Ode to a phone

I mentioned earlier I picked up a Blackberry Pearl 8130 from my (now goin' steady) phone service provider Alltel and that I would write up my initial thoughts of this machine, especially since I've been mostly spoiled by my iPod touch. After almost two weeks the initial verdicts are in. Click on to find outMoving from a Motorola throw-away to the Pearl was a nice change. The closest experience to a full keyboard on a mobile device is my iPod. Not exactly the greatest tool for comparison, is it? My old phone had the standard input method of multi-touch, which I eschewed for iTap. Since the Pearl has a half keyboard, unlike my roommates full sized phone. This means Blackberry had to make a similar choice, multi-touch as well as the BB dubbed SureType which figures out what craziness you intended to write.

Apple released with their iPhone the app store, which is a one stop shop for every single application for the iPhone and iPod touch; why hasn't Blackberry and the providers given us a similarly easy means to buy useful tools for our phones? And why the hell hasn't amazon given us an equally awesome tool to buy impulsively. How can Facebook not have a chat feature in the BB client? It's downright criminal to have it in the iPhone app but not BBFacebook.

So while it's not a perfect blending of software and hardware, I'm not ashamed to pay and use this phone, and if you're still using a dumb phone, why? Feel free to explain why I'm full of shit.