I had an 8830 and I absolutely loved it. The keyboard was magnificent. I still do not understand how, despite being a daily user of iPhone/android on-screen keyboards for about ten years, I can barely type a single word without typos, backspaces, and functional-idiot-grade autocorrects. This was never, ever a problem with the BB. If they’d kept the physical keyboard form factor and added a reasonable touch screen/OS/UX like the iPhone, I would still be using it.
Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
51–60 of 268 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#52Yes
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#53Yes 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...
UniHertz Titan (kind of janky, but has a good hacking community), BlackBerry Key2, fXtec Pro and a few others. There is an audience, and we're out here being weird!
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#54I loved my BB Bold. It’s still snappy for most part. Of course don’t bother where internet speed is concerned (802.11b probably was the best it could do). Loved the keyboard and the optical trackpad. It’s more than just nostalgia.
BBs were great at encouraging multi-tasking in the real world (typing an email while looking at someone and having a conversation). Our large display touchscreens of today are better at better at multitasking on the phone (using multiple apps, switching between them). Android is arguably better here, so a future Android based BB could still deliver on the holy grail experience that marries the two.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#55I remember the BlackBerry Storm, the first touch screen phone by RIM launching at the same time as the iPhone 3G. No Wifi, slow janky scrolling, no apps (well, sure, if you don't mind downloading some random .jar that had to be recompiled for the custom fork they ran on that device). Felt like a rushed beta. Meanwhile the iPhone just worked. Smooth scrolling, fast browser especially on Wifi. You could get apps from t…
The storm was absolutely rushed to market. That's actually the reason that the whole screen was a big physical clicky button. Existing BB software was designed around cursor based interaction, and cursors can both hover and click. In order to release an iPhone competitor sooner RIM opted to create hardware that could separate "hover touches" and "click touches" rather than take the time to redesign their software for…
I was at RIM during this time and it was an absolute shitshow. It took so much in-fighting to get RIM to even address the iphone, so many people thought it was a passing fad and would never get polished enough to be a real competitor, despite the fact it was already destroying marketshare.
But even then, there wasn't enough buy in from the company at large with the device, and it was certainly rushed, I think almost intentionally to try to prove the point of how "bad" touch only phones were going to be.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#56My Blackberry Passport is still quite awesome. Apps are snappy and if all of the services weren't unusably out of date I'd still daily carry it.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#57Not 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 r…
I agree. I had to provide tech support for Blackberry users before the iPhone. I personally was a Danger Hiptop user which I found to be much better.
The primary interaction on the Blackberry was the scrollwheel on the side and every action felt like scrolling through contextual menus endlessly.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#58I used to own a BB Z30, which I bought after my q10 developer édition began having issues, and to this day I still think this is the best phone I ever used, primarily because of the BB OS. I had only owned iPhones before that and have owned both Android and iPhones since then.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#59I do miss it. It served one and only one purpose. Emails on the go. It was super fast to type and had an incredible battery life. I could type on the device without looking at the keyboard or the screen. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I didn’t adopt an iPhone early on. It’s hard to break out of muscle habits.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#60I had an 8830 and I absolutely loved it. The keyboard was magnificent. I still do not understand how, despite being a daily user of iPhone/android on-screen keyboards for about ten years, I can barely type a single word without typos, backspaces, and functional-idiot-grade autocorrects. This was never, ever a problem with the BB. If they’d kept the physical keyboard form factor and added a reasonable touch screen/OS/…
On Android, have you trying installing Google’s gboard and swiping? It is like a superpower for typing fast, and so few people with Samsung seem to discover it (and most iPhone users are not aware of what they are missing).