Take a look at this wild exchange that appeared on Facebook (click to embiggen). The original poster asked what they should get – a “droid” or a Blackberry (not mentioning that they were on AT&T and couldn’t get a Droid in the first place.) The “advice” given by well-meaning participants ranges from “iPhone sucks” to “boss Tim” who had a blackberry. The best reply was “Y do you think they r the best?” in response to someone suggesting an “I-phone.”
Clearly something is wrong with phone marketing. The initial question (“so I am just wondering what people think of the droid (any of them) vs the blackberry”) was molded by Verizon essentially owning the Droid moniker while the responses were a mix of FUD and odds and ends picked up in the tech press.
We mobile geeks think everyone is well aware of every phone model on the market. Au contraire. In fact, the vast majority of the phones we salivate over are unknown to the vast majority of Americans. A few big names escape from the black hole of tech jargon – Droid, Blackberry, iPhone – but you’d be hard pressed to find a good recommendation in this back and forth. While we can’t fault people for trying to figure a fractured and ridiculous market, we can fault the carriers for making things much harder than they need to be.