The release of Apple’s iOS 5 software, which brought customers the iPhone 4S, unleashed a wave of excited chatter and anxious babble from technology lovers at Staples, but just as loud came the “ding, ding, ding!” sound effect, marking the beginning of a battle. Two of the top phones on the market, the iPhone, as well as the Blackberry, have been brought deeper into the competition for the best phone, and students are varied in their opinions.

The new iPhone brought a revolution to the technology world, swooping in to bring its customers over 200 new features on any updated Apple device. According to Apple, iOS 5 gives people “features that go further,” and many students who own the latest iPhone model are in agreement.

Haley Garrison ’13 had a Blackberry, but when her upgrade rolled around, she jumped at the opportunity to buy for an iPhone.

“All around it’s a better phone,” Garrison said of her new phone, adding that she liked how “it’s a phone and an iPod in one.”

Julia Tziolis ’13 also leapt at the chance to have one of the newest products of the technology world and pre-ordered her iPhone 4S days before it was released. She immediately fell in love with its capabilities. After less than a week, Tziolis could easily pick out what she liked, and among her favorite of its features were the camera, the applications, Siri (a computerized assistant built into the iPhone 4S), and the iOS 5 software as a whole.

Her admiration for the device didn’t end there. “Without it, I don’t know what to do with myself,” said Tziolis.

Tziolis was able to decide that the iPhone was the better option over the Blackberry. “I’d heard a lot of bad things about the Blackberry and knew a lot of people were sick of theirs,” said Tziolis, she was not the only one who had been hearing complaints about Blackberrys.

Just four days before the release of the iPhone 4S, Blackberry customers had began experiencing outage problems, and Staples students were no exception. Customers reported problems that ranged from no Internet connection to texts not sending, The mistake was crippling, and Blackberry stocks fell, alongside students’ desire for the once top-of-the-market device.

Tziolis saw the effects of this problem firsthand when she witnessed someone trying to reach their parents on a Blackberry. “They couldn’t call their parents because the network was down, and I wouldn’t want to get a Blackberry and risk that happening to me,” Tziolis said.

But not everyone has turned their backs on the Blackberry, and Alec Wrubel ’13 can attest to the fact that it is a two-way-street. Wrubel knows just how much an iPhone can do from personal experience, but decided to transfer over to a Blackberry about a year ago. “It was less expensive, and I wanted a real keyboard,” he said. Wrubel likes the Blackberry better for emailing, partly due to the Blackberry keyboard, and says the battery lasts longer. He has never experienced service malfunctions and said he didn’t feel their recent effect.

Andrew Felman ’14 did not notice the service interruptions either, but that did not stop him from being yet another student to choose Apple’s new creation over the Blackberry. “I switched to the iPhone because I had my Blackberry for two years and I wanted more capabilities, which can be found on the iPhone,” Felman said. Felman thought the Internet browser was poor in comparison to other smart phones and was also disappointed with how unentertaining his Blackberry was.

“What I like about the 4S is I’m never bored,” said Felman. However, Felman does credit the Blackberry with a better messenging system. “I think Blackberry Messenger (BBM) is better; iMessage does not feel like a capability at all, it just seems like regular messaging to me.”

Whatever the phone of choice may currently be, it is important to remember the world of technology is forever advancing.

For now, Apple’s iPhone seems to have customers very satisfied.

“Now that I have this, I’m never going back,” Garrison said.