For just straight email and business functionality yes. I'd love to just get a blackberry for work.
Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
171–180 of 268 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#172Yes 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...
Fxtec pro1 has one. But I'm probably going to get a planet computers Astro slide since it does not have an annoying curved screen
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#173Oh man I definitely miss my BlackBerrys. I had a bunch of them over the years. Starting with one of the original truly email only devices (without phone functionality).
Every one I owned was awesome for different reasons, although they increasingly got more phone-like in features and form factor over the years.
The early devices were exceptionally well designed. They were limited (grayscale, limited email formatting features etc) but were perfectly suited to the job they were designed for. No feature bloat. I would also liken them to the first iPods. All the fat was trimmed away leaving you with something perfectly designed for its intended purpose. (Though obviously they weren't as beautiful to look at as an iPod).
Battery life was amazing. Form factor was spot on (pretty compact devices for the time).
They were great on corporate features and security too - though there was the overhead of running their server software, but it was well worth it.
As much as I like my iPhone, it's no longer a "phone" for me - it's definitely my primary personal computing device. When I go out I'm carrying around a powerful computer with way too many options and temptations. It often feels like too much. It's also no longer the smallest phone I've owned, which bugs me. I want something more compact to carry. I kind of hanker for a new portable device that I would take when out and about, that keeps me connected to the essentials but has a locked down feature set that prevents me doing too much. With crazy battery life. The original email-only Blackberrys totally hit this spot.
The closest thing in the Apple ecosystem is the Watch but that's still not quite the same.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I loved my blackberry's keyboard, but I adjusted to iOS on-screen keyboard (starting circa the iPhone 4S) pretty well. Last couple of years though iOS autocorrect has started to be extremely aggressive and frequently very wrong (incorrectly changing were->we're, ill->i'll for example. and today changing "Torvalds" to "Torshavn" or something when I was talking about Linus and not the Faroes). If someone has a nice pho…
there all phone with phycical keyboard, unihertz, even blackberries drop new keybaord phone this year
I hope you did not type this comment on one of those :]
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#175Yeah. I've had to use a touch screen keyboard for ten years and I still mistype constantly, on top of it taking ages.
I dearly, dearly miss my Blackberry Bold.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#176I miss the BlackBerry, but I don't think it's the hardware itself that I miss, but rather the technological leap it afforded us back then. Being able to send/receive email anywhere was a novelty unlike any other, as was instant messaging with BBM.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#177I could type 55 wpm on the keyboard. Every time I use a screen keyboard I feel like I lose 10 IQ points. I can use a physical keyboard without looking, but the screen keyboard takes twice as long and consumes my full attention if I want any speed. The blackberry felt like an extension of my brain on the internet. Touchscreen devices feel like an extension of the internet in my brain + eyes, not as nice. I used my bla…
I loved my blackberry's keyboard, but I adjusted to iOS on-screen keyboard (starting circa the iPhone 4S) pretty well. Last couple of years though iOS autocorrect has started to be extremely aggressive and frequently very wrong (incorrectly changing were->we're, ill->i'll for example. and today changing "Torvalds" to "Torshavn" or something when I was talking about Linus and not the Faroes). If someone has a nice pho…
> autocorrect has started to be extremely aggressive and frequently very wrong
First thing I do when setting up a new phone is turning off auto correct and auto capitalization. Yes, I still make mistakes, but I prefer becoming quite handy at using my backspace button than having to fight the auto correct all damn time.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#178Love my BlackBerries - Quickly bought a stack of them before RIM's de-facto demise. I had the Pearl, Curve, Bold, and Classic models, and the Curve had the best ergonomics of all, and was the most liked mobile electronics device that I ever spent money on (followed by a Sony DiscMan CD player in the early 90s).
Touching glas is just unpleasant.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#179Yes. The physical keyboard was so much faster and accurate vs the "on screen" version most phones have now.
The BB was also built like a tank. i once had mine fall off while i was running down 3 flights of granite stairs. It hit my leg on the way down and was kicked a good distance. After clearing the stairs, i put the battery back in and closed the door and it was good to go. Try that with a "modern" smart phone.
My personal favourite was the "blueberry" with the monochrome screen. Incredible battery life on that thing.
I think it was the BlackBerry 6200? they then made the same 'blueberry' but with a colour screen BlackBerry 7210 but it hurt the battery life.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?
#180The only BlackBerry I ever owned was the BlackBerry Classic, back when that was still contemporary. Best phone I ever had. The UX was very consistent between apps, everything targeting it natively tended to be quite speedy, and the keyboard was excellent. I also miss the "BlackBerry Hub" feature, which would aggregate your emails, BlackBerry messenger messages, and SMS messages into a single UI. It even pulled in not…
Windows phone had a hub-like UI, and I absolutely loved it.