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Review: The BlackBerry Classic Is One of the Best Phones of 2009
Molly McHugh writes When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, and I owned a BlackBerry Curve. To me, my BlackBerry was close to being the absolute perfect smartphone. Today, BlackBerry revealed the Classic, a phone that is designed to make me—and everyone who owned a BlackBerry before the touchscreen revolution—remember how much we loved them.
that's the point of TFA. This thing would've been great in 2009. Now it's just serving a niche market of shrinking ex-crackberry users. Still, if it prevents RIM from disappearing from the face of the earth, that might count as a success.
I'm looking forward getting the next Nokia 3310!
Actually BB10 is able to run most Android Apps perfectly fine, I am using a Z10 and have very little issues with Android applications.
Blackberry phones nowadays can run essentially any Android app flawlessly...
Seriously. This kinds of shit is why they pissed away their market lead and utterly destroyed their entire market share.
They keep going for a minute market segment that barely exists, and thinks that the rest of us will hop on board to be with "the cool kids".
What they don't understand is that they've drawn themselves a venn diagram and aimed for the absolute smallest piece of the pie.
Yes, it doesn't require the kind of investment that aiming for a larger market segment does.
But, if you miss with that segment, you crash and burn.
And worse, they aren't even doing the research to even verify the market segment they're aiming for:
A) Can handle the entrance of the device.
B) Exists in the first palce
RIM has been dogfooding so long that they're institutionally blind.
I had a buddy at RIM try to tell me their tablet device was going to rock the market. Couldn't understand why I laughed and laughed and fell on the floor and laughed some more when he told me I basically had to buy into RIM's entire hardware ecosystem to take advantage of the thing. That it wasn't available as a stand-alone device.
Not sure that he still works there. Hopefully the high-decibel flushing sound that's been going on at RIM for the last decade or so will have infused him with a little perspective. Even if his bosses are still acid-tripping on ground up Blackberry 10 phones.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yes, and OS/2 could run almost all Windows 3.1 and DOS applications too.
That strategy didn't work for them in the long run either...
...You are over-qualified and under-paid. If we give you a raise, we will break the cosmic balance of the universe.
Actually, it is still great if you want to use it as a tool and not a toy.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why do you care? I have a z10 and it is the best choice for what I want to do with it. But why would you care about that?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
True, but that was for fairly different reasons.
Microsoft could (and very quickly did) evolve windows in a way OS/2 couldn't retain any sort of compatibility with, and the underlying OS/2 system was not easy to develop for (no matter what REXX nerds tell you).
Android, by contrast, is open source, and they are not relying on Google's version (and the attendant Play issues) but Amazon's fork and app store. They have a deal with Amazon.
They still have to get native development done, but QNX is a much nicer thing to develop for, and the rewards (performance, battery life, memory use) are more obvious.
You're right that it's an uphill struggle for sure, but they aren't trying to retain compatibility with a hostile entity. This might be enough while they reboot their enterprise offerings.
"Windows and BlackBerry aren't very good, so I say Windoze and WhackBerry instead" Do you see how much of a fuckwit this makes you look?
I am not saying anything about their strategy, just refuting the incorrectness of the GP.
Some people prefer hardware keyboards. I'm not one of them; I prefer to have a slimmer device with a larger screen instead, but I've tried one of the old BB models (one with a trackball) and found that its keyboard was rather good for typing longer messages. I can see the attraction if most of what you do is email and messaging.
What a lot of people (myself included) didn't appreciate is how much people hate having to carry two devices. Where I work, many people had a BB provided by the company as well as a personal cell phone (smart or otherwise). As soon as the company offered corporate email and calendar on personal smartphones, pretty much everyone dropped BB and continued to use their personal device. And pretty much no one choose BB as their personal device either. TFA praises BB for not trying to appeal to the mass market with this device, and instead offer something that does a couple of things really well, but BB need to understand that in the world of bring-your-own-device, the reality is that your device needs to service personal needs as well as business needs. Having a physical keyboard and a great messaging app clearly doesn't cut it anymore.
Adding the ability to run Android apps on modern BB phones is a great move though. That may be exactly what is needed to make them good enough for personal use.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
While I hate the Blackberry, some of us actually prefer to have 2 phones: I can shut off the company phone when on vacation or "forget" to charge it, etc.
Actually, it is still great if you want to use it as a tool and not a toy.
Just keep those blinders on, son. Just keep telling yourself what other people use their iPhones and Android phones for isn't to get stuff done - it's not like they're doing WORK the way you are! Don't ask yourself how all those people who switched away from Blackberry could possibly not see how they're no longer getting anything done with those lesser phones...
#DeleteChrome
When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, and I owned a BlackBerry Curve.
You don't love the grammar very much. Do you?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Typing on a touch screen is still shitty 5 years later. Case in point i just had to make 3 corrections to the previous sentenc.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
that's the point of TFA. This thing would've been great in 2009. Now it's just serving a niche market of shrinking ex-crackberry users. Still, if it prevents RIM from disappearing from the face of the earth, that might count as a success.
The old style Blackberries weren't even very good back in their heyday. I got a Black Berry Curve 8320 in late 2007 and used it for about two years. The phones themselves, i.e. the hardware, was OK, I especially liked the Black Berry keyboard and the little trackball. However, I also concluded that the software and OS sucked ass big time if you wanted to use the Curve as a smart phone to surf the net or use apps to make your life simpler like we do with modern smartphones. And that is precisely what I have been buying large screen smartphones for since the early 2000s, to use apps. Even so I can see how the Curve was the perfect device for SMS and e-mail junkies since those were just about the only two things the Black Berry Curve series did really, really well. So I switched to iPhones the instant I could get my greasy paws on one back in 2009 and never looked back except to contemplate switching to Android a couple of times.
It should also be self evident that if a Blackberry device has to load up a substantial chunk of an Android runtime and an emulation layer (in addition to its own services) to run an Android app that it will be neither as performant or memory efficient as a standard Android device. It has two stacks to wrangle and there might be limits on the Android emulation that cause performance issues of its own.
In fact it's hard to see why they bother emulating Android at all when they could just *be* Android. Doesn't stopping them locking it down with Knox, encrypted storage etc. It would save them a hell of a lot of effort in the long run and would broaden the appeal of a device if it actually ran the apps people wanted to use. Emulation and Amazon's store is better than nothing but it's still an extremely poor substitute for the Play store.
Humans are hanged, horses are hung.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Some of us humans are hung too, just sayin
Trapped in a walled garden, are we?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Those humans are referred to as horses so parent is still right.
It's much faster for longer words. But for all of the shorter words with 3 letters, it's almost impossible to get them right every time.
I used to be a Blackberry fan back in the day when it was ahead of the curve. It wasn't until a year and half ago that I tried an Android phone for the first time and I was shocked at how much better quality I have. There simply is no other way to describe how BlackBerry fails on every mark in the current day.
The OS crashed frequently. The app store had a terrible selection and the apps that existed were poor quality and buggy. The browser was slow and difficult to use. The speaker was awful quality whether I was on the phone or playing music, and it got even worse when I connected my headphone jack or auxilliary cable into my car's stereo. The sound quality was easily 4x improved on my Android. Voice command? Laughably bad. I couldn't even get it to recognize the word "Call".
The only thing I miss about it is the physical keyboard which I do type faster on, however that is just simply not enough to keep their dwindling customer base. They didn't keep up and now they are essentially dead. Just like with the Republican party, I will never go back again as long as I live.
> The BlackBerry Classic Is One of the Best Phones of 2009
What most of the internet seems to have missed is that BlackBerry intended the new Classic to be "one of the best phones of 2009".
What is also missed is that, that's okay. There are people out there who don't want an iPhone or Samsung, they want a new&improved Bold 9900. Maybe that's not you: fine. But maybe it is, and that's fine too.
Its good enough that Im willing to look past it to avoid all of the other massive issues Blackberry has, like its inability to interact meaningfully with the world outside of its corporate network.
They made vast improvements in a year and a half? Forgive me if I am highly skeptical of your AC commentary.
Anyone that wants a physical keyboard can have one. There are TONS of phone cases with bluetooth keyboards. I don't know of a single modern smartphone that doesn't support them.
But hey, there are dozens of Blackberry fans that will love this product.....so it's got that going for it.
Post-Snowden, they would have been perfectly placed to argue that theirs was the only secure communicator available to the public.
But then they rolled over for India, of all places, trading backdoors for market share.
The security niche might have given them the breathing space to hold on, but when that was gone, it removed the only cogent argument for corporations to not buy iPhones instead.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
The BlackBerry Classic Is One of the Best Phones of 2009
Meanwhile, the wheel has been nominated as the best invention of the 5th millennium BC.
Brought to you by... Captain Obvious!
Android phone makers experimented with physical keyboards for a while, and lately seem to have decided to just issue the same bland iPhone-but-with-Android form factors and forget about being innovative in that area.
I hope BlackBerry stays relevent enough to undo that and get manufacturers looking at text input again. The current situation may suit many, but I see a 50/50 split between people who are happy with Swype-like text input, and people who really prefer the accuracy of physical push buttons. Me, I'm generally OK with the former, but want to have the latter to fall back on.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I haven't found this to be true. I've tried swiftkey and swype for weeks at a time, and I've found that they're generally slower than me tapping words out. The problem is that the worst case--that the system gets the word wrong and you need to replace the whole thing because none of the suggestions are correct--comes up surprisingly often for me. I also find the flow of tapping to be a lot more comfortable. I never stop tapping until I'm finished, while with the swiping methods, I have to pause in between words before I start swiping again.
Mileage varies, but I'm considerably faster with the built-in Apple keyboard unless I'm walking and typing with one hand. In that case, the swiping method has an obvious payoff because I can be less accurate with my movements.
I usually swipe my whole email first and then correct all incorrect words afterwards so not to interrupt the flow.
Yeah not necessarily relevant to the masses anymore but Blackberry and Win phone's piece of a very big market is still a nice profitable company. Last I saw Win Phone had something like 2.5% market share which would be the equivalent of Nissan or Hyundai in the car space: small companies but they don't just give up because there is still a lot of money to be made especially since Blackberry and Microsoft make the devices too so they make money on both ends.
Not so great if you want it to actually ring when a call comes in. On the Bold, I found that I have to use the ringer that sounds like an office phone ringer. If I use any others, it plays the short sound once (and they are all only a second or two in length) and I tend to miss the call. Also, I want the Favorites group open every time. Isn't that reasonable? I mean, they're my favorites. But it always mysteriously moves to Frequent or All, so that I have to swipe to find what I want. Most of the tiny icons don't look like what they represent, or two or three look almost the same.
It's crap, and I can't wait until my company replaces it with an iPhone.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Per John Chen:
Blackberry went to customers and asked what they wanted. They wanted the "belt" and a keyboard. Crazy huh. BBRY did market research and determined that their customers wanted the Blackberry Classic.
Also, if you are a consumer then Blackberry is not targeting you. So if you don't like it, Blackberry really doesn't care. They are targeting business users.
I personally don't want the Classic but I am a consumer. But the Blackberry Passport is damned tempting.
...but do miss the QWERTY keyboard like mad. I've been waiting for any company to launch an Android phone with QWERTY keypad., that don't suck . But I guess the Blackberry Classic is as close as I can get to that.
Gary
I'm comfortably easing into using my passport. Currently on day #3, so far so good.
The passport's keyboard is very well done, they have put a lot of thought into the user interface and hardware: here is an interesting video of the keyboard in action. Limiting the physical keys to just 3 rows of letters actually works really well with the virtual rows that can pop up on screen.
I'm sure I will find some things about the passport that I dislike, I just haven't found any thus far.
self evident that if a Blackberry device has to load up a substantial chunk of an Android runtime and an emulation layer (in addition to its own services) to run an Android app that it will be neither as performant or memory efficient as a standard Android device.
It's not self-evident. There are serious jank problems while scrolling, 10-second latency problems navigating trivial apps like Settings, and nagging battery-drain problems with Android. These are the main problems the platform has.
Memory use isn't one of the problems: the standard phone went from 0.5GByte to 2GByte RAM a couple years ago without any significant change in app functionality, and the K release used less memory than the J release so general platform bloat is actually going backwards: the stack's memory tax is therefore less than a quarter of the standard platform size and not a big deal for emulation.
Performance probably isn't a problem wrt the emulation because the performance problems are not flat-out CPU bound work nor mean-latency problems: doubling the mean latency would not be a big deal because android has such huge tail-latency problems. And doubling mean latency in return for cutting max latency is exactly what hard-realtime kernels like Neutrino are made for. Whether they can do this through the android stack is doubtful because the latency is probably coming from java crappo, but who knows. Anyway it's not self-evident that emulation will cause a memory problem for Android, nor that it will cause a performance/battery problem.
Emulation and battery-drain problems aren't related because they're caused by poor scheduling, bugs, held "wake locks", etc. Part of the area where bugs can exist will be replaced, so if QNX is higher-quality than Android in this replaced area it will win the battery game.
Go pump BB's stock somewhere else.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The minute Microsoft made Activesync sufficiently robust, BB's cause célèbre evaporated.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I used a corporate issued BB with hard keys for years. While I agree the error rate is higher on the soft keys, I was most surprised how my thumbs no longer hurt. Also the advantage of being able to use the full screen outweighs the error rate problem. Also I don't buy into BB claims of security. This is complete nonsense as all lawful intercept occurs on the inside of the firewalls in BlackBerry's network. And these days with BB10 they use SSL routed over the public imternet instead of IPSec tunnels routed over dedicated circuits. MEH.
It's not self-evident. There are serious jank problems while scrolling, 10-second latency problems navigating trivial apps like Settings, and nagging battery-drain problems with Android. These are the main problems the platform has.
Utter bollocks. And even if it were true (and it isn't) it does not mean the kernel is to blame so your point would still be bollocks.
Memory use isn't one of the problems: the standard phone went from 0.5GByte to 2GByte RAM a couple years ago without any significant change in app functionality, and the K release used less memory than the J release so general platform bloat is actually going backwards: the stack's memory tax is therefore less than a quarter of the standard platform size and not a big deal for emulation.
Utter bollocks again. Android has increased memory generally so more apps stay resident in memory. The less memory, the more likely it would be to purge apps. In other words it makes use of the memory for stuff.
Performance probably isn't a problem wrt the emulation because the performance problems are not flat-out CPU bound work nor mean-latency problems: doubling the mean latency would not be a big deal because android has such huge tail-latency problems. And doubling mean latency in return for cutting max latency is exactly what hard-realtime kernels like Neutrino are made for. Whether they can do this through the android stack is doubtful because the latency is probably coming from java crappo, but who knows. Anyway it's not self-evident that emulation will cause a memory problem for Android, nor that it will cause a performance/battery problem.
Utter bollocks because it presupposes your other bollocks and makes no sense in any event. The point I was making was that to emulate Android, a Black Berry device has the memory pressure of two runtimes in memory at once (the native one) and the emulated one (plus shims). It obviously impacts on memory and performance.
Emulation and battery-drain problems aren't related because they're caused by poor scheduling, bugs, held "wake locks", etc. Part of the area where bugs can exist will be replaced, so if QNX is higher-quality than Android in this replaced area it will win the battery game.
It's true that a misbehaved app can drain battery but normal drain is caused by the screen, radio and general activity. And in any event it's largely an irrelevance what kernel is underneath because an app can misbehave over any kernel. And modern kernels are wasting CPU / battery unless something above is telling them to.
The typing I miss, but I can live with a touchscreen. What I really want back from the old days is the battery life that earlier BB's etc used to have.
Even if you make a second proofreading pass on an article typed on a touch screen, placing the insertion point near a particular word to correct it is a pain too. Or do I just have overly fat fingers?
If hardware keyboards are such "a dead technology", why do PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS still have hardware directional pads, analog sticks, and buttons, as opposed to relying on multitouch with zero tactile feedback the way the iPhone and Android devices do? For game genres using directional as opposed to positional input, even the widely panned Turbo Touch 360 gamepad is better than a flat sheet of glass. So there's at least one niche of applications best served by a specialized input device that helps the user align his fingers without looking at them. BlackBerry fans believe that e-mail is another.
It's sad, but BB is doing a lot of things to make up for its lost years.
BES 10 didn't support older BB 5,7 devices. That was one of hte biggest blunders. They are fixing that now in BES12.
Back in 2009, there was nothing really wrong with BB phones per se. They just needed a new OS with better app/dev support. you can't go back in time and there were issues with adopting Android, but that is basically what they are doing now with Android app support...
Yes, years late, but a lot of enterprises still have BB7 devices and the old BES. This is their upgrade path that should have been there in 2009.
It is probably their best play as far as plays goes.
Continued and enhanced android support will basically let them make a corporate/secure/managed version of android.
Consumers could latch onto it as well if they like the keyboard and build/branding.
" Case in point i just had to make 3 corrections to the previous sentenc."
four.
I would disagree. They are spot on when it comes to business tools vs toys.If you want to get the job done and be totally business, nothing can beat a BlackBerry. The Hub, general PIM functions, sound profiles, notifications cannot be matched by anybody to date.
I made a huge mistake recently by switching from BB10 over to a Galaxy S5 and several weeks in, I am kicking myself for doing this. The Android is a gorgeous OS with lots of fun toys but when it comes to PIM and business productivity it just plain sucks. I had to root the damn thing just to get the volume button to not adjust my ringer volume ... WTF! Also, Android is so incredibly inconsistent and fragmented with its UI's. At least BlackBerry and Apple strive to get consistency with UI design.
I know that Apple likely does a better job with PIM than Android but it still cannot compare to BlackBerry.
The new BlackBerry Blend is an awesome implementation and model. Who needs syncing and the could when all your secure information is locked into to just one device that you have with you at all times. The concept is sound and implemented very well.
But BlackBerry sucks for Linux support and you cannot run BB Link on many older OSX machines. This was a huge issue for me and a big reason for my switching as I don't buy new iWare and don't run Windows at my house any more. Also BB's method for connecting over USB through a virtual ethernet connection is beyond stupid. For instance, if you are running a Cisco VPN client and connected, it will block the BB connection and how stupid is that.
I will switch back though once I find an old laptop that I can run Windohs 7 to connect and find someone that will trade a new Galaxy S5 for a Z30.
Congramulations! U JUST got the koke. Srry capd. U'v won a freeeb bluetooth keyboard!
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
I really do not care how _you_ waste your time. While it may be true you are in a dead-end job that you do not enjoy and "working" on you phone is your escape from it, I do enjoy my work and I like being efficient at it. I do realize that professional quality-level tools are not the right fit for most people and please, by all means, stick with your toy. As long as BB survives and puts out an actually useful phone now and then, I am fine. You cannot dominate the market with something that is actually really good, people are just too stupid for that.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's almost like we need a system to take care of that. I think we should call it something fancy like "predictive auto-correct".
Then you also need to consider the huge burden of simply clicking the correct word suggestion. *sigh* It's all too hard.
How is this any more/less secure than an ActiveSync over SSL with your own keys though? I don't see the benefit of it. I always thought that as soon as the Android / iOS devices caught up with corporate users needs the Blackberry heydays would be over. It was only a matter of time.
t0ucch scvreemns sUclk./
Its good enough that Im willing to look past it to avoid all of the other massive issues Blackberry has, like its inability to interact meaningfully with the world outside of its corporate network.
Sounds like the BB has a mild case of autism
I've had it three days and love it. After the Palm Pre I don't think I could be excited about another slab phone. Pressing on a piece of glass is not well suited to human anatomy or kinetic pleasure. I love the Classic and also enjoy how much that angers everyone. From an Android dev.
I find tapping slightly faster than swyping, but swyping far more comfortable, and I prefer comfort over speed. I still have and use a BB along with my Note3. The Note3 shits all over the BB in every area.
This is why I got a Note3. Bigger screen and stylus makes this easier to deal with.
(haha, my typing/keyboard just screwed this up, starting again) It's quicker to just use voice input. Then the person at the receiving end can set the phone to read the message so it can be heard without as much attention being demanded. some day, somebody will devise a system which will allow you to send an audible message to somebody else. Maybe even realtime synchronous audible communication will someday be possible.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
my big fat fingers are pretty lousy, even for swyping, but a big fat stylus works very well for swyping for me.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
That press release demonstrates they've done anything but given up. It sounds instead like Blackberry want's to diversify away from its own hardware and ensure its middleware runs over more platforms such as KNOX.