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

Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 103 posts

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#61

Post by Samuel_Michon »

serge2k wrote: post #27
purephase wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The re-brand is telling. This is not the same organization that launched the PlayBook. I also believe that the PlayBook is an extremely under-valued product. I, and quite a few people I know, use it all the time. For the price point it is a great device.

For the 200 dollar price point. When it launched it was what, twice that? Also came missing basic features. That's what lead to the failure. I got mine as a gift, it's a nice device. Main complaint is no suffort from bigger third party companies (i.e. netflix, skype).

The 7" Blackberry PlayBook 16GB cost $499 when it went on sale in April of 2011. That's the same price as Apple was selling its 10" iPad 2 16GB for.

Five months later, RIM slashed the prices of the PlayBook. The 16GB model was sold for $199, $6 below the Bill of Materials costs.

RIM sold 700,000 PlayBooks before they lowered the prices, and even when they were selling them at a loss, they only managed to sell 1 million more.

Aside from its price point, it's not hard to see why the PlayBook flopped. When it launched, there were hardly any third party apps for PlayBook, the OS lacked autocorrection, the onscreen keyboard was barely usable, there was no integration with cloud storage, the default search engine was Bing, it had no store for media content, and of course: it had no standalone e-mail and calendar software.

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#62

Post by zmmmmm »

icki wrote: post #60
zmmmmm wrote: post #59

It's great to see a fully gesture based phone. I've always thought this would be the most natural way to interact with a touch based device, and it's always the gesture based apps and interactions that I enjoy using most on my phone. My only hesitation is whether gestures interfere with normal use of the phone. Will it confuse interactions in the game I am playing with the swipe to go back to the home screen, for exa…

I'd have to agree with you that gesture interactions tend to feel more natural then typical button pressing (e.g. pinch-to-zoom), but can be a little awkward for first time users. A customer who stops by a mobile phone kiosk while walking through their local mall might not know how to handle a BB10 device without assistance from a sales associate. However, gestures often become second-nature, and users rarely find th…

> Swipe-upwards to unlock/return to homescreen requires initial contact with the screen's bezel

Hopefully that works well. However when playing games it's pretty easy to hit the bezel when you're aiming for something on the edge of the screen. I always used to have this problem (and still do) on Android phones with their capacitive / on screen buttons.

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#64

Post by MattRogish »

garagemc2 wrote: post #58
kunai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real time task scheduling, a much better keyboard, an excellent multitasking UI, full push email support, a better web browser and better benchmarks, to name a few. The reasons I listed above are directed at BB's biggest userbase: businesses. That doesn't mean that the average consumer won't be able to take advantage of these features, though. QNX is real-time. That is huge. The performance of the OS should be unmatc…

"QNX is real-time. That is huge." Why? What's the benefit? P.S. I have a playbook if you can use examples from that (if it has RTOS)

I'm interested in this, too.

I interned at a software company back in the late 90s that ran on QNX (batch control software for concrete ready-mix plants) - so I have some exposure to QNX. It is a pretty interesting RTOS (the Neutrino microkernel was pretty neat, architecturally). QNX is cool and all, but what "huge" advantage does "real-time" have on multi-core mobile devices?

I also have a PlayBook somewhere (got it for free at a conference) and there was nothing particularly impressive about the multi-tasking that wasn't either obviated by OS design or otherwise simulated "good enough" in other tablet operating systems (the perennial real-time vs. preemptive multitasking argument).

I'm not saying that there may be some interesting things that are made easier for BlackBerry due to a RTOS - but what "huge" things is a BlackBerry user going to see that, say, an iOS or Android user won't - solely due to a RTOS?

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#65

Post by eropple »

dmix wrote: post #48
Osiris wrote: post #25

I welcome any competition into the mobile OS market, especially if it brings a refreshing new take on design and user experience. My devices all run Android and while it's usable, I'm not a huge fan of many aspects of the OS. While I don't plan on getting a BB10 device, I am interested to see if or how its innovations cause other OS vendors to adjust their own user experience.

I'm fine with the Android OS, still not a fan of the hardware. Although its gotten better, Android phones are still nowhere near the physical build quality of the iPhone 4 (including the S3 which I'm currently using).

Battery life aside, I found the Nexus 4's build quality to be quite nice--in the iPhone ballpark.

(The battery life was a killer for me, though, so I went back to my Galaxy Nexus.)

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#66

Post by pavanky »

dmix wrote: post #48
Osiris wrote: post #25

I welcome any competition into the mobile OS market, especially if it brings a refreshing new take on design and user experience. My devices all run Android and while it's usable, I'm not a huge fan of many aspects of the OS. While I don't plan on getting a BB10 device, I am interested to see if or how its innovations cause other OS vendors to adjust their own user experience.

I'm fine with the Android OS, still not a fan of the hardware. Although its gotten better, Android phones are still nowhere near the physical build quality of the iPhone 4 (including the S3 which I'm currently using).

When I held the iphone 5 it felt like I could damage it if I held it with a tight grip[ (I am a big man). My One X doesn't feel that way.

Perhaps what physical build quality means is subjective?

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#67

Post by Pwnguinz »

shawn-butler wrote: post #38
rcb wrote: post #22

Does anyone know if BB has the ability to push OS updates direct to customer handsets? Years ago such updates required carrier "approval"/intervention, which meant updates occurred infrequently (usually after significant delay), if ever. Edit: US carriers, specifically AT&T.

Nope. [0] However, on unlocked phones you can load whatever image will work. [0] http://us.blackberry.com/support/apps-and-software/desktop-a...

Not sure about BB10, but with previous BB's, you could always load whatever image will work. The "Network Carrier" branded version was unnecessary even if you had a branded BB.

Somewhat like Android. You can also load tweaked custom OS's, or "hybrid OS's" as they're known in the BB community.

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#68

Post by illuminate »

kunai wrote: post #14
manishsharan wrote: post #11

I am not falling for BB again ! In my last iteration of smartphone purchase, I bought a latest-at-the-time Iphone 3GS for my wife and the latest-at-the-time Blackberry Bold. Since then I have watched in envy as my wife could get so much done on her phone than I could on my BB. My BB never did much beyond email and BBM ( I love BBM ) In this iteration, I recently placed an order for Nexus 4 and a Iphone 5. maybe if th…

Did you even read the review? This isn't related AT ALL to the old OS7 Bold or any other Blackberry line, which were awful. BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience.

"BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience"

It would probably help if you named specific benefits that didn't sound like PR spew, because this means absolutely nothing to me.

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#69

Post by soperj »

untog wrote: post #16
kunai wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read the review? This isn't related AT ALL to the old OS7 Bold or any other Blackberry line, which were awful. BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience.

It's still relevant. Increasingly, mobile OSes are less about where they are now than where they will be. Apple have been outstanding in that regard- providing OS updates to really quite old phones. Vanilla Android has been just as great, but individual Android manufacturers less so. MS has been terrible. BB has a history of being terrible. So, Blackberry's past is relevant. No, they might not repeat it, but absent o…

BB is also making good on that now, updating things that can be updated like their playbooks, even though they're several years old.

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#70

Post by soperj »

dholowiski wrote: post #24
kunai wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read the review? This isn't related AT ALL to the old OS7 Bold or any other Blackberry line, which were awful. BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience.

Brand new OS, brand new hardware, what could possibly go wrong? Last time they did this (Playbook - new hardware, new OS) it was a gigantic hit, right?

The OS is an update of the Playbook OS, so not brand new.
Post reply on HN