NTSB Dumps BlackBerry In Favor of iPhone 5

Nerval's Lobster writes "The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) plans on replacing its existing stock of BlackBerry devices with Apple's iPhone 5. Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones, the government entity wrote in a Nov. 13 notice of intent, 'have been failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate.' The NTSB's use of iPads means it has the operational support for iOS; consequently, the decision was made to go with Apple. 'The iPhone 5 has been determined to be the only device that meets the dual requirement of availability from the existing wireless vendor and is currently supportable by existing staff resources,' the notice added. RIM is fighting to retain the government and enterprise contracts that originally made it such a mobile powerhouse. If agencies and boards such as the NTSB begin to embrace alternative platforms, however, that could critically weaken RIM's business model just as the company attempts a comeback behind the upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform."

Camera

[RobertNotBob]

If Apple, or any ANDROID manufacturer would just make a modern phone without a camera, the DoD (at the very least) would drop blackberry like a red-hot potato. RIM would be finished faster that you could turn around.

It's a shame that NOBODY in those companies has figured that out yet.

Not ruggedized.

[Animats]

I'm surprised the NTSB wanted something as fragile as an iPhone. I would have expected them to go for something that had a ruggedized, waterproof model in the product family.

Rugged smartphones have been around for a while, but in 2012, they got bigger screens and current electronics. The Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro, the Honeywell Dolphin 70e, the rather bulky Caterpillar B10 Smartphone, and the thin Nautiz X1 all meet basic military ruggedization standards while running reasonably current Android versions.

Department of Defense

[Dan East]

According to CNet, the DOD is also moving away from RIM:

To add insult to injury, the U.S. Department of Defense also announced last month that it was ending its exclusive contract with the company and opening up bidding to other device makers, including Apple and Google.

That is a *much* bigger deal, because the NTSB is actually a very small government agency (only around 400 employees). DOD could involve an order of magnitude more devices than the NTSB.

Re:Not ruggedized.

[Anonymous Coward]

... NTSB...

...blah blah android rubbish ... all meet basic military ruggedization standards while running OLD Android versions.

Here - fixed this for you. And here's a hint - the NTSB is not the military.

Re:Not ruggedized.

[alen]

chances are the the NTSB uses MS Exchange and iOS has the best MS Exchange client

never used Samsung but i've used HTC and Moto and the iOS email app is better than those. and with iOS 6 there are some nice features like VIP folders

you can talk specs and rugged all you want but in usability iOS wins

Re:How

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything you listed except app deployment can be handled via Exchange ActiveSync, if you are using Exchange of course. App deployment can be handled via the iPhone Configuration Utility. And, of course, every iPhone since the 4 (and AFAIK all iPad versions) has included hardware AES-256 encryption.

Re:How

[ImprovOmega]

There are many solutions for it. SAP/Sybase Afaria, Fiberlink MaaS 360, Centrify, Symantec Mobile Device Management, Good Technology, and many, many others will do all of the app management/device management/whatever you need. Most of them have at least feature parity with BES and some that I've looked at go above and beyond. It all depends on what exactly your needs are. Rest assured there's a solution out there somewhere that feels custom tailored to your unique situation.