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Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#101

Post by rcarmo »

buggeryorkshire wrote: post #29

IIRC the secret sauce of BlackBerry, before Android / iOS, was they used the mobile carriers to push notifications to the phone. You had to usually pay for a expensive BlackBerry plan, but you got notifications immediately. It used the mobile carrier rather than keep a push notification data channel open. Kind of wouldn't work these days what with so many notifications and background tasks, but you can definitely see…

It actually kept a push notification channel open. It was just more optimized for low bandwidth networks.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#102

Post by qsi »

Yes, absolutely!

This may be nostalgia talking, but I loved (most) of my Blackberry devices. Certainly in the earlier part of its ascent, through to its heyday, it was indisputably the best at what it was supposed to do: emails (and messaging more generally).

I was able to type much better on my BB, although these days I'd miss the multi-lingual autocorrect of a SwiftKey. But not BBs were made the same: I remember upgrading my BB once to a newer, fancier model (I have long forgotten the designations) but its keyboard felt inferior to me. Keyboard feel is subjective of course, but I that one was a big step backward in my enjoyment of typing. I quickly switched to a newer model.

At one point I was forced to an HTC Blackberry-lookalike. I think it was a Windows phone, and while it looked similar, it was infinitely worse to use. I was happy when I could go back to a Blackberry again, and I kept using them until the last servers were switched off at my company.

I could be on the road for a few days without taking a charger too. I would only pack a charger for longer trips... but that had started to erode towards the end too.

Blackberry had a long afterlife in Indonesia; it must have been around 2014 or 2015 when I visited Jakarta and the one phone to have was a Blackberry, presumably due to its network-effect lock on the messaging market.

Meanwhile my Samsung's battery is down to 53% barely halfway through the day.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#103

Post by rcarmo »

908B64B197 wrote: post #22

I remember the BlackBerry Storm, the first touch screen phone by RIM launching at the same time as the iPhone 3G. No Wifi, slow janky scrolling, no apps (well, sure, if you don't mind downloading some random .jar that had to be recompiled for the custom fork they ran on that device). Felt like a rushed beta. Meanwhile the iPhone just worked. Smooth scrolling, fast browser especially on Wifi. You could get apps from t…

See my other post about that on another thread. Summary: it was so bad that I persuaded my CMO to only buy 200 for the whole country. In the UK they had 25% (or more) return rates in the first week of sales.

We (in the marketing and terminal testing teams) eventually went out and printed T-Shirts that said “I survived the BlackBerry Storm”.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#104

Post by qsi »

alpaca128 wrote: post #100
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use Swiftkey-like typing on your keyboard? On my Android phone I find I can type so fast with it, and I barely have to look at the keyboard.

Swiftkey seems nice until you're not an english native speaker, which means you automatically write in 2 languages (native and at least some english). Now good luck having the keyboard guess which dictionary to use for every single word, which can even lead to mistakes if both suggest the same thing (capitalization). I care about not having a wrong word in the middle of every other sentence. And even that doesn't cha…

Actually SwiftKey in multiple languages helps me write in the ones I am less fluent in, due to its autocorrect. I agree it can be annoying too... you have to be careful with activating languages, and I switch off the languages I am unlikely to use in the near future.

Still miss my BB though.

Edited to add: unlike other commenters here, I never use the glide feature in Swiftkey! I just use it as a better keyboard...

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#105

Post by numlock86 »

Not anymore. I missed it for a couple of years but I left my technical nostalgic conservative self behind and I think typing by just approximately swiping over the letters the word in question is made of is much faster, convenient and (by today's standards and mostly AI-driven engines) less error prone. And yes, I am using multiple languages.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#107

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

pjerem wrote: post #96
mushbino wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on what you're talking about? I'm having a hard time picturing it but I'm interested.

Swiftkey like keyboards (like … Swiftkey or the iOS one) are keyboards where you write your words by swiping your finger across the letters of the keyboard, releasing your finger between each word. Like this : https://youtu.be/D2XyP7iUErI at 00:17

iOS has swipe to type built in.

I used Swiftkey for iOS recently, it’s no better than the built in option, and worse if you disable the spying “feature”.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#108

Post by jesterson »

Positively surprised to see may people missing it. I do so as well.

Started with 9870, moved to 9900 then Passport, Q10, Priv.

Last model was a disappointment since it was android based.

Besides amazing keyboard, BlackBerryOS was just amazing piece of software, probably due to large RIM experience in real-time OSes. System had no lags whatsoever, everything was just working how it should be.

Miss it dearly.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#109

Post by metaphor »

_mhr_ wrote: post #47

No one has yet mentioned the Blackberry Priv, an Android phone with a quality keyboard sold as recently as 2016. I loved it so much, but it recently stopped holding charge among other issues, so I had to get a new Samsung. I type an order of magnitude slower now, and I write constantly. But there is no alternative. I don't know if you guys are aware, but https://www.onwardmobility.com/ is supposed to release a new An…

I switched to Key2 (currently on third...too many oopsies) after burning through two Priv, but I still know at least one serious Priv holdout locally (SWE wife of a EE friend) for strictly keypad reasons. The S8 did somewhat interest me due to its snap-on accessory keypad, but I couldn't get over paying a flagship pricetag and then some for a half-assed keypad that explicitly nerfs 30% of display real estate out the gate.

If OnwardMobility's eventual offering has a proper Blackberry-class keypad, it'll be an instant in for +2, and friend's wife will def be in for at least one as well.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?

#110

Post by brazzy »

I actually used the latest Android Blackberry (Key 2 LE) until a month ago when it slipped from my pocket and fell from the first floor balcony.

I really, really wanted to get another hardware keyboard, but the Key 2 is both dated (Android 6 IIRC) and commands ridiculous collector's prices.

And there are no newer ones - Fxtec has vaporware that has its release pushed back three times already, and the new owner of Blackbarry apparently has announced a new phone, but nothing concrete yet.

So I have a "normal" phone now, but really don't like to use it for typing.

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