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BlackBerry's Keyboard is Coming Back for One Last Dance (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the one-more-time dept.

BlackBerry has officially stopped making its own phones, but the company has one last treat for die-hard fans: a new phone sporting its trademark physical keyboard. According to Bloomberg: Chief Executive Officer John Chen had hinted at the phone in September, but hadn't confirmed it until Thursday, when he spoke to Emily Chang in an interview on Bloomberg TV. "We have one keyboard phone I promised people," Chen said. "It's coming." Under Chen, BlackBerry has gradually shifted from smartphones to software and said in September it would completely stop producing, stocking and distributing its own phones. Instead, it will license the BlackBerry brand to outside companies to put on phones they build themselves. The physical keyboard is BlackBerry's best-known smartphone feature, with many former users still lamenting its absence as they clumsily tap out e-mails on their iPhones and sign off with words like "pardon the typos."

37 comments

  1. Physical interfaces by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 2

    There's something about a physical interface that I just never get with a touch-sensitive screen. I miss the clunk of the keys on the old Macs of the 1980s. I remember being able to text without looking at the phone. I always thought that Star Trek TNG crew members had a raw deal having to tap panels all the time. Even Tom Paris in Voyager complained about it once.

    --
    Drill baby drill - on Mars
    1. Re:Physical interfaces by tnok85 · · Score: 1

      If you don't have one already, invest in a good mechanical keyboard. It's absolutely wonderful.

    2. Re:Physical interfaces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah.... that's one of the main reasons Voyager sucks. I agree with you about mechanical keyboards, but not in this case. Particularly with the Blackberry - there is literally no way you can type as quickly, accurately, and efficiently as is possible with a properly trained Swype-style system. Google keyboard has one that works quite poorly, and I'm not sure if any of them are that good ultimately, but the technology is there and absolutely the ideal entry method if you're going for comfort.

      Unless you hook an IBM keyboard from the 80's somehow, then that would be better. But tiny little hard plastic keys that barely depress? No thanks. Just a legacy feature to appeal to those who haven't figured out how to use software smarter than a pocket calculator yet.

    3. Re:Physical interfaces by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I have a Bluetooth keyboard that I can use w/ any of my phones or tablets

    4. Re:Physical interfaces by Aereus · · Score: 2

      Judging by how haptic technologies are advancing now, I would imagine touchscreens in the future would have the ability to dynamically raise their surfaces to provide a measure of physical feedback.

    5. Re:Physical interfaces by TeknoHog · · Score: 2

      I have a Bluetooth keyboard that I can use w/ any of my phones or tablets

      I also got one back in the day, but I now wonder why. A separate keyboard ruins the whole idea of a phone that's always with you as a single, small package. It's also hard to use unless you're sitting down. Nokia got it right with the N900 and its slide keyboard, which BTW is considerably smaller and more "pocketable" than today's thin but wide slabs.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    6. Re:Physical interfaces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah.... that's one of the main reasons Voyager sucks.

      Well yes, Captain Janeway does take some ... getting used to. I think it's the gravely voice, more than anything else. But if you bear with her, you get rewarded later in the series with Seven of Nine! It's worth it. Seriously she has what is likely the perfect female form.

    7. Re:Physical interfaces by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 1

      There's something about a physical interface that I just never get with a touch-sensitive screen. I miss the clunk of the keys on the old Macs of the 1980s.

      Well, you could always get an ADB to USB dongle... ;-)

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    8. Re:Physical interfaces by tepples · · Score: 2

      How big is it and who made it? BlackBerry owns design patents on keyboards that would be useful with a pocket-sized device, as opposed to a tablet or the like.

    9. Re:Physical interfaces by immortalcrab · · Score: 1

      Just stay away from Geekhack, Deskthority or /r/MechanicalKeyboards; they community is actually pretty nice until they lead you to believe that expending hundreds of dollars for a board with 80's alps switches and designer keycaps is perfectly normal; and that having more than 10 keyboards is actually a sensible financial decision.

  2. It's like Night of the Living Dead by JoeyRox · · Score: 4, Funny

    Lifeless gadget zombies from the Blackberry grave keep rising up just to be shot dead in the head again.

  3. Shut it down. Turn off the lights already. by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

    >> Chief Executive Officer John Chen

    Sooo...who's left at Blackberry? Five people and a receptionist? Are they down to a storefront office next to the Chinese buffet yet?

    Shut it down and turn off the lights already.

  4. Clickbait by kelemvor4 · · Score: 2

    Warning: The video at the top of the linked page is political discussion by Chen. They talk about the election, immigration, etc.

    I clicked for a video I thought would be about blackberries and their keyboard (that I miss desperately). What I got was a video about some guy complaining about the election and calling himself an immigrant yet expressing fear over the reduction of work visas and expulsion of illegal aliens.

    I guess most slashdotters have nothing to worry about. Most don't read the articles anyway.

    1. Re:Clickbait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess most slashdotters have nothing to worry about. Most don't read the articles anyway.

      Correct. I certainly have nothing to worry about. I can count on one hand the number of times I've bothered clicking one of the links.

      Also, I hope Chen is the first one deported. And hopefully they build a wall around him. Not necessarily in that order.

    2. Re:Clickbait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think he's secretly worried Canada might do the same thing, banning him from visiting the Canadian company he's CEO of.

  5. Speaking of smart phones: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If anyone knows the guy that designs iTunes, please tell them that Brian says he's a fucking retard.
    Thanks.

  6. Gesture typing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tons of typos? Maybe learn gesture/swipe typing, insanely fast and accurate in my experience

    1. Re:Gesture typing by demonlapin · · Score: 1

      Swype (and related) is a great concept but really has a couple of problems: one, it's really bad about ignoring words that are in the default dictionary in favor of what you type all the time (several versions were absolutely fixated on choosing "nee" instead of "me", even though I write the latter several times a day and the former maybe once a year); and two, the huge number of English words that are formed by top-row letters need some better mechanism to distinguish them: put, out, our, it, pot, pie, poi, purr... and that's just right to left. Then you have to and top, going left to right.

    2. Re:Gesture typing by Leslie43 · · Score: 1

      This depends A LOT on which keyboard you are using.
      Swype! has been pretty good until a recent update, after clearing the dictionary/cache it cleaned up and started doing well again.

      Google did okay-ish, but Swiftkey and several others I've tried were a complete joke, sometimes not even using my own language. In other words, you may need to try a few before you get one that works well for you. That said, I will not go back to pecking.

    3. Re:Gesture typing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Swiftkey and several others I've tried were a complete joke, sometimes not even using my own language. In other words, you may need to try a few before you get one that works well for you. That said, I will not go back to pecking.

      Disagree about Swiftkey. I can type entire sentences using solely predictions. You have to do some training and *remove words from the dictionary you don't use/add words you do use*, but after a short while it's fantastic. I agree, however, that you may have to try a few and find the one that best suits your typing style.

  7. Re:Shut it down. Turn off the lights already. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hi!

    Blackberry Chief Innovation Officer here. Yeah, we have 3 full time and 8 part time employees. Not only do I innovate (can't you tell), I run the mailroom, mop the floor and I do some Uber pickups when things get slow around the office. That's getting more and more frequent, as you can imagine. You know how a lot of manufacturing companies have big signs that say "This facility has gone X days without a work related injury"? Well, ours says "This facility has gone X weeks without a customer order"

    We already turned off the lights. Johnny boy said he can't afford the light bill anymore.

    Have a nice weekend!
    - Blackberry

  8. Just license the shit out of keyboard patents by swb · · Score: 2

    Since they're not actually going to make phones, why not just license the shit out of their keyboard patents to anyone who wants to make an add-on keyboard widget for smartphones?

    Maybe their lawsuit against the Typo keyboard made sense back when they filed it and still had dreams of being a smartphone manufacturer, but at this stage nobody wants to buy Blackberry outright and they're not making any phones. So why not make what they can licensing the patent out?

  9. Re:Shut it down. Turn off the lights already. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >> Chief Executive Officer John Chen

    Sooo...who's left at Blackberry? Five people and a receptionist? Are they down to a storefront office next to the Chinese buffet yet?

    Shut it down and turn off the lights already.

    Dont give them too much crap, these people love their Rim Job apparently otherwise they would not have stuck around!

  10. Introductions by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

    Nostalgia, meet irrelevance.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    1. Re:Introductions by Guybrush_T · · Score: 1

      Just because you think it is irrelevant doesn't mean there is not a niche market for it, especially for slashdot readers, who sometime log on servers with their phones using SSH.

    2. Re:Introductions by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      The problem for BB is the niche is too small to sustain them. And lots of mobile devices that have ssh clients. My Android phone has one

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:Introductions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So they get picked up by Ford (ousting Microsoft for IVI), and do this. I'm all for the physical keyboard in a work environment, but this seems foolish.

  11. Re:Shut it down. Turn off the lights already. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Nah, they're installing QNX as the base operating system in 2 out of every 3 new vehicles, and 85% of all medical devices.

    Additionally, they've outsourced manufacturing and design of their phones to Alcatel, while providing timely security updates to Android in a manner unrivalled by any other phone manufacturer, and sometimes even beating the Nexus / Pixel lines getting security updates out the door.

    Keep singing that BlackBerry is dead song. You've all been singing it since 2011, and it still hasn't come true.

    BlackBerry is literally moving cars along and keeping people alive.

  12. QWERTY FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bring back the QWERTY keyboard! My Nokia E72 is one of the best laid out design I used but a little small for my thumbs.

    For example a Samsung Galaxy or Note would be perfect with one. I wouldn't care if the screen was a little smaller.

    Listen up manufacturers, listen to the consumers!

    1. Re:QWERTY FTW by damnbunni · · Score: 1

      Well, you could always get the existing Blackberry hardware-QWERTY phone that runs Android.

      I mean, if you actually want a hardware keyboard, it's out there to buy. I have one and rather like it

      It also lets you swype on the physical keys, which is a really bizarre experience. Slide-to-type but you can feel the keys you're sliding over.

  13. Re: Shut it down. Turn off the lights already. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Which is why the name change from RIM was so pointless. They're barely in the BlackBerry game.

  14. No root, no deal. by sethstorm · · Score: 1

    The phone is developer-hostile.

    If it had root ability, I'd be all over it.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  15. Write Poetry While You Walk! by BrendaEM · · Score: 1

    That is what I could easily do with my LG Lotus.

    I am in a real bind here, as voice recognition does not work well for me, and because I make many things with hands, as well as play guitar my thumbs feel uncomfortable texting without physical keys.

    Almost everyone makes the same phone. Blackberry will likely make an otherwise flawed phone, and everyone will blame its demise on the keyboard.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM