The switch from iPhone to Bold

I've really tried to like the iPhone and for the most part, it's lived up to many of my expectations. However, there are a few things that make it hard to use for business:

• Battery life. On a normal-use day for me (probably a heavy-use day for most people), I wind up recharging the battery at least once during the day and have to charge it overnight.
• Signal. There still seem to be some signal issues with 3G service; I can stand right next to a co-worker using an original model Samsung BlackJack and he has full bars on 3G while I'm on a couple of bars with EDGE.
• Keyboard. I've gotten pretty good at using the iPhone keyboard, but it still is limiting when compared to a real QWERTY keyboard (yes, I've tried the Storm with the haptic and although it's marginally faster, it's not really as good either).

I picked up a Bold last week and immediately took it with me on a business trip. Things that I like:

• Contacts & calendars. I simply set up Google Sync and all of the information from my contacts and calendars downloaded to the phone and everything syncs in real-time. While I had configured this on the iPhone, Google Sync on the Bold automagically happens by simply downloading the app and entering in your account information.
• QWERTY keyboard. I can fire off e-mails about 3 times faster than I could with the iPhone.
• River of messages. Having everything -- e-mails, MMS, and SMS -- come into a unified inbox greatly improves my workflow. I've gone from being a minimal texter to a heavy texter as I use texting as a filter for importance.
• Battery life. I'm only recharging it every other day under my normal use conditions.
• Signal. Unbelievably good in areas where the iPhone wouldn't even have coverage. There's no option to shut off 3G, but the only reason I ever considered doing that on the iPhone was to conserve battery, which doesn't seem to be an issue with the Bold.
• Call quality. People on the receiving end have commented on the voice quality, so it must be noticeably different (I didn't call myself from my iPhone and I haven't called myself from the Bold, so I really would know).

What I don't like about the Bold:

• User interface. Apple and the iPhone blow everyone out of the water with this on every Apple device that I've used; nobody even comes close.
• Applications. The BlackBerry's handling of applications is kludgy at best and there just aren't that many real applications yet. I miss a lot of the applications that I use to use on a daily basis, including applications as simple as the iPhone Weather application. I'll see what happens when the BlackBerry app store opens.
• Media handling. Totally sucks compared to the iPhone -- I'm not sure anything handles music, pictures, and videos as well as the iPhone (except a Mac, of course). It does such a poor job that I travel with an iPod Touch to take care of these items.
• Screen size. This is a total opportunity cost -- in return for getting a real QWERTY keyboard, I lose half the screen real estate that I had on the iPhone.
• Rich e-mail handling. For the most part, the iPhone rendered e-mails on its screen the same way a desktop e-mail application does; the new BlackBerry OS does an ok job, but not great. Further, since I access my personal Gmail from the Gmail BlackBerry app (I accessed it via a Safari shortcut on the iPhone), there is not support for rich/HTML e-mails, which sucks.

Overall I think I'm happier with the Bold from a getting things done perspective, but there are definitely times when I miss the iPhone. Interestingly, the AT&T folks told me I couldn't move back and forth with my SIM, but I popped it into my iPhone today just to check and had no problems whatsoever (note that I don't use VisualVoicemail, but I'm guessing that would not have worked) -- I was able to make and receive calls, send and receive SMS messages, and access the internet. I'm guessing that my iPhone is completely unbricked, which means that I could probably sell it for a fortune, I'm just not sure that I want to at this point with the knowledge that I can bounce back and forth. I suppose if any of you wanted to make me an offer for it, I would consider it, but I'm not necessarily in active sales mode right now.