AUC Caravan

by Gaser El Safty:

Whether you own one, know someone who owns one or have seen one, chances are you know what a BlackBerry is. The hype that has recently taken the world by storm is impossible to ignore.

The wireless mobile device that was developed by Canadian company Research in Motion was originally developed as a two-way pager. But by 2002, RIM had developed features such as mobile telephone, push email, internet faxing, text messaging, and web browsing for their new smart-phone.

The BlackBerry technology was originally intended for business and industrial purposes, giving businessmen convenient access to their emails at any time from any place. Also the BlackBerry Messenger function lets you communicate via messaging with anyone who’s also connected from a BlackBerry anywhere in the world.

However, nowadays the BlackBerry has become a fashion icon, a new trend among teenagers,

where in communities like the American University in Cairo, students are seen constantly fiddling with their blackberries and using the BBM service. Like any other mainstream item, the BlackBerry now has two extreme sides, people who love it, usually the people who own one, and people who down right hate it.

Omar El Sayed, a political science graduate, said he bought the phone for its functionality and thought it was worth the money.

“I bought the phone from abroad so it was a lot cheaper than anywhere else,” El Sayed said.

Sophomore Salma El Sebaey is also pro-BlackBerry.

“It’s a good phone, it has everything, until now I’ve had no complications with it,” she said.

However, not all users share this opinion as some found using a BlackBerry complicated.

The stores where you can purchase a BlackBerry do not give you a crash course on how to use it, neither do the service providers like Vodafone and Mobinil, and this could prove to be problematic for those who are not tech-savvy.

Aya El Batrawy, a journalism and mass communication professor at AUC, recently bought a BlackBerry, and was seen fiddling with it in class trying to figure it out, asking students for help on how to get started with it.

“I figured since it was so popular, it would probably be user-friendly and easy to use,” she said. But upon attempting to use it, Batrawy decided it was not.

Batrawy said her old phone’s “most sophisticated feature was a flash light,” which she found quite handy. But with the BlackBerry’s overly sophisticated interface she said that she feels “like [she] moved from Harlem to the Upper West Side.”

Other people share similar opinions on BlackBerry’s inconvenience.

Marwan Kandil, a theater junior, thinks BlackBerry software is “hideous,” and that there are much better substitutes.

“You can buy an N71 for far less money without all the extra fancy gadgets,” he said.

The multiple features built into the BlackBerry are indeed very useful, granted you know what they are and how to use them, but they were directed at a market of businessmen, who might actually make use of such features as internet faxing. However, a BlackBerry is now more of a fashion statement than a functional tool.

This BlackBerry phenomenon has spread beyond the AUC community.

“I got a BlackBerry because I thought it was very fashionable and trendy,” said Kareem El Kadi, a business administration junior at The German University in Cairo.

The Apple iPhone is a similar smart-phone that supports a wide variety of applications as Apple itself promotes the development of third-party applications. When an iPhone user goes to the Apple store, he finds a more diverse variety of software to download in a variety of genres, including games, music and maps, among others.

The iPhone’s touch screen is considered by many to be more technologically advanced in comparison to the BlackBerry Storm, which also supports a touch screen.

Unlike the BlackBerry Storm, the iPhone’s touch screen supports features like shaking your phone, scrolling, zooming, angling your phone, and turning it upside down. The only advantage users pointed out is that a BlackBerry has proven a lot more durable than an iPhone.

The iPhone also comes equipped with a camera, functions exactly like a video iPod and an internet client which supports e-mail, web browsing and Wi-Fi connectivity.

But, since both phones support internet access, any instant messaging application could work on either, like Windows Live Messenger, which allows one to communicate with other messenger users logged on from their laptops, desktops or smart phones.

One thing is for sure, the BlackBerry has a seemingly addictive nature. Avid BlackBerry users are often referred to as CrackBerry users.