My idea for RIM.

Seeing the London made me think about the direction BB is going. Pushing forward full steam with another IOS, Android and WP competitor this late in the game is going to be next to impossible. What is blackberry known for? Three things, right? Battery life (not so much anymore), messaging and the keyboard. The current BB7 OS is horrible. Sorry to say it, it just sucks. I posted about salespeople giving me an attitude when I went to get my bold 9900 but I understood thier issue a little better when I returned it five days later.

A few of my frustrations:
1) I took me 30 minutes to update the five core apps that were outdated on the version of software that shipped with the bold. Then I had to reboot my phone to complete the installation. Now, these apps were no more than 4 MB each. If that had been IOS or Android the process would have taken about 3 minutes and required no reboot. This is not user friendly and ridiculous in today’s tech landscape.
2) ATT pushed out a small update which I downloaded OTA. The update was 9.5 MB. It took two hours to update the software. 2 hours of not being able to use my phone. Quite frankly, that’s just awful.
3) Every time I deleted an app I had to reboot my phone. Its truly amazing that RIM has not been able to figure this out. I don’t really care if there is a legit reason for it, it's a joke.
4) You can’t use facebook contact syncing while connected to BES. Maybe I missed something here, but the option was grayed out. Why? Why can’t you integrate this key aspect of FB?
5) Syncing with BES and Gmail meant that all of my contacts that came from both were doubled. No option to merge.
6) Googlemaps takes way to long to get a fix on your position and then panning around in choppy.
7) The browser still sucks. Is it much better, sure, but it still sucks.

So anyway, Im not going to lament about all the things I was disappointed about during my return to BB but that is just the start of the list. Which brings to what I think BB should do. First of all, the BB OS is still very easy to use and great for getting things done. ITs unique in its approach and has a huge loyal following. But the Java platform is horrific in 2012. What BB should do is use the QNX based system and re-create the BB experience. Get rid of all the crap that makes current BB phones slow and cumbersome. I'll say it again, I still think the blackberry experience could be great and garner market share. Maybe I’m wrong here, but BB loyalists have stayed loyal because they dont want a full touch screen device. The want their keyboards, they want their marathon battery life. With Blackberry going to BB10 my feeling is they are going to alienate all of the core users in hopes of winning market share against three platforms that will have been around for a minimum of two years. Three platforms that each have a huge developer community, they each have differentiated themselves. BB, stay true to yourself, just get your OS up to snuff and stop putting design over function. I’m looking at your Bold 9900 (too small a battery and no AF camera) and you Bold 9900 charging bod (too hard to find the contacts at night, in the dark).

just my 2 cents.