Read more.Quote:
The last-ditch effort hopes to win back the old-school BB keyboard loyalists.
Printable View
Read more.Quote:
The last-ditch effort hopes to win back the old-school BB keyboard loyalists.
So the design and form factor that lost so much market share because it did not keep up with modern designs and specs is now back......
Final nail in the coffin perhaps.
Seems like a bad move. I had that when it was a new device and I did like it, but 3 years on and it a bit old hat now.
Unfortunalty if it wasn't cutting edge back then which it wasn't, then it's not now. Even with blackberry 10
tbh BB10 is a great phone OS, and there *are* people out there who want a physical keyboard. If there'd been a decent spec android phone in this form factor any time over the last two years I'd own one - since there hasn't been I own a BB Q5, which this looks to be almost spec identical too, except it's got the trackpad & buttons, where the Q5 hasn't.
The fact that something isn't the latest trend doesn't mean it doesn't have a place, and there's nothing wrong with catering to a core audience. BB have two main choices - try to compete with Apple, Samsung and the other big Android players, and Nokia, for the mainstream smartphone market, or try to fill the niches that aren't covered yet, and perhaps win a few converts on the way. Like I said, last time I bought a phone what I wanted was an Android handset in the Classic/Q5 form factor. Now, I'd probably look at the BB10 phones before I considered switching back to Android. So this is good news, as far as I'm concerned...
A last dying gasp, the company would have survived if the software side had been kept and it became the Blackberry app for secure comms with an alt OS to Android, alas it is not to be and we are left with people facing backwards driving a company headlong into its past, just like there is a market for Grandfather clocks in the digital watch era, everyone likes how they look but in practice cumbersome, hard to maintain, impossible to replace and impractacle and far more expensive than the mass produced clones of iphones.
Well, exactly.Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
For me, though, price and availability will be an issue. As will, most emphatically, personal data security. I'm not forking out Apple-style money. And I'm sceptical as hell about my privacy on ANYTHING Android-related, for a reason I can sum up in one word - Google. Whom I detest.
I could do with a new phone, emphatically at the budget end (so not Apple). Data vampire Google puts me off Android phones, and due to MSs stance over Win8 and MUI, I won't have a Win8 phone or tablet as a gift, never mind actually buying one.
I haven't really looked at this BB, and would need to know a lot more about it, but it MIGHT fit the bill for me. If it does, lack of touch screen or not being 'latest trend' bothers me not at all. In fact, I see the lack of them as positives. ;)
Have you used a Blackberry 10 keyboard phone at all? It's about the size of any normal smartphone (so cumbersome is out), is regularly updated and has a fully featured maintenance menu & apps (there goes hard to maintain), the Classic is a brand new phone with all the feature of previous Blackberries (impossible to replace? Just no), it has all the functions of any other smart phone (so not really impractical), and my Q5 cost me £129 sim-free unlocked (so actually on the cheaper end of sim-free smartphones *and* it's well specified). Sure, the Classic is more expensive than that at launch, but then the classic is actually a higher spec flagship device (more like the Q10). If there isn't a reduced cost version of the Classic available in relatively short order, I'd be amazed. So I'm failing to see one of your objections that actually stands up....Quote:
Originally Posted by KendrickDM
It has a touch screen. BB10 uses a relatively intuitive set of edge swipes to pull up the menus and navigate quickly around the OS. How the optical trackpad interacts with that I'm not sure - definitely want to have a play with one at some point and find out. The implication seems to be that you can interact purely with the classic trackpad and buttons combo. But lack of touch screen is not one of the features of this phone - don't know whether that would bother you or not...!Quote:
Originally Posted by Saracen
As I say, I've been a massively happy BB user for almost a year now, and I suspect I'll continue being a happy customer for as long as they continue producing inexpensive, qwerty-keyboard phones with a decent mobile OS :)
It doesn't bother me, no, but for typing text, I prefer a physical keyboard provided it's not too small and fiddly to use. The security/privacy thing does bother me, and that, I need to look at carefully.Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
@ ScaryJim
I have - unfortunately mini keyboards do not work with 1.5 cm width fingers and the screens too tiny.
The Classic marries the old Classic look with the Superior BB10 OS. It's another choice that the company is offering.
BlackBerry has the best physical keyboard devices on the planet. They also have the Best Virtual Keyboard to date.
Choice is king ATM for this company. The Passport shows unique out of the box innovation, a device that somewhat put BlackBerry back in the news. The Classic for those that can't let go of the Bold phones.
Though I believe they have to come out with a Z10 and Z30 full touch replacement device with high specs. Perhaps the upcoming Slider phone will be that device, that serves Full Touch fans and QWERTY fans.
My company is replacing BBs with Nokias as they break, but the people that have the BBs are hanging on to them as long as possible, as people that type out e-mails a lot, they prefer a physical keyboard. They all have their own iPhones/Android for surfing etc, but for e-mailing, the BB is the only one.
I think there is a market for them, provided they are as tough as the old ones used to be. We switched because reliability went out the window with the more recent models.
Are they replacing older generation BOLDs or BB10 devices such as the Q10 and the Z10? All BB10 devices are very reliable, and built tough. They also won multiple design awards. The Z30 won best smart phone of 2014.
The issue is garbage marketing and advertising. People still don't know what a BB10 is. Ridiculous.