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In today’s AT&T earnings call, they boasted on 1.6 million new iPhone activations last quarter. Impressive, kind of, until figures from India came in: 15.6 million new cellphone users in the month of March alone.

Kind of puts everything into perspective, doesn’t it? While the US smartphone market is our main stock and trade here at Giz, no one should forget about companies like Nokia that supply a huge percentage of the rest of the world’s phones. Even though they took a bit of a bath last quarter, it wasn’t nearly as bad as some have hoped, and for that Nokia has nearly 16 million new phone users in India to thank. [Reuters]

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With the launch of Apple iPhone, RIM has faced challenge like never before to keep up their sales of Blackberry phones like many other mobile phone manufacturers. Everyone will agree with me that iPhone is a revolutionary product that changed the way people used to think and act with their mobile phones. But Blackberry was always there to suit the needs of the corporate people. What makes these full featured phones so different? Let us discover 10 differences between these two blockbuster mobile phones.

1. Design

The iPhone design has made a revolution in Cellphone world. Keeping in mind that the recent Blackberries look smarter than before, they are just a good looker but not gorgeous like the iPhone. If the design were a fad then there wouldn’t be hundreds of iPhone Clone available in the market. The clones are selling only because it has the iPhone look.

2. E-Mail

The E-Mail service of Blackberry is simply the best. A Blackberry set up with Microsoft Exchange server has intelligent push email service which downloads the message immediately on the phone and an LED indicates that a new message has been received. The iPhone recognises new messages in 15 minutes and needs to be checked actively by the user.

3. Application

Any discussion of iPhone is incomplete without a mention of iPhone Apps. The developers of the applications for Blackberry use outdated tools that doesn’t give them enough access to the core APIs on Blackberry handsets. On the other hand iPhone is the easiest device to develop applications for. This is why there are thousands of developers developing millions of apps for the iPhone.

4. Surfing the Internet

The Blackberry browser is only a primitive one compared to the stunning safari browser of the iPhone. But the iPhone browser seems to load the pages more slowly than Blackberry over the EDGE network.

5. Keyboard

Every Blackberry except Storm boasts a full QWERTY keyboard. It is excellent for fast and accurate typing. It is true that the virtual keyboard in iPhone comes nowhere near the typing satisfaction by hardware keyboard and it takes time to master typing ability in a virtual keyboard. But there are a plenty of people who are fans of QWERTY keyboard only that takes up the whole bottom part of the front face of their cellphone and for them iPhone is really a bliss.

6. Camera

Most of the Blackberries have better camera than the iPhone. For example The Blackberry Storm has a 3.2 MP camera with image stabilization, auto-focus, white balance, variable zoom and flash. The 2.0 MP camera of iPhone is still not upto the mark to be fair. With storm you can also capture videos.

7. Battery

The iPhone battery runs out faster than Blackberry which makes it less reliable for corporate use. Although one reason for this may be due to the fact that iPhone is used for more tasks. But still I feel that iPhone has a poor battery.

8. Phone Call Quality

Blackberry has good RF reception ability. They get signal in many areas where many other phone don’t. The iPhone on the other hand has similar kind of reception quality too. So not much to distinguish between the two.

9. Multimedia

The iPhone is a great multimedia entertainer. It has good music and video players which is far ahead of any other device. The only place where Blackberry is superior than iPhone in multimedia section is the camera quality. But anyway, for multimedia, Apple iPhone -hands down.

10. Usability

At first, the iPhone may seem to be bit awkward with its full touchscreen design but you can use your intuition to get things done. On the other hand everyday Blackberry users can do the tasks faster with their shortcut keys. But Apple iPhone is just too ahead when its about learning from the scratch. Its very simple, easy to understand and still stylish.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I have to say that the iPhone may be a very good, attractive and revolutionary phone but it still lacks the features that are vital ones for corporate people. But for ordinary people like many of us, the iPhone is the best. They both have their own sets of target and that is why, no matter what Apple iPhone and Blackberry battle will be on for some time to come.  Do you have any other thought? Please share with us.

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Remote Buddy turns your iPhone into a remote controller for iTunes. If you are one of those people who have stuck on to iTunes for its obvious benefits, you might as well start to use your iPhone as a remote. This app was one of the firsts, and it’s been increasingly picked up because it lets you do lots more. It’s not only a remote, but a presenter and a keyboard (for your Mac), launching videos, etc. Remote Buddy is an AJAX Remote, so you get the same interface on the phone’s browser; since its connectivity is via Wi-Fi, lag times are low and efficiency is almost up there. 

Pandora Radio

Pandora Radio is an internet radio application for the iPhone, using which you can stream music on your iPhone. The application is smart. Once you name one of your favorite artists,  songs, etc., it will auto create a station customized to your choice; and if you’re registered on Pandora Radio, you can save the settings. You can login through your iPhone and have your saved custom-station at your service or create more of them.