iPhone therefore iAm

Just try bringing up the phone debate and see what happens. By Sarah Britten

Friday afternoon and it's war out there. People should be crawling in first gear on the M1 or downing their third Windhoek Light, and instead they're arguing about cellphones. Admittedly, I can't pretend I didn't know there would be trouble when I launched that innocent question onto the interwebs: "I'm thinking of getting a new phone. iPhone or BlackBerry?"

Soon enough, the insults start flying.

"Multimedia Crap vs Smart Business Gadget," says a BlackBerry fan.

"Look at a BlackBerry user using the apparatus," retorts an iPhone aficionado. "There is a little nipple/clitoris thingy in the middle of the phone that they keep playing with. It scrolls the screen. That's their story, anyway."

The iPhone is a toy, say the BlackBerry people. Using a BlackBerry is like using MS-DOS, say the iPhone people. BlackBerry people are serious about business (or boring, depending on who you're asking); iPhone users are impossibly edgy (or posers who've bought into the hype).

Somebody weighs in with an opinion that the HTC kicks iPhone butt.

"The HTC is not in this dogfight," snaps the iPhone devotee. "Go find your own."

It's as if Archduke Franz Ferdinand just rolled into town. One blogger observes, "My world seems to be populated by iPhone or BlackBerry obsessed people ... It's like there are only two kinds of people out there." This is true: nobody seems to get this excited about their Nokias or their Samsungs, which claim a far bigger slice of the market.

"iPhones are for people who think they're cool," says 23-year-old data analyst Khanyi Tshume. "BlackBerries are about communication." She's on her third BlackBerry, relying on BlackBerry Messenger, BBM, to stay in contact with her friends. It's looking as though the possession of a BlackBerry will become a requirement for friendship in the first place. BlackBerry people will only be friends with other BlackBerry people, and soon there will be a virtual volkstaat in our midst. No wonder Dubai threatened to stop all BlackBerry services because of security concerns. I hope someone - Gareth Cliff, perhaps - has alerted our president to this possibility.

In fact, some parliamentary apparatchik should set up a task team forthwith because South Africa is fast becoming BlackBerry country. People post their BBM pins on Facebook like acolytes tapping out a secret code on a door. At the office, the pings and bongs of BlackBerry messages arriving can be heard in every cubicle. In every cellphone shop I enter, salespeople offer me a BlackBerry before anything else. They tell me parents love it because of the R60 a month fixed cost for data, which means they can control their offspring's spending, and the kids love the BBM. This is why the idea that the BlackBerry people are serious-minded business types is no longer strictly accurate, not when every second student has one.

Both the iPhone and the BlackBerry have had considerable impact, not just on technology, but on culture too, and this is partly why those who swear by them seem to vest so much of their identity in these mobile persecution devices. The iPhone revolutionised the smartphone market when it launched in 2007. The notion that where the iPhone leads, others follow, is profoundly important to those who've created a sort of iPhone/ego mashup, where their inner lives are mapped by the apps on their screen.

In terms of sheer cultural impact, however, the BlackBerry - or "Crackberry" - edges out its übertrendoid rival. It's hard to believe that the term "BlackBerry Prayer" first appeared as long ago as 2000. Seven years later, the New York Times noted, "What's clear is the BlackBerry prayer position - head bowed, hands together, thumbs going - is a solipsistic emblem of our age". Today the BlackBerry enjoys the dubious honour of being the device that people have allowed, more than any other, to eat into their lives, turning them little by little into an extension of the office, until they are hardly human at all.

So, is there a verdict? Which camp has pledged allegiance to the winner?

"I have this conversation once a week," says Toby Shapshak, editor of Stuff magazine and the one man who could settle this debate. It turns out - somewhat disappointingly - that he uses both. "It's basically down to a matter of preference," he says. Maybe he's right to make like Switzerland in this argument, because prejudices can prove to be off the mark.

"I swore I would never get the iPhone but I'm thrilled with it," says Reg Rumney, director of the Centre for Economics Journalism in Africa. "It works."

Finally, there are always those, like ChaiFM producer Juan Coetzee, who refuse to pick a side at all. He says no to both. "These things are total invasion of privacy. Enough is just enough."

He's getting rid of his BlackBerry and getting a R200 Nokia instead.