SmartPhone Needs A Bat Phone

So how’s that iOS 5 install going for everybody?

Yeah, it’s definitely slow on the uptake.  I was joking with some friends on Facebook last night that perhaps Apple should buy some new IBM Blade servers to help speed those downloads along.

But hey, at least the download/install eventually worked, slow though it may have been.  That juxtaposed with our friends at Research In Motion, whose BlackBerries have been on the blink since Monday of this week.

RIM is reporting now that everything’s back in working order, but this outage was a black eye that the BlackBerry simply *didn’t* need at this particular moment in time, considering all the other smartphone option available in the market these days.

Once I turned in my BlackBerry Bold for an iPhone 4, I must say, I’ve missed the BlackBerry service, particularly because I’m guilty of being an email junkie.

But I haven’t missed it so much to want it back, and it’s features were certainly not keeping up with the iPhone Joneses.

The BlackBerry for me was mostly a one-trick pony, whereas the iPhone 4 (which I’ll be learning about again for weeks with the iOS 5 upgrade) has been more of a Swiss Army knife.

During my recent trip to Bangalore, I didn’t bother taking my iPad, as I wanted to travel light and figured I could use the iPhone for a number of different things.

And I did.  I used it to watch movies, play games, and read books on the flight.

Once in Bangalore, I used it to take some pictures and shoot some videos of me almost getting run over in the Bangalore traffic. I also used Skype on the iPhone to call back to the States via the hotel wireless network.

I used it to keep track of all the social media activities I needed to follow while I was out.  And I did all this without even bothering with the local phone service or a proprietary network (I did all this via wi-fi).

So, I’ll stick with my iPhone 4 for now, as it gets the job done.

Speaking of jobs, Nielsen is out with a study informing us that 40% of TV viewers use their tablets or smartphones while they’re watching the boob tube. Whoa, this could lead to a major advertiser’s dilemma.  Do you advertise on the boob tube or the tablet and/or smartphone?

I’m gonna go with both.