After years of using a BlackBerry I switched to Android for a few months. I started out with the Motorola Droid but after a week I decided it was too big and I didn't like the keyboard. I traded it for the Droid Eris. It is a great phone: very compact, fairly fast, great browser.

This weekend I switched back to BlackBerry to do some testing on the Storm 2. I was pleasantly surprised. I forgot a few key things that make the BlackBerry a good OS:

Fast access to applications

Things like email and the contact list just appear when you click them. There is no waiting for some third-party application to launch, it is just there.

The Messages Folder

The message list can be used for email, SMS, BlackBerry Messenger, Google Talk, and Facebook messages all in one place. Clicking on those will bring an application to the foreground to correctly handle it but it gives me a good overview. The notification bar on Android comes close but once you dismiss an item it is gone from the view. Also when you click on a notification in the Google notification bar you have to wait for an application such as Gmail to launch and it often opens up to the message list instead of the message you want to view. BlackBerry provides a history in the messages folder that is configurable and when you click that message, it just opens.

Notifications

Android allows custom ringtones but BlackBerry has way more options than that. I can make the LED light flash when I get an email from someone important and not flash for everyone else. I can set an alert which vibrates and rings when I get an email or SMS from a specific server email address. I can set custom profiles which group my notification preferences together. I'm sure most users don't use all of this customization but I do and I'm glad it is there.

Shortcut keys

I have an application for my BlackBerry which takes screen shots. I can set it to my shortcut key and take a screenshot of any application. The Eris doesn't have any buttons that can be remapped to anything so this just can't be done.

BlackBerry Messenger

I know SMS is just as fast but I feel like I can have a conversation via BlackBerry Messenger and everything just works. I can see when my text is delivered and read. I can tell when someone starts typing back to me. I also don't have to worry about the length of text I type. It is a pretty nice application to have.

Application Switching

If I press and hold the menu button I can view a list of all running programs and switch to them. This makes multi-tasking incredibly easy. Android tried to do something similar with the Home key but it only shows the last 6 applications you launched and they may or may not be already running.

The Drawback

The main problem I have with this device is the browser. When you compare the Android browser (even the one with 1.5) and BlackBerry's latest browser, there is still no comparison. Rendering is slower and the pages don't render as well. Reading text is difficult in Page Mode but Column Mode gives the feeling of a overly simplified Internet. On the Droid Eris zooming and reading are much easier and javascript seems to work a lot better. Pages like Metova's Jira and Google Reader look significantly better in the Android Browser.

I think I'll stick with the Storm 2 for a bit longer as long as I don't have to do much web surfing.