Every day when I leave the house, I walk out with two gadgets- an original model iPhone and a Blackberry curve. I use two phones on a daily basis, and while it can be quite cumbersome, it’s a system I’m quite happy with. 
The iPhone is a hand me down- much of the gadgets or phones I’ve used for most of my life have been hand me downs from either my mother or my aunt. Both loooove gadgets, but most of the time, they have no clue how to use them half of the time, or what to do when things go wrong (and that’s when they call me). I used a Handspring Platinum back in high school- that, combined with a fold out keyboard, gave me the ability to write my webcomic reviews (or ongoing serial stories) all the easier. I’d pop out the keyboard, plug in the pda, and write in Word to Go. (it was just showing how nerdy I really was to my classmates- pulling out a PDA with a foldout keyboard does automatically label you as a nerd, especially in high school) In college, I’d toy around with an SNES emulator I found for a Palm Zire 72 Special edition, playing Yoshi’s Island in the back of geography class. Both of these PDAs were hand me downs- from my mother and my aunt respectively. When my aunt switched to an iPhone 3GS, she gave me her first generation iPhone. After a complicated jailbreaking (i say complicated because i was cursing most of the time). I turned the contract required iPhone into an iPod touch with a camera built in. Almost anywhere I go often has a wifi point, so keeping the phone on airplane mode (to remove the power to the now useless phone) and turn on the wifi whenever possible to use the internet hotspots. The phone has been the best little present I’ve been given in years. With every paycheck, I allocate ten bucks or so for the apps on the phone (I have never been tempted to “pirate” applications on the iPhone. Paying for them is still completely worth it, and knowing that I can support part of the mac community with my purchase is worth it). And I love it. I’ll bust out the iPhone most of the time, to answer emails, check twitter, or write down a idea I had. It’s a sweet little thing, and I love it dearly. The integration with my mac helps a bit as well. Certain little applications have made it all the better- Hipstamatic, Evernote, and Gas Cubby have made it useful on the go (I can list quite a number of apps i use on a regular basis, perhaps I’ll have to make a top ten list post sometime). The blackberry, on the other hand, is a different story. I came to using the blackberry a year ago, and I really did love it. It was the first phone that I actually bought for myself, and with it, gave me some great appreciation of the phone. I quickly loved all of the features- Powerful email, nice keyboard and a great contextual menu (click the blackberry button and send your image to a certain program! click the blackberry button over a phone number and send a text to that number. All sorts of things can be done with that menu that you don’t see on the iPhone.). The honeymoon period though, lasted only so long. The amount of decent applications for the blackberry is minimal at best. An app store was created for the blackberry system, but the sluggish nature (and annoying paypal tied paying system) keeps me away from the more premium apps. Most of the apps are either really incredibly slow or don’t really work on my Blackberry- a curve 8330. The phone itself is incredibly slow- running even one application in the background forces me to stare into the blackberry’s version of the Beachball of Doom- a simplified hourglass that taunts me with every passing minute. So much of the operating system on the blackberry feels like a relic from the time it still competed with the original Palm OS. Nothing on that phone feels fresh anymore- yeah, if i had more friends using blackberries, things like Blackberry Messenger would actually make sense- but i don’t. Everyone just uses iPhones these days. Now, the blackberry is just a glorified phone- I’ll check it from time to time whenever I don’t have wifi available for the iPhone. I’ll send text messages from both gadgets (the beauty of having a jailbroken iPhone- Google Voice running on both!). My real wish is to one day seeing the iPhone on my network of choice- Verizon. While that may be a far-flung hope (and ridicule from one friend- I’m looking at you, Ross), I still have some ill conceived hope on the subject. To have the iPhone as my only gadget would be a godsend. I don’t mind the virtual keyboard so many seem to loathe- the auto-correct feature (something phones with physical keyboards should have) usually saves my hide from my terrible spelling track record. For now, I’ll be walking around with an iPhone and a Blackberry in my pockets, confusing people who see me with my two phones.
