Whats all this Blackberry about?

As the thread states, we was talking about BlackBerry 2 years ago in work and it seemed a bit Naff then, compared to HTC's that is...

Is there actually much difference between one of these and a standard HTC smartphone?

Or is it just a fad with the kids as the moment... Because everyone in my university is going mad for'em.

I suppose it depends what you're after. I use a BB for work and have a HTC Magic for personal. The BB works a dream for email, contact and calendar sync and the latest devices are fantastic (except the Storm). The Magic syncs my Gmail account seamlessly which is perfect for me also. So like I say, if you're looking to sync personal stuff, go for HTC but for work, BB all the way. I've been using and implementing BB for the last 3 years so may be a little biased.

I can't say anything about a htc because i know nothing about them, but the blackberry is becoming a bit of a fad i think, i got myn mainly for email and just because i swore never to buy a nokia N-series again. Now i suddenly have lots of people getting them and adding me on blackberry messenger.

I hope the new popularity of the blackberry doesn't steer them into making a "popular" phone instead of a blackberry (which i think they did with the storm, which made it crap).

At work people have them - they sync email, contacts and calendar very well with our exchange/blackberry server.

Precisely why I don't want one, I do not wish to be emailed outside work time. If I wanna look at my work email in my time I can login with webmail.

Without the functionality that is only available with bes/exchange, I would say getting a blackberry is pointless, verging on stupid as they offer nothing that hasn't been improved in other phones.