On mobile trends: "The most exciting mobile trend is full Qwerty keyboards. I'm sorry, it really is. I'm not making this up." Lazaridis, May 2008. Almost Trump-like in his dogged grasp of fantasy.
BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development
91–100 of 170 posts
Re: BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Android and Apple do also focus on productivity as well as entertainment. It sounds like what you're asking for is basically a high end phone but only supporting a subset of apps and a slide out keyboard. This sounds like commercial suicide in my opinion. As much as I'd love to see more handsets with physical keyboard, they never seem to sell well enough for manufacturers to invest in releasing more models. And I rea…
> "As much as I'd love to see more handsets with physical keyboard, they never seem to sell well enough for manufacturers to invest in releasing more models." Because like the Priv, they attach keyboards to massive screens. Those screens aren't necessary in a productivity phone. They make it unwieldy and ridiculous to use. The form factor of a Blackberry Classic is all you need, just integrate with Android.
The form factor of a Blackberry Classic is all you need, just integrate with Android.
I think you just inadvertently highlighted why that business model would be so difficult.
I was almost 100% with you in this thread until that point. I too would like to have a modern phone with a good hardware spec that is primarily a communications tool and personal organiser, rather than an entertainment product. I would like good battery life, security, privacy, and a convenient, robust design that fits in my hand and my pocket. I don't see any phone on the market today that is anywhere close to meeting my ideal requirements.
But then you mentioned Android, and for me that would immediately raise security and privacy issues because of all the Google integration.
Re: BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development
#93I've been never more productive with my smartphones than with a Blackberry. The BB's keyboards are still unmatched. While I can type as fast with my iPhone 7 where cursor control is thanks to 3D touch great a BB Classic is still better—reasons why: - You can rest your fingers on the keyboard like on a real keyboard without pressing the keys (you can't do that on a touch screen) - After a short time you start to touch…
You're defining productivity as pure typing speed. This is exactly why the iPhone killed Blackberry. All the Blackberry had was a hardware keyboard. Everything else about the platform and OS was vastly weaker. Apple and Google have real, full-fledged OSes (Blackberry eventually got this, but it was really a feature phone with QWERTY keyboard). I do all kinds of productivity and work tasks on my iPhone and the keyboar…
Actually, hes defining his productivity, and you're defining yours. Both of you can be right :) To your point, Apple did put a computer in my pocket, but it took away my control over it and it became _their_ computer. No root access, no control over updates, no way to copy files in and out of it, no way to control any aspect but what they let me. That is not my definition of a real computer, but an appliance. Sure, they're very successful and maybe lots of people do want an appliance, but its certainly not a real computer, the way a laptop with OSX, Linux, Windows is.
Re: BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development
#94BB's strong suit isn't software or hardware. It's semi-competent at both.
BBM is amazing and BB10 OS is pretty amazing (name a phone that can multi-task now, i.e. play youtube and write an email). But it also has lots of stinkers.
The keyboard is pretty rocking, devices can take a beating, but BB has various hardware issues. Battery pulling to solve problems etc.
Now that they are going android, nobody knew that the world could only support 2 phone ecosystems as opposed to 3, i think they need to leverage the strengths. Keep making the excellent software, cut the chafe (BB virtual keyboard, BB Hub, BBM, etc). Also they have should leverage their hardware group and make excellent and robust android phones.
1. keep making the BB Classic using android OS. People want it. 2. Make phones that are robust. People want phones that can be beat up, 3. Make android phones that have better than 2 years of support. iPhones support 3-5 years which is amazing compared to android. I want to buy an android phone that i don't have to throw out every 2 years. They have excellent devs that could extend the shelf life of older android versions or just BB phones.
Re: BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple put real computers in users' pockets. Blackberry just made texting and writing emails (not even full-fledged emails either!) easier to write. That's it. For some people email is all they're looking to do and that's why it feels so much more productive. Unfortunately for BlackBerry it's a pretty small niche.
I remember when the "new" Dodge trucks came out in the 1994. They were "ugly" according to most people, but Dodge/Chrysler found that 10% of the people loved them. That was enough to make a bunch of money. I think that a quality keyboard on a phone would be similar. The problem is that for some reason most companies think they have to be growing tremendously or it's not worth being in business. You can make really go…
You guys are forgetting another reason that Blackberry cratered: People didn't want to carry two devices. Even if a Blackberry meets your email needs, if its bad for everything else you want to do professionally and personally (apps, websites, music, audio books, etc.), it's not going to be enough. Business execs wanted to carry one device all day long, and Blackberry didn't offer enough to be an all day device.
You also have to keep in mind that companies switched from providing devices for employees to providing subsidizes for cell service. That's what my company does. They pay for my cell plan, but I bring my own device. When companies went away from providing people with Blackberries, that also helped doom the company.
Their core issue was that they didn't believe the iPhone was real when it was demoed in January 2007. They thought it was fake. It took them far too long to realize that Apple's vision was the right one. Had they got that immediately like Google, they might still be here today.
Blackberry did make great keyboards and their hardware was nice. BBM was an original messaging leader, but they rested on their laurels.
Re: BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development
#96Someone at work had a Blackberry Android phone that I had a brief play with. Hardware seemed nice and it had the latest security updates. Maybe they just need to rebrand.
Hardware seemed nice and it had the latest security updates.
Ironically, it was security that put me off BlackBerry as a brand.
There was the whole mess over whether their messaging systems were actually secure in technical terms, and the final conclusion seemed to be that some of them weren't. Apple handled the related issues much better.
More than that, when they brought out the Priv and made a big deal about putting their DTEK software on top of Android for security and privacy, there was a glaring hole in their presentation: it was all about detecting bad things when they were already happening, but I never found a single reference to preventing those bad things from happening in the first place.
Those two issues convinced me very clearly that modern BlackBerry is more about style than substance when it comes to security and privacy. It's sad, because as someone with a very productivity/professional focus with mobile devices, I should have been their ideal customer and they should have been the closest to my ideal phone maker of any of the major brands.
Re: BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development
#97How many companies not named Apple are doing great hardware AND software anymore? Sounds like a cold world for these types of players... Seems more and more people who did both are simply picking one side anymore.
For a while Nintendo, and they also got rid of the headphone jack on the GBA at one point.
Re: BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development
#98as an owner of an Android black berry, i say they are killing the wrong side.
the hardware is still good (Android phone with slide out keyboard where each key has capacitive touch sensors)
the software not only is pure garbage, it keeps getting worse with each update.
if blackberry did open hardware, and released all specs so we could have true open Android phones, it would dominate the market as the pc clones dominated the computer market of the past.
Re: BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember when the "new" Dodge trucks came out in the 1994. They were "ugly" according to most people, but Dodge/Chrysler found that 10% of the people loved them. That was enough to make a bunch of money. I think that a quality keyboard on a phone would be similar. The problem is that for some reason most companies think they have to be growing tremendously or it's not worth being in business. You can make really go…
You guys are forgetting another reason that Blackberry cratered: People didn't want to carry two devices. Even if a Blackberry meets your email needs, if its bad for everything else you want to do professionally and personally (apps, websites, music, audio books, etc.), it's not going to be enough. Business execs wanted to carry one device all day long, and Blackberry didn't offer enough to be an all day device. You…
Sorry, I should have been more specific, I meant a BB quality keyboard on an Android device. Completely agree with you on two devices.
Re: BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development
#100I was at the (only?) Blackberry store in New York. They had some nice looking phones, but the magic was gone.