For business, the Blackberry is superior. I don’t care about integrations with Microsoft Exchange or other IT concerns. I’m talking about the end-user experience.

If my business required that I listen to music, watch YouTube videos, or check the weather in Palo Alto, the iPhone would be my choice for sure. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t figure into my daily job routine and so I have to do real work and that, for good or bad, means lots of emailing with clients, prospects, magazine editors, my teammates, etc.

And when it comes to email, the Blackberry is the indisputed heavyweight champion of the world. And to me the iPhone is the Ivan Drago of business mobile phones.

Ivan Drago (played by Dolph “I will break you” Lundgren) was the brick-eating Russian boxer of Rocky IV. He was younger, faster, stronger, quicker than anyone and everyone or at least the hype said so. He killed Apollo Creed in the movie and was anointed the next big thing. He then met his match in Rocky and as a result, Drago was sent packing to Siberia.

When it comes to business smartphones, the iPhone is no different than Drago. It will likely have killed some other past their prime players like Apollo (are Palm and Treo still around?), but when it goes head to head against Blackberry, the iPhone has met its Rocky.

Ok – I’ve dragged this metaphor on for too long. But you get the point.

Here’s my argument based on a sample size of 1. Why do people use business smartphones? For email. And Blackberry is very good at this on many fronts. It makes me more productive because I can type about 8 times as fast on a Blackberry as the iPhone I currently have.

It’s because RIMM’s blackberry has keys which I can touch/feel as I type and that makes writing emails quicker and more accurate. Tactility (that a word?) is a good thing. It increases my productivity. Productivity helps our clients. Clients are happy. I am happy. Blackberry wins round 1.

The iPhone (almost daily) says it cannot validate my email credentials and so when on the road, there are moments when I cannot get my emails. This is mildly irritating at best and stressful at worst. Blackberry went down occasionally (every couple months) so I could bear it. The iPhone service hasn’t gone down because my personal emails still come through but it has some problem getting to my work emails. I never had to think about this with my Blackberry. Blackberry wins round 2.

I could probably find the answer to this validate issue on some forum, but instead of wasting my time there, I’m going to start shopping around for a new Blackberry.

BE FREE CALL WITH A FIX PHONE!!!!!

Oh, and maybe make it operable with XM or Sirius. I know it’s a bit antithetical if the thing is both a phone and WiFi, but to be able to get Stern or baseball live and portable would be a big perk for me.

Oh yeah. I’m buying. :P