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BlackBerry Launches Android Smartphone
wiredmikey writes: In an attempt to come back from the dead, BlackBerry announced plans to sell an Android-powered smartphone. The struggling Canadian smartphone maker said it would begin selling "Priv," described as "a flagship handheld device that will run on the Android operating system with BlackBerry security," expected to be available later this year. The company isn't giving up on its own operating system, and will continue to develop and enhance its BlackBerry 10 platform, which currently represents less than one percent of smartphone users.
They are 6 years too late.
Day one purchase if it does.
Why does Blackberry even still exist?
What happened to Blackberry that caused them to go from technology pioneer and market leader to being so clueless and completely blind to the market that it took them literally years to realize that the world had left them behind?
I can understand year one. Year two is hard to understand. Year three? Year four? WTF? Year five? Are you fucking kidding me?
How can you double down on ignorance five times over?
*Offer not valid where prohibited by law*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The maker of the most secure mobile OS is forced to sell a phone using the least secure mobile OS in order to stay relevant.
The closing sentence in the summary suggests that the BlackBerry 10 is a losing proposition because it represents less than 1% of the market.
The mobile phone market is so enormously vast that 1% of it would still be quite large, thankyouverymuch. Nearly everyone in the US has a phone. Let's use round numbers: say we have 300,000,000 phones in the US. 1% of that would be 3,000,000 phones. Each phone has an expected replacement cycle of 3 years, so the sales should be about 1,000,000 units per year.
Please show me a single manufacturer that would not be jumping out of their pants to move a million units a year. Heck, there probably aren't that many manufacturers that COULD deliver at that level.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
What is the reason? Is this surrender? White flag? To what is BB surrendering? What's left? Apple? Will it go Android? Should it? Could it? Call in and let us know.
Blackberry makes some stylish hardware, so it could be a good move.
Move into a new market, while not leaving your old market.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Case in point, trying to service a buddy's Android 4.1 phone. It can't manage application permissions, it would need Android 4.3 or 4.4 for that (even if needing some rooted app) and it's stuck till end of Earth on 4.1. What a pile of garbage. The need is to run a chat/VoIP application, but they demand access to contacts i.e. uploading the phone directory to unknown third parties. (App still not installed). Fucking absolutely ridiculous.
So even if Android Turd Sandwich, Android Fellatio or Android Mothership have mended their way, why trust them? A fork with built-in security might be better.
They would have been a lot smarter to have implemented Play Services or gotten their Android runtime Google Play certified so that it could run normal Google apps. That was really the main deciding factor for me to not get a Blackberry Passport---it simply won't run Google Play Services-dependent apps (though all other Android apps worked when sideloaded). Things that relied on Google Maps or any of the Google ID authentication failed to work, which is surprisingly a lot of apps. Simply improving their Android app runtime and getting that elusive Google Play store icon on their screen would have been a huge opportunity. So few BBRY users are even aware the Android runtime exists, so getting a direct Google Play store icon would be a huge a revelation to them.
I still remember in the old days the CEO/founder guy would hold up a new Blackberry model to the audience and yell,
"Canadian Technology!"
and the crowd would cheer.
Now they're belatedly bringing out devices that run Android but it's basically just Samsung and KNOX under the covers. It's probably too little too late. I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung buy Blackberry outright and use the brand to sell a bunch of security hardened phones.
I recall, prior to the launch of BB10, a spokeman doing a presentation on a stage in Toronto.
"We're being careful, we're not going to screw this up, we're not going to promise anything we don't deliver and deliver on schedule. We know if we do, we're done."
Then they cancelled BB10 for the Playbook, broke the BlackBerry Bridge, failed to make the Blackberry server component more administrator-friendly, and modified their phone interface to make it less useful than it could have been.
They lied, and they have no credibility as a result.
If your going to stay alive in the market you have to be willing to accept what is working and change. Obviously they can't run IOS, they can't run some security riddled China OS and they surely won't run Windows Mobile which is circling the drain itself. If they can make Android fit with security which is sort of a questionable fit. They may find a niche to stay in business. Although its very much a if at this point and my question is. Who are they going to market this phone too?
But does trump use an Android or a Blackberry? THAT'S the real question
Regardless of what people think of blackberry, I think that this method might help them. Android is a very popular (as in 89% of the world market popular), and the fact that they are giving you an android with a slide-out blackberry keyboard allows them to enter into a niche market for people who want a real qwerty keyboard. Practically every other smartphone developer has dropped their physical keyboards a few years back. I know because I tried looking for one for one of my family members as a christmas present a couple years ago, but couldn't do it because I would have to buy a 3 year old device.
(Had to repost. For some silly stupid reason the new slashdot logs you in, but posts your comments as ac. stupid untested beta creeps)
You think it is too late? Late for poseurs and wannabees. Too late for them.
I have been surrounded by iphoneatics and people with bigger and larger tablets you need two pairs of cargo pants to wear them, the second one for your brain in case it ever needs to multitask. Sure it'll fit, if you don't drop it on the floor.
You'll be like the rest of the phoneatics, mesmerized by the glow, which you will need since it's too dark where the sun don't shine. And guess where your head is at.
So please BB, make a phone for the rest of us that aren't thrown by the shiny shiny or the price. Or the long lines. Because WE know who Big Brother really is. He's up there in the icloud.
Go ahead and buy the new model, with the gorilla glass and chinese-made parts. But don't forget to sign up and have an account. You know resistance is futile. But not smexi.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Companies don't get security.You can't build a secure phone. Period. You might be able to design a more secure and privacy friendly messaging device, but it's a hard problem to solve. Android is hardly a "secure" or securable platform and the phone tech that one has to built off is deliberately insecure. Cellular tech is designed such that any cellular device informs the towers where one is at all the time. It needs this information to communicate. It can't send large amounts of data (ie voice communications) to every device in a given region.
The only way to thwart this would be a paging-only receiver chip. The actual modem chip used for two way communications would need to be separate and it would be critical that power got cut to this chip whenever not in use. They'd still know where you were when you were making or receiving calls. Sending and receiving messages could be a little more complicated if not used with voice to reduce the level of tracking possible. For example you could send a message and that message could be queued for later delivery at a time and place which is specified thus eliminating an adversaries ability to know when your away from your office or house short of your consent anyway to 'send now' (and reveal your location) or 'send later at a more privacy convenient time'.
I always think the blackphone and similar efforts are little more than fraudulent or at least taking advantage of unsuspecting users. They're not releasing full code and they are building off platforms which can't be secured (both hardware and software).
Ever try to write a BB app? It was frigging impossible to get it done.
I have. From OS5 through 10. Even OS5 development was easier than Android.
As far as I know, BB still has not learned this lesson.
As of OS10, things are dramatically better. Android development, however, still sucks. I don't think it was the tools.
So, what happened? Superior technology. Easier to write apps, you say. Yet iPhone but a boot across Blackberry's throat and Android rolled over them both like a column of Sherman tanks!
Why didn't app makers flock to Blackberry?
Why did Blackberry refuse to offer an alternative with a bigger screen and touch?
Why, in your opinion did Blackberry allow themselve's to have their hats handed to them, despite their supposed superior platform?
Six years too late and SOOO many dollars short, they decide to try to engage with an Android phone in a market absolutely flooded with CHEAP as dirt Android phones.
They didn't launch it. Nice clickbait.
I bought a Q10 a few months ago after years of trying and then abandoning other smart phones. I managed to use it without signing up for any accounts for several weeks. I can run android apps on it without rooting the thing. You can port QT apps to it with ease.
My phone uses MY servers for its data not someone one elses. That data link is fully encrypted and under my control.
BB apps make more money for most app developers than iphone and android apps.
The main problem with the thing is they managed to screw up the "screen lock/power" button so the thing turns off in my pocket. The thing has 39 buttons so they should drop pressing the top button to power off and require something like the top button and hold down "P" to power down and top button and "U" to unlock. I don't know how they could screw up something that has been well know for so long.
2c. They're toast.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
have replacements handy for anything that matters? The browser is Open Source. The messaging apps are what make blackberry blackberry, so they could give a *bleep* about losing those. I suppose there's google maps. But google makes that available because the positional data is too valuable to give up. I guess you'll lose that awesome mid-90s style music player.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I just want a Blackberry Classic running Android and MobileIron for 8-12 hours a day. Is that too much to ask?
I just noticed/read that Blackberry is Canadian. That explains a lot. :-)
lol...
My wife finally gave in and is using a touchscreen-only model now, but only because there were no viable choices with keyboards and even now she still uses a stylus for most things including text input. It makes me nuts but I'm not going to successfully smack the stylus out of her hand any more than you could smack the cigarette out of the mouth of a smoker.
If Blackberry brings this out with 5.1 Lollipop or even manage to get Marshmallow on there, it will be the ONLY current keyboarded Android phone from a major vendor, the only available keyboarded phone with a screen over 4", one of two phones with a screen higher than VGA's 640x480 (the other is an LG from 2013 with 800x480 and Android 4.1.2). It may be a niche market, but if the phone as released doesn't outright suck it will be a niche market that Blackberry will own. If it's unlockable and can get updates in the future that'll just cement its potential for success even if BB doesn't do well with the OS.
IIRC, I saw some discussion that a leaked preview pic had a T-Mobile branded app icon which indicates that it's going to be GSM/LTE and likely will work just about anywhere in the world.
fencepost
just a little off
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