Going back to March 2009 when CrackBerry first announced the public beta, SmrtGuard immediately become a popular choice among BlackBerry BIS users for its ability to backup device data remotely, and via a web dashboard, allow users to login and execute a number of actions, such as locating a lost BlackBerry. Since its launch, SmrtGuard has continued to roll out a number of new value-added features, offering the basics for free and premium features for a price.
Just last month, RIM released their own app along the same premise, called BlackBerry Protect, which at a glance looks a lot like SmrtGuard and appears to offer a similar feature set. Of course, BlackBerry Protect is built by RIM and is offered as a free app/service, which immediately makes for a compelling download choice.
Since BlackBerry Protect hit the scene, I've received quite a few emails from readers asking us to compare the two services. Does it make sense to pay for the full version of SmrtGuard? Or is the free version of BlackBerry Protect good enough? Not wanting to delay any longer and being swamped at the moment with all the BlackBerry PlayBook craziness, I decided to take a different approach on answering this one and reached out to Rob Kao, SmrtGuard's Founder, to walk us through the comparison. I figured he's more hands-on than anybody with these apps, so would be able to provide us with an accurate tale of the tape and further insight on the comparison. Keep reading to see what he has to say, and if you've used both SmrtGuard and BlackBerry Protect in the past, be sure to chime in on the comments with your personal findings.
