Smarter phones for business

The latest round of smartphones may just have made your decision on whether you want to opt for iOS, Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry that little bit harder.

It used to be so simple. If you wanted a phone for business, your first choice was usually Blackberry. But things have changed. In 2007, the iPhone came along and quickly established itself as the smartphone everyone wanted – even business users. Blackberry saw its market share fall, as more people jumped ship to ioS.

Then came some serious competition from Google, with its Android powered handsets, and Microsoft, with Windows Phone. Both platforms have gained ground in recent years, and now it’s not uncommon to see Samsung smartphones in the hands of executives.

Blackberry hasn’t gone away though. Earlier this year, it unveiled its Blackberry 10 devices and, although they certainly have some way to go to regain any kind of dominance in the boardroom, Blackberry isn’t giving up.

For this comparison, we took some of the top smartphone handsets – the iPhone 5, the Blackberry Z10, the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (the Galaxy S4 isn’t due to land until next month at the earliest) – and compared them to see what smartphone is best for your business.

Security
First and foremost in the minds of many businesses is security. Companies need to know that the data they store on devices will stay safe and secure, even if the device is misplaced.

Given blackberry’s reputation for security, you would expect that this is one area where it would excel. And it certainly doesn’t disappoint. The new Blackberry Balance feature allows you to keep your work and home profiles completely separate, keeping the work applications and data into a walled off area. This means you can have two profiles existing side by side on the device, but without fear they will cross over.

And should you leave the company, the work profile can be deleted remotely, leaving your personal files untouched.

Add into that the Blackberry Enterprise Service support, which encrypts mails and messages, and you are covered on most fronts.

The iPhone is no slouch when it comes to security though. It has a whole host of security features from hardware encryption and app sandboxing that prevents apps from accessing certain data, to file data protection that protects data stored in flash memory.

One of the major problems with Android is the amount of malware that exists for the platform. This can be tackled in part by never installing applications from unknown sources – i.e. outside the Android market – but experts say the amount of malware for Android is rising. That doesn’t mean that Android is wide open though. Google Apps for Business users can locate stolen or lost devices on maps and reset passwords or lock the device remotely. Administrators can also encrypt the data on a device.