As I have flown across the world, I think that I have spent more time with wireless handheld devices than anything else. And, I am a fickle master. Looking back at my wall of devices, I find that I have been the proud owner of the following:
- Palm VII
- Danger (T-Mobile) Sidekick
- Palm Treo, Treo 650, Treo 680 and Centro
- Compaq iPaq
- BlackBerry 7100, BlackBerry 7200, BlackBerry Curve 8320
- Apple iPod Touch (2 different generations)
- BlackBerry Storm, for a single day
- Motorola Droid
- HTC Droid Incredible
Am I addicted? It would seem so. Am I addicted to the device or to reading email? The Sidekick, Treo, and now the Droid, were with me all the time. It was a fashion accessory. (Who has the smallest and thinnest?) But, I think I really wanted to stay in touch.
So, I think I have some experience with how the devices work for email. Until a few months ago, I would have said that the BlackBerry Curve was the best device that I have used.
But now, I am passing the crown to the HTC Droid Incredible. There are still some things that it could learn from the BlackBerry. But, overall, it is easy to use and has the best features for creating an email.
KEYBOARD FOR CREATING EMAIL:
It is easier to type on this device than any of the other ones I have tried. Let’s put it into perspective:
- Palm Treo 680 – Nice keys, easily defined, a little cramped.
- Palm Centro – Probably the world’s most cramped physical keyboard in a commercial product. Horrible.
- BlackBerry Curve – Great physcial keyboard. But, no on-screen error correction. I was prone to typos.
- BlackBerry Storm – Do I really need to press down so hard? I made lots of errors.
- Apple iPhone / iPod Touch – Really nice on-screen keyboard. But, the word suggesting feature makes one guess. Touch it and it keeps the bad word and not the correction.
So, lets talk about the Droid and entering text. There are three reasons to love keyboarding on the Droid:
1. You have four keyboards to choose from. It really matters:
- The first two keyboard are on-screen keyboards that are every bit as good as those on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. One is vertical and the other is horizontal. The spacing is beautiful and the letters appear significantly above the key stroke. (I have two complaints about typing with the BlackBerry Storm and Storm 2: (a) The on-screen keys are good, but they glow when you type. It is hard to see which key you actually hit. (b) You need to use a degree of force when you type, which slows down the typing process.)
- The third is an on-screen vertical keyboard similar to the small BlackBerry unit in which each key handles more than one letter. I am not a fan of this style of keyboard and I have not used it much.
- And, you can download a keyboard of your choice. Check out this video for BlindType:
2. The haptic feedback creates a small vibration in the device when you type a key with the on-screen keyboard. This feedback gives you a real confirmation that you have “depressed” a key, even when you have not actually pushed on anything. It is a great feeling. It is also better than the BlackBerry implementation for which you must actually depress the glass plate.
3. The Motorola Droid actively suggests a list of words to complete what you are typing. Look at the image to the left. As I typed the word app, there is a list of words that I only need to touch to complete typing. It pulls words from its dictionary and also from my contact list, so names of people appear in the choices.
I cannot overstate the value of this list of words. I often find that I can complete typing in a fraction of the time it takes to normally type a sentence. It is better than my Curve, which does not suggest anything as I type. It is also better than the Apple iPhone that suggests one word.
EMAIL NOTIFICATION
Unfortunately, the Droid is the laggard in the pack when it comes to email notification.
I believe that the BlackBerry leads the pack because of its TODAY screen. I am not shocked by this as BlackBerry was designed to be an email device from the beginning. However, I believe the fix for the Android may be a simple widget.
The BlackBerry TODAY screen wins because it shows the sender and subject of the most recent email messages on the main screen. It is easy to see it arrive. One simple push opens the right email application. The native email application has a combined inbox. That application and the Gmail application both show an asterisk when new mail is received. It will also flash an LED with new messages. In my opinion, this works best.
The Apple iPhone and iPod Touch show the number of unread messages in the mail application, but it is the total number of messages across all mail platforms. There is not a combined inbox, which means it is necessary to switch between personal and work emails.
The Droid is the worst in the pack for email notification. There is not a today screen. (Anyone able to write the application?) It will, however, light an LED and make a noise, if requested.
READING THE EMAIL
The final criteria for an email client would be reading the email. Both the iPhone and the Droid do an excellent job of rendering emails. You get the full HTML and images. For example, I love seeing my Dilbert comics daily in full color. You can zoom in and out on the messages. They even turn to meet the width of a portrait or landscape mode. Attachments are attached and applications can be opened — such as the music player for voice mail and Documents-to-Go for presentations.
I think the Droid and iPhone have a tie here. Some may quibble about multi-tasking and others may quibble about pinching the screen versus a zoom button. The bottom line is that they both work well.
Reading email is where I hate the BlackBerry device. They reformat the messages to fit on the screen and it removes some of the graphics. They layout of the original message is not preserved. As messages include more images and more HTML, the re-rendering is a problem. I also do not like that my BlackBerry does not download entire attachments until I tell it to. This is a left over from the days of narrow bandwidth.
CONCLUSION
Each device has pros and cons. But so far, I think I am going to say with my Droid. I score the categories as follows:
TYPING – slight edge to the Droid because of the list of words that complete my typing. It really speeds things up. But, I can make the BlackBerry and iPhone work.
EMAIL NOTIFICATION – BlackBerry is the clear winner. Droid needs new software.
READING MESSAGES – Droid and iPhone share the winner spot. BlackBerry needs a lot of changes here.
As I said, the Droid will stay. Fewer typos and properly rendered HTML matter the most. I am sure that an unread widget will be coming and then I will feel that the Droid is the clear winner in the email camp.
Roger Matus is an early adopter’s early adopter. He loves trying the latest technologies, especially in software and mobile, with a focus on whether they add value in a person’s life. He also is a technology marketing guru, having brought to market several major new products including large vocabulary speech recognition, hand-held audio conferencing, and more. He writes the blog Death By Email DeathByEmail.com on the foibles of our communications revolution.
Roger’s travels have brought him to five continents with repeated trips to many. He says that his breath-taking experiences snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, flying past the Aurora Borealis, standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, going to a Buddhist monastery in the shadow of Mount Fuji, and walking the beaches in Brazil top anything that technology can offer.
