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

arstechnica.com

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

#71

Post by shawn-butler »

Pwnguinz wrote: post #67
shawn-butler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't really think that's true. I mean it was in some sense but for example if you loaded a seperate spectrum compatible, carrier "image" it might be fine until the next reboot at which time the carrier service books would get reloaded.

So for example, you may have installed the bb maps and on the next reboot away they would disappear to be replaced with a link to purchase "AT&T Navigator", etc. The "AT&T Mall" would reappear, etc.

Service book configuration was something fairly unique to BB and allowed carriers to configure the user experience to a pretty significant extent.

Doesn't really apply to BB10 afaik so it's just reminiscing about the bad old days, irregardless.

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

#72

Post by helloamar »

I trusted blackberry from the bold 9000, with that trust I got a playbook thinking they will add more apps but after waiting for more than a year I got the iPad4,

Now I have a bold 9900, time to change my phone in a couple of months ,now the bb10 arrives I'm waiting for the apps that keeps my business running if it didn't show up I'm going to get the iPhone

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

#73

Post by fi0660 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #62
icki wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It works surprisingly well in Nokia N9. I think games are also allowed to disable the gestures while the game is in non-paused state.

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

#74

Post by wvenable »

kunai wrote: post #51
wvenable wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BB10 can do much more than an iPhone Really? That's not the impression that I get. It might be able to meet the current features and abilities of iOS and Android but I haven't see anything that indicates it can do "so much more". There doesn't seem to be enough here to justify purchasing a device from a 3rd place manufacturer with brand new software.

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…

You said the BB10 can do so much more but then provided a list of fairly insignificant features and the mention of potential. If you were a sales person, you would have lost the sale.

QNX being real-time has little to do with real world performance. While the Z10 does have good performance but it also has a pretty high clocked processor and double the RAM of competitor devices.

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

#75

Post by fleitz »

MattRogish wrote: post #64
garagemc2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

No kidding humans don't care about 10ms jitter, missle guidance systems do. RTOS doesn't matter to humans.

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

#76

Post by shawn-butler »

MattRogish wrote: post #64
garagemc2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

So for example, the android runtime operates at the same level as any other process. You will run android applications at the same "performance" level as native qnx apps. The benefits of the microkernel means crashes of an android runtime or the adobe AIR runtime have zero chance of bringing down other platform services, etc. You have to remember it was once planned to also offer a "legacy" runtime environment so that j2me/bb apps would continue to run alongside android apps. That obviously was lost (good riddance!) in the development cycle. The CPU scheduler is also quite different.

The playbook represented a very "rush a beta product to market too fast" case study, so I wouldn't prejudge the smartphone builds of BB10 to the playbook experience. How does this translate into a "better" user experience is not clear to me either apart from being able to run repackaged android apps from day one. Design and flow is more important.

That said, the multimedia latency that can be important in gaming on low-powered devices is significantly improved compared to the performance of the linux kernel. Finally, if an app ecosystem builds up around "sharing" information capabilities between running apps, the QNX IPC messaging is significantly better optimized than the IPC mechanism "borrowed" from BeOS that android uses.

In theory, the advantages of the QNX microkernel to Blackberry isn't so much in that it will dramatically improve the smartphone experience per se, it is that QNX can be deployed/configured with less headache across more divergent platforms with different capabilities and hardware than the j2me platform, such as auto infotainment systems, factory floors, medical devices, etc. It would be quite possible to boot the device and "download" most of the necessary modules to run the hardware dynamically.

Finally, I think the one aspect of QNX that hasn't really been exploited or discussed yet is its use as a distributed computing platform. It is rather easy to tie QNX "nodes" together and do IPC across the network by using TDP on qnet. [0] I could imagine for example using the processing power of the "nearby" qnx systems to power the apps running on my phone to save its battery. You could see swarms of phones contributing to enterprise problems in a distributed fashion. Want to access the camera on a phone in China, the code is the same as accessing the camera on your local phone, kind of like the Plan9 filesystem/protocol. Obviously BB10 has to be successful for anything grander and someone at BB has to share my product vision for it to take root.

Sorry just rambling here, I'll stop.

[0] http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.3.2/neutrino/prog/qnet....

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

#77

Post by illuminate »

arbitrage wrote: post #7
tlack wrote: post #2

Anyone got the inside info on why they are waiting so long to release these in America? Should have been available unlocked at launch if they really wanted to regain the hearts and minds of the fickle American consumer.

Is an unlocked phone really that important to the majority of American consumers? They've showed quite readily in the past that they really don't care that much.

"They've showed quite readily in the past that they really don't care that much."

I don't think the telco lobbying interests reflect the consumer's opinion.

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

#78

Post by illuminate »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #53
arbitrage wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is an unlocked phone really that important to the majority of American consumers? They've showed quite readily in the past that they really don't care that much.

No. Majority would give you a blank stare if you mentioned a mobile phone being locked/unlocked.

I think T-Mobile may help to change that.

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

#79

Post by zmonkeyz »

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…

Then I can only judge Apple by OS 7.

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

#80

Post by zmonkeyz »

janlukacs wrote: post #30

i think people should give it a chance, too much negativity due to fanboyism.

It's sad when people hate on every piece of tech that isn't their favorite. If they would have came out with a new Bold with OS 7.5 people would bitch. They develop BB10 and people still bitch.
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