Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 58 posts

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

#21

Post by wanderr »

jrockway wrote: post #10

I've never understood what problem Blackberry is trying to solve. They say the advantage is email. But isn't Gmail on Android much better than Exchange on Blackberry? (Not to mention cheaper!) Blackberry has never done statistical analysis to tell me which unread messages are most important, for example, but this is a core feature of Gmail.

The keyboard on BB devices is really better than anything else running Android, barring maybe a couple of Android devices with extremely under powered hardware.

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

#24

Post by wtvanhest »

wanderr wrote: post #21
jrockway wrote: post #10

I've never understood what problem Blackberry is trying to solve. They say the advantage is email. But isn't Gmail on Android much better than Exchange on Blackberry? (Not to mention cheaper!) Blackberry has never done statistical analysis to tell me which unread messages are most important, for example, but this is a core feature of Gmail.

The keyboard on BB devices is really better than anything else running Android, barring maybe a couple of Android devices with extremely under powered hardware.

The thing I miss most from my BlackBerry after switching to andriod is the track ball/pad. That made one handed navigation extremely easy.

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

#25

Post by garethsprice »

If they stripped down their OS so it wasn't so clunky and unstable. If they had a web browser that wasn't sub-IE5 quality. (As a developer) if development wasn't Windows-only/massively fragmented/difficult to set up.

Apple's got "cool", Android's got "cheap/open". Nobody owns "reliable". BB did for a while but seem to be trying to play catch-up with Apple and failing. They don't stand for anything any more.

BB are well positioned to be the Thinkpad/Toughbook/Model-M Keyboard of mobile devices - minimalist, under-designed and ultra-reliable.

Ask anyone who had a Nokia 3310 phone about it and they'll rave about how indestructible and reliable it was. Ask a business nerd about their Thinkpad and they'll tell you that they don't care it's not as cool as a frou-frou Macbook, it's a machine for getting serious work done. A few years ago you'd get a similar response from a BB user, now they just look mildly embarrassed and say "work pays for it, I don't get a choice. I hear we're going to be able to bring our own iPhones in soon though."

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

#26

Post by SatvikBeri »

wanderr wrote: post #21
jrockway wrote: post #10

I've never understood what problem Blackberry is trying to solve. They say the advantage is email. But isn't Gmail on Android much better than Exchange on Blackberry? (Not to mention cheaper!) Blackberry has never done statistical analysis to tell me which unread messages are most important, for example, but this is a core feature of Gmail.

The keyboard on BB devices is really better than anything else running Android, barring maybe a couple of Android devices with extremely under powered hardware.

But today we have Swype, which is massively faster than a BlackBerry keyboard for typing emails and texts. I honestly can't imagine ever switching to a BlackBerry, unless I really needed battery life.

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

#27

Post by kstrauser »

swampthing wrote: post #7
traxtech wrote: post #2

Without product differentiation, why switching ?

The keyboard is a huge differentiator.

I can't see switching ecosystems because of a hardware feature of one of the units. So BBs have great keyboards; I'll take your word at face value and assume that they do. But if any of Android's manufacturers came out with a good keyboard - which is certainly likely if there proves to be a market for it - then what?

I know on some level that you could make the same argument about any feature. I think it's especially true on something as relatively common as an input device, though. Which would be easier: BB seamlessly running Android's 700,000 apps, or Samsung adding a high-quality keyboard to a phone?

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

#29

Post by wavephorm »

If I'm going to invest my time and money into a hardware platform I'd rather go with the company that is on the leading edge. Blackberry's offer no advantage over Android or iPhone for me, they're old-fashioned. It appears that RIM still hasn't caught up to the iPhone v1 released in 2007.

At this point I think RIM would require a paradigm shifting new technology or something radically new to get me to buy a Blackberry. And Apple is already pushing forward with voice-activated controls with Siri. Why isn't there that type of innovation happening at RIM?

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

#30

Post by nchlswu »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #26
wanderr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keyboard on BB devices is really better than anything else running Android, barring maybe a couple of Android devices with extremely under powered hardware.

But today we have Swype, which is massively faster than a BlackBerry keyboard for typing emails and texts. I honestly can't imagine ever switching to a BlackBerry, unless I really needed battery life.

I haven't used Swype regularly. is Swype massively actually massively faster when it comes to two handed typing?

I can easily see the performance difference for one handed typing, but I'm having trouble seeing power users reliably typing emails realizing much faster results with Swype.

Post reply on HN