I’ve been wrangling with my own sensibilities for months trying to make a single decision. Do I get an iPhone or a Blackberry.

The debate climaxed today with a decision. I’m getting the Blackberry Bold 9700, a sleek, simple phone that will do everything I need it to do and little more.

The main influencer on my decision was price. As a Western employee, I qualify for special pricing on a phone through our IT department. The price plan is almost half what I would pay for an iPhone per month. What’s more, the phone contract continues even after my employee contract expires.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Western doesn’t offer an iPhone on this plan. Probably because they don’t want to fund browsing and app downloading. Had they offered it, I might have considered spending extra. But there were other considerations.

I’ve owned the atrocious LG Eve for about a year. With all its whiz bang capabilities, it fails at the simplest task: being an actual usable phone! The touch screen is muddy and disobedient, the processor is slow and barely handles Android. I got it because it could do everything — like the iPhone — including downloading apps and surfing the net. But quickly I realized I don’t want to do those things on a phone. All I want is to make some phone calls, text message and check some email (if it wasn’t so cumbersome and annoying on the Eve).

All of these things are satisfied to a great degree on a Blackberry. It’s built as a phone, it’s probably the best for email, and its text messaging is supplemented by the apparently addictive (and recently highly advertised) BBM.

That’s why it’s a fit for me. I’ll be missing the app downloading and the iTunes integration. But that’s what my iPod Touch is for.