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People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

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Re: People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

#51

Post by 908B64B197 »

blhack wrote: post #32

I would pay a lot of money for a blackberry 7500 based phone. With some minor upgrades to make it work with modern paradigms )I do want to be able to use signal). The world I want is where my media device (for tik tok, Spotify, Facebook, etc) and my work device are physically different, and tailored specifically to their purpose. Nothing released since then had even come remotely close. It had hardware buttons, the s…

> Here’s a lesson for people running companies now: BB failed when they stopped marketing to boring suits, and started trying to compete with the Motorola RAZR, then the iPhone.

But here's the thing: Suits all pretty much wanted iPhones. I recall one of the most requested feature on the iPhone was Exchange support.

And their custom messaging thing just wasn't valuable enough to keep users around (hint, the real high value messaging platform for business is and always has been Bloomberg).

Looking at devices like the Storm and playbook, I wonder why blackberry couldn't execute. Talent gap with Apple?

Re: People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

#52

Post by afandian »

To anyone who has a fond recollection of BlackBerry, I recommend the book "Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of Blackberry".

It's well paced and captures a lot of atmosphere (from what I recall).

And "Piloting Palm: The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring, and the Birth of the Billion-Dollar Handheld Industry" if you're into that kind of thing.

Re: People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

#53

Post by [deleted] »

arch-ninja wrote: post #9

I use a BB Classic (q20) every day. It's the most responsive, ergonomic phone on the market aside from the q10. I also have the native development kit and the skills to keep that device operating forever, one thing I noticed is the root SSL certificates are no longer updated. I have copied the ones off my Arch system to the SD card and manually install new roots of trust as they are published. When I push a button an…

[deleted]

Re: People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

#54

Post by app4soft »

Nition wrote: post #23
simo_dax wrote: post #6

I'm one of those guys, I still use a Q10 (OS10 family) as my daily driver. I felt in love with its ux e.g. the hub which acts both as notification center and timeline, full gesture-based navigation (back in 2013!) and an app permission system which allowed you choose which one should be granted to the app (again, back in 2013! Android had to wait years before this was implemented) Apps are scarce, many don't work any…

> full gesture-based navigation (back in 2013!) Only two years behind the N9.

> Only two years behind the N9.

Symbian still alive![0,1,2] (Not sure about Maemoo/MeeGo)

[0] https://github.com/mrRosset/Symbian-Archive/issues/10

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/symbian/new

[2] https://github.com/search/?o=desc&q=symbian&s=updated&type=R...

Re: People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

#55

Post by nyir »

Got a Classic one on a job and fell in love with it too, so I recently bought a used one and now a replacement battery (just have to actually do the replacement ... will be fun given it's not made for it). The keyboard is just lovely and especially coming from ThinkPads the cursor is super good too. Hope I can keep it alive for a long time!

Re: People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

#56

Post by qchris »

HideousKojima wrote: post #4
Scramblejams wrote: post #2

My kingdom for a slick, open Linux phone with a fantastic camera and a keyboard on par with the Curve's.

Pinephone is getting a keyboard attachment. Not sure on the camera quality though

As much as I like having the Pinephone to play with, and I know some dedicated folks are technically able to use it as a daily driver, the hardware quality is far below modern quality, even on entry-level phones. This is pretty noticeable on the camera in particular. I believe it's only 5 megapixels, and the lighting, etc. is not great. Totally understandable considering it's basically a $200 developer platform, but I wouldn't try to compare it to any smartphone I've owned in the last 6-7 years.

On the other hand, it's proved pretty popular. Maybe in a few years when higher-performance open SoC's are released and low-cost hardware improves, a new version will be released that causes the quality difference to close more. The upcoming keyboard attachment you mentioned could certainly drive some neat things on that side as well.

Re: People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

#57

Post by walrus01 »

In our current era, I think it's too much of a risk to use a mobile email client that isn't capable of IMAP over TLS1.2 (or ideally TLS1.3). And similar for TLS1.2 SMTP submission for outbound.

I wouldn't want to be using a 8 year old Blackberry that only support TLS1.1 to talk to my email server. All of those old crypto schemes have been specifically disabled.

Re: People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

#58

Post by Pasorrijer »

jariel wrote: post #35
blhack wrote: post #32

I would pay a lot of money for a blackberry 7500 based phone. With some minor upgrades to make it work with modern paradigms )I do want to be able to use signal). The world I want is where my media device (for tik tok, Spotify, Facebook, etc) and my work device are physically different, and tailored specifically to their purpose. Nothing released since then had even come remotely close. It had hardware buttons, the s…

The people in the suits are actually a really small part of the market. Nobody really sells that kind of specific devices. Irrespective of any choices BB made - they went up against the iPhone, the #1 product of the last few decades - and on the other end a mass deluge of Android manufacturers. And the scale of operations is hard to fathom: BlackBerry had 1 guy for mapping. Google has an entire mini division. The act…

Can second that. I worked as part of the Home screen team at QNX one summer as a Co-op. That's the entire homescreen, all navigation, integration, accessibility, everything. Grand total? 6 developers and 3 testers.

Re: People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

#59

Post by girvo »

Nition wrote: post #23
simo_dax wrote: post #6

I'm one of those guys, I still use a Q10 (OS10 family) as my daily driver. I felt in love with its ux e.g. the hub which acts both as notification center and timeline, full gesture-based navigation (back in 2013!) and an app permission system which allowed you choose which one should be granted to the app (again, back in 2013! Android had to wait years before this was implemented) Apps are scarce, many don't work any…

> full gesture-based navigation (back in 2013!) Only two years behind the N9.

Which also had the unified notification/message centre too.

The N9 was so far ahead of its time it’s not even funny. Easily my favourite phone of all time.

Re: People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

#60

Post by SamCritch »

decafninja wrote: post #43

Never understood the raves about the keyboard. I've had several PDA or phones with built in keyboard, including multiple Blackberries issued by work. I've detested the typing experience on every one of them. My hands and fingers are pretty small too.

I'm a huge guy (6'5", big frame), with big thumbs, and my Key2 is the fastest, most productive phone I've ever owned (including various Androids and a couple iPhones). I don't mean fast in terms of raw processing power, I mean in terms of getting things done.

You get used to the keyboard fast. It's soooooo accurate, I can touch-type on it (I haven't had to look at the keyboard once whilst typing this comment), and there are loads of shortcuts, like hitting "w" to open WhatsApp or hitting "t" to get to the top of a list of messages in the BlackBerry email app (called "Hub").

Not only that, but it's an Android phone with a touch screen, so I can use any of the apps anyone else uses too.

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