I’ve been an avid BlackBerry user since 2006. I think they’re great if you can moderate their use. (You don’t want to be the loser in the room who plays with their phone all night, right?) But I would also like to see some changes for the better. And becoming an iPhone is not one of them.

1. Multi-color LED alerts. One of the best features of the BlackBerry is the ability to glance at it from afar without activating the screen to see if you have an unread message. For example, the little LED in the upper right corner blinks red when I have a new message. But I wish I could set different types of messages to display different color alerts. For example, the Curve’s LED blinks blue when in Blue Tooth mode, and green when fully charged. Why not put those colors to good use?
2. Connection scheduling. In my continued efforts to show my smart phone who’s boss, I’d do cartwheels if I could control when and where I receive data like emails or any other non-call messages. For example, I’d like to schedule my BlackBerry to stop receiving emails (but continuing receiving calls) from 6 pm to 7 am and on the weekends, with the ability to override if I choose. It would also be great if I could automate this by location, say override any schedule when I’m at a desired location.
3. Background downloads. Maybe it’s just me, but I wish my BlackBerry would download entire emails as opposed to downloading sections of bigger ones. “Continue scrolling to download more” is annoying. Just download the whole thing once an email arrives, m’kay?
4. Shazam support. Quite possibly the coolest portable application ever made, Shazam is music recognition software that lets iPhone users discover news songs by recording a short sample of music, which then returns the name of the sampled song. That’s awesome.com. There’s a rumor this is coming to BlackBerry, but it’s an old rumor. Wishful thinking most likely.
5. App store. Research in Motion says a centralized store is “coming soon” to BlackBerry, but I wish it were here already. And I hope it’s as nifty as the iPhone store—one of the pros of Apple’s device over RIM’s—but I doubt it will be. Keep hope alive, I guess.

See also: BlackBerry on Smooth Harold