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Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#31

Post by lunatuna »

Battery life (4-5 days) and being able to have an extra battery or being able to share is what I miss most.

I also miss the customizations for alerting. I would set personal colour coded alerts on the led - that was perfect. Customization of alerts is very limited on anything else I’ve used since.

The iPhone keyboard seems to be getting worse with its auto correct. If it gets any worse (or maybe it’s me) I will get to a point of wanting the physical keyboard back.

Modern phones seem to be like a bloated MS Word with 90% of features I don’t need. All wasted.

I was recently in an area with limited cell reception. My old Blackberry would have done its job only requiring limited data using the BES. I was amazed that some iPhone apps couldn’t even login. Using the house wifi that had +500ms latency some iPhone apps failed as well. Interesting to learn how little effort is put into low bandwidth or high latency situations. Blackberry had that nailed. But they were in the wrong end of the market for cell companies.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#32

Post by morganvachon »

thedday wrote: post #6

I do miss my Treo. I preferred it to my Blackberry. Both were better and less distracting than my current ad-presenting spy box.

The Treo 650 was my first smartphone, followed by the OG iPhone, the Blackberry Pearl, and the Nokia N900. At the time, the iPhone was actually a step down from the Treo but my Palm phone had died a watery death and they weren't available anymore from my carrier so I went with the iPhone. This was before the App Store, so everything not already installed was a web app and they all sucked back then.

After just a few months of suffering on the iPhone, I went with a BB Pearl, which was hardly better app-wise but much better as a communications device overall. As soon as the N900 dropped I bought one at full price and I was back in smartphone nirvana. Of course, by then Android phones had hit the scene and the iPhone had vastly improved, and the N900 started feeling slow and cumbersome compared to my coworkers' and friends' devices.

Later my love for the Nokia device transferred to Windows Phones, which I still maintain were the best smartphone paradigm ever made. For once I felt Microsoft finally "got it right" on the OS design and people-centric interface. I sorely wish they still made phones with mobile Windows 10, but I get why they left the market.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#33

Post by Dracophoenix »

thegagne wrote: post #4
Dracophoenix wrote: post #2

I wished I had a Blackberry when I was a much younger, but personally I miss Windows Phones a lot more.

Windows Phones were awful in general but provided something that no full featured smart phone can: simplicity. Notifications? Hardly. Browser? Barely works. Apps? Pshh. Instant messaging? I hope you like SMS! Games? There’s a couple good ones you never heard of that won’t be maintained. But heck, if you want peace and quiet and while still offering the basics in good form, the Windows Phone couldn’t be beat.

I do have a few contentions with your assessments.

I got my Windows Phone in the summer of 2013. It was WP8.

It had pretty fast notifications. In fact, I used to get real-time CNN notifications and I got information much faster than when what show up on the news channel. I even got wind of Nelson Mandela's death before Wikipedia made any edits and any obituaries made it to Google's first page.

The browser was Internet Explorer 11. It wasn't the best, but it performed well enough for reading articles.

Apps. I agree and that's still a problem almost a decade later.

IM was actually one of the strengths of the phone with the People Hub/Rooms feature. You could use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all in one application. I don't know why they removed in Windows 10 Mobile.

The games were mostly iOS ports, so quality varied, but many were well-known. Angry Birds and its myriad variations, Fruit Slash, Candy Crush, etc. It even got GTA San Andreas. But a distinctive feature for achievement junkies was that many of those games had Xbox Live integration (still works too). The phone also worked as a touch controller and remote with the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One.

You're right that it wasn't the most capable phone. But it offered a lot more than a refinement of the basic essence of a phone.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#34

Post by satysin »

Not at all. I got a few of my old BlackBerry's out last year during lockdown when I had a big organise in my home office. I charged and powered a few on because nostalgia hit a bit plus I had time to kill with being in lockdown.

Using them for just a few hours I realised how bad they are. The screens were awful, navigation was horrible, the keyboard hurt the tips of my thumbs and they were slow. So so slow. I don't remember them being quite as slow so perhaps it is battery related (although they were plugged in) but it wasn't great waiting 5 seconds for an attachment to load when I am used to it being instant on my 3 year old iPhone.

I know we are spoilt now with HiDPI screens and stupidly fast mobile SoC's but they really were horrible devices looking back.

Perhaps language such as "horrible" is unfair but it is the adjective that first popped into my head to describe the experience.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#36

Post by dddw »

Yes I miss it everyday, I feel so clumsy typing on a piece of glass, and make soo many typos. I could type BLIND without typos whole emails while maintaining a casual conversation (much to the annoyance of my girlfriend). There are a lot of BlackBerry-stans still on crackberry.com holding out on older and newer BlackBerry phoned (key2 being the latest).

Really loved my Q10 with bb10os and my Keyone running Android! Sadly security updates stopped so had to get a slab, and run Blackberry Inbox on it (unified inbox of all your messaging apps, it is quite nice).

BlackBerry licensed Onward Mobility to make another keyboard phone, although they promised one this year, they are so silent I would be surprised if they are able to.

Bb10 was really a supernice OS, a lot of android and iOS stuff is inspired by it. blackberry still has some amazing patents and software, so it isn't a goner, but no phones directly from them anymore, only licensees (India, Indonesia, and hopefully worldwide via Onward Mobility)

I never knew the glorydays of bb07, but sure know if they stayed succesfull then (I.e. made less catastrophic mistakes and made strategic choices away from business products when they had a significant mobile phone marketshare ) how cool it might have been now with them still in the mobile phone field.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#37

Post by Wowfunhappy »

dddw wrote: post #36

Yes I miss it everyday, I feel so clumsy typing on a piece of glass, and make soo many typos. I could type BLIND without typos whole emails while maintaining a casual conversation (much to the annoyance of my girlfriend). There are a lot of BlackBerry-stans still on crackberry.com holding out on older and newer BlackBerry phoned (key2 being the latest). Really loved my Q10 with bb10os and my Keyone running Android! S…

I really am surprised that with of all models of Android phones in the world, no one is making one with a keyboard. Even if it was a niche product, you'd think there would be an audience...

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#38

Post by e-master »

To this day I think the touch sensitive keyboard of the BlackBerry Passport is absolutely revolutionary. Not sure if they just licensed it or created themselves, but I loved it. That was probably the one thing I loved about BlackBerries, and perhaps the touch gestures - no button and all, it was such a pleasure to use.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#39

Post by dddw »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #37
dddw wrote: post #36

Yes I miss it everyday, I feel so clumsy typing on a piece of glass, and make soo many typos. I could type BLIND without typos whole emails while maintaining a casual conversation (much to the annoyance of my girlfriend). There are a lot of BlackBerry-stans still on crackberry.com holding out on older and newer BlackBerry phoned (key2 being the latest). Really loved my Q10 with bb10os and my Keyone running Android! S…

I really am surprised that with of all models of Android phones in the world, no one is making one with a keyboard. Even if it was a niche product, you'd think there would be an audience...

It is actually quite hard to make a GOOD physical keyboard, BlackBerry has this tech down. Any BlackBerry clone (I had a couple before ending on BlackBerry, Nokia and Samsung). Titan pocket exists though, gets mixed reviews I believe but overall being 'not too bad', which is different than the love BlackBerry phones tend to get.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#40

Post by pedalpete »

cuddlybacon wrote: post #7

I miss my Pearl, but not the other BlackBerry devices I had. I like how you could type on it without looking. It's been a decade and I still have typo issues with touchscreen phones. A post this long would likely have 4 noticeable typos if done on my phone.

I don't so much miss the keyboard on my pearl as much as I miss the form factor. It was so small, yet you could do so much with it.
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