What is the difference between a PDA and a blackberry?

Answer 1

A Blackberry is a make (brand of PDA) just as Kleenex is a brand of tissue. A PDA is a type of organizer, phone book, expense record, and so on. All of these functions are on a Blackberry. The Palm type PDA was set to take the market on this, but RIM was able to invent the Blackberry PDA with instant email and that took over. A lot of people use the Blackberry only for its email capability and don't often use the other funtions.

Answer 2

I will take a Palm 700p from Sprint with a $15 high speed unlimited connection all day, every day.
Email is easy to send and the Palm operating system is far superior to Windows. PDA's soon will not be made without telephone capabilities. Having WiFi is useless unless you are near a hot spot. I want to send an email wherever I am and not have to wait until I am near a hot spot. Those that do not want to pay $15 a month for high speed unlimited internet are cheap. WiFi means nothing for those of us who really want the option of connecting wherever we are. As I stated in a previous answer, if you are on the road or in a forest with a PDA or Blackberry and you haven't paid for an internet plan all you have is a phone with a nice calander.

Answer 3

Blackberry is a brand of smartphone (A PDA and a phone combined) that runs Symbian OS. Palm makes a few smartphones that run Palm OS, and a couple that run Windows Mobile. Most other companies (Except Nokia, they run Symbian as well) make PDAs that run on Windows Mobile or Windows CE.

Answer 4

A PDA can be a Palm or Pocket PC, There is a big diference between this 2 but they both have OS, you can improve them by downloading extra software aand they are more prectical than a black berry, thay have more multimedia and fun options and the BBerry is more dedicated to calendar, apointments, etc. It also has integrated phone and there are less extra software for Blackberry OS than Palm OS or Windows (for PPC)

Answer 5

Not much. A Blackberry is a particular kind of PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). Like Pepsi is a kind of cola or Band-Aid is a kind of adhesive strip.

Answer 6

PDA is Public Display of Affection and is frowned upon. A blackberry is what Britney exposed recently when she was caught without panties.

Answer 7

The Blackberry is positioned as a corporate email solution. RIM (Research In Motion) makes the Blackberry handheld device and the proprietary push email solution that enables the Blackberry handheld device to receive email, contacts, tasks and calendar updates. www.blackberry.com Usually when a company deploys blackberry's they will also set up a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) to interface with their mail server and "push" there corporate mail to the Blackberry handheld.

The Blackberry's handheld device software is limited. A user can open up and view an email attachment such as Word document or Excel spreadsheet. But the user cannot save or edit the attachment to the device's memory. The user can only forward the same attachment that he received if he wants another user to receive it.

The Blackberry's multimedia capabilities are also limited. Most Blackberry's are glitz-free. Meaning no built-in camera, no removable media capabilities, such as secure mini-cards, or ability to play back popular music or video formats such as MP3 or MPEG. For the most part, Blackberry’s are closed-off handheld units designed as simply easy to maintain email devices for companies with on-the-go employees.

Whereas corporations value a highly secure, safe and static solution, RIM realizes it most open up its handheld device if it wants the consumer to purchase it. That’s why RIM has finally “cracked” the Blackberry open by allowing it accept outside media, added a camera, playback music and video with the introduction of the Blackberry Pearl.
http://www.blackberrypearl.com/ This device is geared toward the consumer with POP3 email accounts. RIM makes available a service to “push” POP3 (Yahoo, AOL, Gmail) email to consumers. http://www.discoverblackberry.com/personalize/blackberry101/internet.jsp

PDA’s as you have probably surmised are more multi-media, multi-functional devices. They are fully capable of accepting outside media, such as MP3 and MPEG, and playing it back for the user’s enjoyment. They are also capable of external outside memory being added to them, such as secure cards: micoSD. They are duly capable of opening, storing and editing received email attachments such as Word and Excel.

PDA’s, for the most part, (there are smaller niche pda OS’s such as Symbian and even a Linux PDA OS) can be broken down into two types, either a Palm operating system or Microsoft operating system. If your PDA has a Palm OS it is made by Palm. If your PDA has a MS OS it can be made from a number of manufacturers such as Samsung, UT Starcom, or Motorola. This is in stark contrast to RIM which controls and makes proprietary the handheld operating system and handheld hardware.

As a quick segue, Palm now also makes a Palm device with a MS operating system. This was to great consternation of Palm Fanatics who religiously swear by their double Palms!(hardware and software) A great tale about the early PDA days can be heard by these original Palm-mites if you happen to run across one at local Starbucks. Pour the joe and listen!

Another stark contrast is the push email solution for PDA’s. RIM has theirs built-in to their solution. To get a push email solution, corporations that use PDA’s need a 3rd party software to enable a push solution such as Good Technology www.good.com or Intellisync www.intellisync.com . Microsoft recently up the ante to include a push email solution into their mail solution: Exchange 2003 SP 2 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=535bef85-3096-45f8-aa43-60f1f58b3c40&displaylang=en


In summary, there are still distinctions to be made regarding the differences between a Blackberry, a proprietary corporate email solution versus a PDA, a consumer friendly solution with multimedia functionality. But in the next few years these differences will begin to lessen as each tries to add the functions and capabilities of the other.

Answer 8

black berry is a cell phone and requires you to have a plan.

PDA's dont require you to have a cell phone plan,