Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?

#11

Post by binarymax » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 5:31 PM UTC

Im not saying Im a loyal customer, but I am stuck with BB because I loath 100% touchscreen, and BB offers the best keyboard experience by far.

I was deep down hoping for WebOS to work out, since the preliminary devices offered keyboards and a much better OS. Unfortunately we all know the story there.

Re: Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?

#12

Post by SkyMarshal » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 5:32 PM UTC

Another option: If it were a better Android.

Aka, the performance, UI responsiveness, and battery life of iOS/iPhone, but with a FOSS OS, not necessarily Android (Embedded Linux, Minix, etc.).

And as a developer, a better development language than Java. C, Go, or just leverage Apple's Objective-C developer network with Clang's implementation.

All these things are pain points on my Nexus S. If someone could do better, I'd jump on it in a heartbeat, even if the app market is sparser.

Re: Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?

#13

Post by dsolomon » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 5:33 PM UTC

If this piece of shit driod 4 drops connection one more time.

My blackberry never required a reboot to pick up signal - droids, yup.

Re: Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?

#14

Post by grandalf » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 5:38 PM UTC

The original blackberry was great. With today's technology it would fit on a wristwatch and the battery would last for a year.

Blackberry got caught up in an arms race that offered no benefit to its customers. Why waste 50% of CPU cycles to make the UI look more like Windows 3.1 ?

Blackberry also charged for the SDK and offered no quality control, so eventually mobile JRE apps (not designed at all to be usable on BB hardware) became the majority of apps.

I have used several over the years but about 3 years ago it became clear that IOS was worth a 50% price increase per month.

Re: Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?

#15

Post by meow » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 5:39 PM UTC

If blackberry could fork/use Android and promise prompt upgrades. This will be good for both developers and users.

Re: Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?

#16

Post by rdrimmie » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 5:47 PM UTC

xekul wrote: post #3

I switched from Blackberry to Android (Samsung Galaxy Glide) last week and I'm mostly happy, except for some features that I had taken for granted as a BB user (good physical keyboard, notification LED, and stellar battery life). If RIM were to release a Blackberry that could run Android apps and had better Google Apps integration, I would switch back in a heartbeat.

The BB10 devices should run Android apps, but I doubt there will be better Google Apps integration. My guess is that they will feature better MS apps (in part because of the Bing app on PlayBooks) before they do Google ones.

Re: Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?

#17

Post by JohnHaugeland » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 5:48 PM UTC

A fullscreen with a split-to-open keyboard. A high density screen. A store with a better ranking and categorization system that allowed me to more easily find the software I wanted.

Re: Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?

#18

Post by rdrimmie » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 5:49 PM UTC

I switched about 8 months ago because my employer bought me a BlackBerry (edit to add: Torch 9810). I was quite surprised with how good it is, though my needs for it are pretty lightweight: Email, occasionally Twitter, and casual browsing. It does all of those extremely well.

Re: Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?

#19

Post by ekalvi » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 5:59 PM UTC

Thanks for the repost.

I think RIM should have a look at these results and realize that perhaps it should consider putting it's OS (at least partially) in the hands of Google.

They're spending more time working on BB10 in making their own OS awesome, when, at least from this sample, looks like people don't care. It would be easier to hop on the Android bandwagon, and get some new customers that way.

They'll never capture top spot again, but perhaps they can salvage a halfway decent share of the huge smartphone market.

Re: Poll: What Would It Take For You To Switch To Blackberry?

#20

Post by trotsky » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 6:12 PM UTC

BB could get my business if they doubled down on security, privacy and encryption. I'd love to see them end up with a product that was sort of like what Whisper Systems was trying to do with Android. In particular I'd love enterprise messaging that didn't need any 3rd parties to hold keys, and an ability to use some kind of removable smart card with a cryptographic processor that when removed rendered the phone data inaccessible. These kind of features are becoming more and more needed everyday as mobile attacks (both physical and remote) become more common as well as more and more situations become off limits to mobiles. I have a number of clients that have no good solutions for high risk employees, especially when they're travelling. It's a natural fit for BB and a market they're still the most plugged into - and one no other smartphone vendor is particularly interested in (save motorola, sort of)