhone was didn't help Samsung's cause. The main thing that put me off the S3 was just how big it was. It's funny how the first mobile phones were huge and slowly they got smaller but now it seems we're heading back the other way again, although at least they are remaining thin! Samsung have, however, revealed a smaller version of the S3 will be released, possibly solving the size issue for many potential customers.

I think in the end a lot of it does come down to reputation. Apple has long had a reputation as a game changer, as being the top dog in the pen. You know if you buy an Apple product, the chances are you're going to be pretty happy with the quality of the device. Samsung have managed to achieve this now and are a major player and rival of Apple, so much so it created the court battle between the two over patents this year. Do you think Apple would have bothered if Samsung were barely scratching the service in the mobile world? Me neither.

Reputation is the biggest issue facing Nokia and BlackBerry right now. Both companies have been at the top at some point, most notably Nokia who used to rule the mobile land. Interview people on the street and I guarantee 90% will have had a Nokia at some point but they were overtaken and took too long to catch up.  Slowly the fallen giant is making it's way back with the Lumia range and will be pinning a lot of its hopes on the new Lumia 920, due for release in Europe in November. Blackberry has the same hopes pinned on the BlackBerry 10, after a fall from grace as it was passed by touchscreen technology and its own major failures. It remains to be seen if these devices can revive the fortunes of each company but the worrying thing will be where could they go from here if they don't?

In the end I went for the new iPhone and have not regretted it at all. It's a great device and an even better one when compared to my old BlackBerry. It is everything I thought it would be and what I explained it was in this article. The question now is could I ever see myself going back to a Blackberry after converting to Apple? Well I like to look at it this way, if you upgraded from a tricycle to a Ferrari, would you ever go back? Anyone knows though that nothing stays the same forever and nobody stays on top forever, so we shall see if anyone can truly knock Apple off their perch in the future.

But as the old saying goes, if you can't beat them, join them and I think I will be joining them for a good while yet.