1. JAS0NB0URNE's Avatar
    Sure - and I hope it translates into upgrade sales, migrations from legacy BlackBerrys and more BES 10 installations. Honestly though, I'm going to take a wait-and-see attitude because I suspect a lot of companies are more concerned about BlackBerry's viability in 1 year, 2 year, 3 years than they are of whether or not a device has a trackpad. And the only way to solve that frankly is to see profits, rising sales, a growing userbase and greater adoption of the platform.

    The world right now sees a company with a declining userbase, a lot of bad headlines, financial losses, and at least one product completely dumped in the last year. I like my Z10 fine and like BlackBerry 10 fine, but if I had to buy a bunch of devices for my company, I'd be very worried about how the product is sold and supported.
    As you said, let's wait and see. I love my Q10 just fine also.

    Posted with my ?Q10 running 10.2.1.1925.
    02-27-14 06:32 PM
  2. gnirkatto's Avatar
    I think your 70 million figure is way out of date, it has been shrinking precipitously over the last year.
    OK then it's 65 or 60 million. Still a big enough number to try to keep them as customers.

    Are those the people who "KNOW" that Ford is superior to General Motors, or who "KNOW" that Islam is better than Christianity, or who "KNOW" that Green is better than Blue?
    If I can get my stuff done faster, with less errors and without frustration, then I KNOW it is better for me then anythign else. You may have noticed - or not - that I spoke about those users that keep the legacy BBs for that very reason. Surprisingly, I am aware that there are also users who KNOW that touchscreen is best for them. This is obvious, but this was not my point.
    Oh yes, by the way, of course the majority of my friends and workmates moved over to iOS, and although they are not planning to give it away, most of them hate typing on their iphones with a passion. Their messages often are barely readable. People even got used to refraining from writing messages on their phones, because of the difficulties with typing. This is the big achievement of Apple & co., to having made users keep these phones, despite their obvious dissatisfaction with this very important feature, typing.

    The available evidence suggests that people in general these days prefer full touch smartphones. Even traditional bastions of Blackberry use, like the US Air Force, which is dumping many thousands of Blackberries in favor of iPhones.
    Ask the users after 6 months or so. I bet there will be a significant number that will hate this move.


    So I think it's a bit presumptuous to claim that "all business users" somehow MUST KNOW that these keyboard devices are better and more desirable. The sales of touchscreen devices (probably 100x the sales number compared to Blackberry physical keyboard smartphones today), suggests otherwise.
    I didn't say that, I didn't use these terms, I didn't deny that touchscreen sells more than QWERTY. You didn't get my point.

    The bottom line is: BlackBerry sales have dropped to levels not seen in 5 years or more, while their competitors sales are skyrocketing. Blackberry has publicly stated that they are going to emphasize mobile management tools and "regulated enterprises", many of which are still using the old BBOS devices. They are trying to find a device that will be more familiar to those users, trying to forestall migration to other platforms.
    No contradiction to what I said,

    In a nutshell, Blackberry as a company which has lost massive amounts of money and eliminated many many thousands of jobs over the last 2 years is in no position to make a global push for mass market sales, so they are hunkering down and trying to save what few legacy OS users they still have. They don't really have much choice.
    Of course this is not the ONLY strategy they are driving. But an important building block for future success.

    But do not mistake that as some kind of proof that those designs have mass-market appeal. They do not, outside of certain places slow to adapt to technology trends, which still value Blackberry's brand.
    I can't remember having said that this is an attempt to win back the mass market.
    02-27-14 06:35 PM
  3. dracolnyte's Avatar
    Always entertaining when people use made-up fictional abstractions like "A lot of people this", "A lot of people that".

    In my experience, about 75% of the time, people make this stuff up in a weak attempt to prop-up their personal preferences.

    So you have some proof that people hated the Q10 in some unique way that isn't just a reflection of the fact that MOST OF THE WORLD prefers full touchscreen smartphones these days in general?
    my friend works at a real estate management company (think Brookfield competitor), they went from 9900 to Q10 and dropped it in a month for an iphone because it was not easy to use.

    and if you think having a belt looks dated, well guess what, keyboards are dated too but they are tools for getting things done
    acovey likes this.
    02-27-14 06:43 PM
  4. waterfrontmgmt's Avatar
    So you think the core Blackberry user cares how a phone looks? Interesting.
    Well, you personally feel that way. Why speak on behalf of everyone? I freely admit that when I had the choice between the 9900 and the 9810 a few years ago, I did choose the 9900 partially because I thought it was a much nicer looking device.
    02-27-14 06:52 PM
  5. BerryRipe's Avatar
    I can't understand why so much hate!
    If BlackBerry said that all BlackBerry will have the belt thingie then would understand, but that's not the case, you have many other options. You have full touch screen, you have big full touch screen, touch screen with keyboard, and now keyboard with big screen and the belt. What other company gives you that many option????!!! Apple definitely doesn't, Samsung doesn't, HTC doesn't, Nokia doesn't, NOBODY ELSE DOES!!
    So buy the device you like and STFU....
    This is not directed at the OP but to ALL those who have been hating so much...

    From my White Z30
    Perfect brother! You tell em'...take that to the bank!

    Keep The Faith ? BlackBerry Q10 ?
    acovey likes this.
    02-27-14 07:15 PM
  6. RubberChicken76's Avatar
    So you think the core Blackberry user cares how a phone looks? Interesting.
    I'm saying I don't know the "core audience" and neither do you. We know what we like and how our social group acts, but can't speak on behalf of the tastes of millions of people we don't know

    Posted via CB10
    Omnitech likes this.
    02-27-14 07:20 PM
  7. aha's Avatar
    I don't see the reasoning behind it either, but I guess we'll both have to wait and see whether Chen made a mistake or not. I LOVE my Q10 and I'll buy this phone, but I honestly don't know if I'll use the trackpad, etc.
    Nah, I have waited and seen so many mistakes BlackBerry made, so I am going to start complaining until their bubbles of they are doing right thing burst.
    02-27-14 07:29 PM
  8. aha's Avatar
    1) It benefits BlackBerry because now users still on Legacy devices who have resisted BlackBerry 10 due to no toolbelt will be much more likely to upgrade. Some with the Q10 will also upgrade to the Q20.

    2) If you read Kevin's interview posted last night, BlackBerry is going to also make qwerty keyboard phones without the toolbelt. They are just making different lines of phones - all touch, qwerty with no toolbelt, qwerty with toolbelt. The Q20 is to placate a segment of BlackBerry legacy owners who have resisted upgrading because they want the toolbelt, whether it is to answer/reject/hangup from a phone call without looking at the screen, or to use the trackpad for superior copy/paste ability.

    Adding a toolbelt does not make the phone slow like Legacy device phones are.

    Posted with my ?Q10 running 10.2.1.1925.
    So they are going towards fragmentation again after a fresh start?
    02-27-14 07:31 PM
  9. waterfrontmgmt's Avatar
    How do you know that I don't know them? Sounds a tad hypocritical to me.
    I'm saying I don't know the "core audience" and neither do you. We know what we like and how our social group acts, but can't speak on behalf of the tastes of millions of people we don't know

    Posted via CB10
    02-27-14 07:40 PM
  10. RubberChicken76's Avatar
    How do you know that I don't know them? Sounds a tad hypocritical to me.
    If you know their broad user base of millions of customers n detail, you must be a popular guy

    Posted via CB10
    Omnitech likes this.
    02-27-14 08:16 PM
  11. JAS0NB0URNE's Avatar
    So they are going towards fragmentation again after a fresh start?
    How was that fresh start going? So poorly that some US carriers took the phones out of their stores, off their websites. When you go into a store looking for a BlackBerry sales reps try to talk you out of it. Why not try something else?

    Posted with my ?Q10 running 10.2.1.1925.
    02-27-14 08:17 PM
  12. smitty1077's Avatar
    I agree with the OP. I'm hoping for a version with a larger screen and no 'tool belt'. Only then will I consider a permanent migration back to a physical keyboard.

    The tool belt is useless because of the gestures. This is a throwback phone for some old school die-hards. It won't even be anything more than a niche product in the physical keyboard market.

    Posted via CB10
    02-27-14 08:39 PM
  13. hecmanhoops's Avatar
    I've read through almost this whole thread and can't believe people are complaining. This is a brilliant move by Chen IMO. There are many legacy users still buying old Torches, Bolds, Pearls on secondary markets like eBay because they refuse to give up things like a trackpad and tool belt. And if they are willing to give up said trackpad and tool belt for better software then BlackBerry is losing market share because many of those legacy users are jumping to Android or iPhone instead of the Z or Q BB10 stuff. With the Q20 Chen is clearly trying to keep the legacy users while at the same time giving them a reason to upgrade to the BB10 software and ditch the old phones. Moreover, the Q20 is probably aimed strongly at old legacy users who jumped ship for the Android or iPhone but would happily come back to BlackBerry because they miss the hard keyboard experience. I predict BlackBerry will gain some market share with this new phone. I hope so anyway.
    Anilu7 and acovey like this.
    02-27-14 08:40 PM
  14. JAS0NB0URNE's Avatar
    I agree with the OP. I'm hoping for a version with a larger screen and no 'tool belt'. Only then will I consider a permanent migration back to a physical keyboard.

    The tool belt is useless because of the gestures. This is a throwback phone for some old school die-hards. It won't even be anything more than a niche product in the physical keyboard market.

    Posted via CB10
    There will be a more natural successor to the Q10 than the Q20. Truthfully they should have named it the C10 so there isn't so much confusion. They are going to make qwerty devices with and without the tool belt.

    Posted with my ?Q10 running 10.2.1.1925.
    higherdestiny likes this.
    02-27-14 08:46 PM
  15. waterfrontmgmt's Avatar
    Or I work with a lot of popular people.
    If you know their broad user base of millions of customers n detail, you must be a popular guy

    Posted via CB10
    02-27-14 08:51 PM
  16. RubberChicken76's Avatar
    Or I work with a lot of popular people.
    Ha! My favorite retort today! :-)

    Cheers
    waterfrontmgmt likes this.
    02-27-14 09:03 PM
  17. RubberChicken76's Avatar
    I am very curious to see how this belt will be used on BlackBerry 10. A lot of the items were so critical in the navigation of BBOS, but I'm struggling to find a use-case for how they'd be used on BlackBerry 10 fully.

    - I get the trackpad itself to make it easier to select and copy. I might even use that too. Might be nice on the smaller screen devices to select certain things too I guess
    - I get the phone button and actually would like that myself. A camera button would be nice too
    - the end/home screen button have their uses too in terms of ending a call or moving an app into a minimized state

    Where I'm struggling a bit is what on earth do the back and menu buttons do in BlackBerry 10? Call up the settings menu in an app or the OS? Call up the hub? Shortcut key?
    02-27-14 10:48 PM
  18. waterfrontmgmt's Avatar
    It may help navigating websites, especially those with web forms. It may also open new possibilities for developers to customize what these buttons do.
    02-27-14 10:55 PM
  19. belfastdispatcher's Avatar
    Wow, really? You don't find it confusing when someone says if they don't add marshmallow back in these cookies I'm going to buy another cookie with no marshmallows? OK, whatever.
    That argument makes no sense, when the time comes to buy you just choose the closest to your needs from the menu. Ever thought that maybe one baker made the best cookie with marshmallows, while another makes the best plain cookie?




    Sent from my iPhone using CB Forums
    02-28-14 01:19 AM
  20. belfastdispatcher's Avatar
    I am very curious to see how this belt will be used on BlackBerry 10. A lot of the items were so critical in the navigation of BBOS, but I'm struggling to find a use-case for how they'd be used on BlackBerry 10 fully.

    - I get the trackpad itself to make it easier to select and copy. I might even use that too. Might be nice on the smaller screen devices to select certain things too I guess
    - I get the phone button and actually would like that myself. A camera button would be nice too
    - the end/home screen button have their uses too in terms of ending a call or moving an app into a minimized state

    Where I'm struggling a bit is what on earth do the back and menu buttons do in BlackBerry 10? Call up the settings menu in an app or the OS? Call up the hub? Shortcut key?
    Let's see, the menu button will activate menu, and the back button will move you back self explanatory


    Sent from my iPhone using CB Forums
    02-28-14 01:20 AM
  21. Omnitech's Avatar
    I know is terrible they should just give you one phone style and once a year add 2MP at the camera and you will happily clap you're hands for how amazing the new phone is and go and spend you're money And maybe once in 8 years add a fingerprint scanner and blow your mind with the amazing productivity

    I sympathize, however: a vendor needs to develop an "operational paradigm" and stick with it, to SOME extent. Otherwise it's very hard to develop a mindset and a following. This is what the legacy Blackberries did, and it is what iOS devices do today.

    Every once in a while you can evolve this, and you can evolve it greatly without changing the basic operational paradigm. If Microsoft swapped the functions of the left and right mouse buttons every 2 years, it would be nearly impossible to develop a large, loyal group of users that are comfortable with your usage paradigm. But they can maintain the functions of the left and right mouse buttons while doing lots of innovation elsewhere.


    You have 2 choices of iPhone, 5C and 5S

    And it certainly hasn't impacted their ability to destroy Blackberry's marketshare either.



    Apple fanboys love everything Apple does and everything else is crap ...
    Android fanboys hate everything from Apple which isn't available on Android and postulate that everything else was invented by Android earlier.
    Windows Phone fanboys ... do not seem to exist

    And finally BB fanboys hate everything from BlackBerry which is not what they want

    ROFL, yes.. yes indeed...


    .
    02-28-14 02:07 AM
  22. Omnitech's Avatar
    I still miss the thumb wheel from my 7105t. And no, that's not sarcasm. I'd KILL for a thumb wheel on my Q10.

    It is definitely handy for one-handed text scrolling.

    But the problem with a a thumbwheel on a touchscreen device is that it may leave your hand in an impractical place to do other interactions with the device's screen. The location and shape would have to be carefully thought-out.



    BlackBerry Head of Design Leaves Company - BlackBerry Head of Design Leaves Company - WSJ.com

    How is that for the future of BlackBerry 10?

    Well you know what's funny about that: while one could certainly read that as "Design innovator leaves company as management decides to revert to legacy styled products", the reality is, BB10 UI design was pretty uninspired too. I'm not sure which is worse.

    I liked the Heins-era ideal of Blackberry innovating a new UI and building a unique experience. But unfortunately the reality on the ground was that there were a lot of real inefficiences in the UI, missing features, unnecessarily complicated things, things that Blackberry stuck with mostly because it supported their talking-points of gesture-based design, but which didn't actually improve the productivity of the device.

    So in short, I've got mixed feelings about that particular departure. What I think they should have done is give the TAT crew more leeway to innovate, rather than water-down their designs and end up with something which was neither particularly attention-grabbingly innovative, or particularly comfortably productive.


    I assume they are a quite conservative group...

    No doubt about it. And some other terms come to mind.

    Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of some of the old features. It's just the people who want everything the same, all the time, no matter the situation, who don't even have an interest in trying something new.... yeah, I do have some problems with that.



    Why spoil the fun for Belfast and co? :-P

    Oh noooo..... do NOT go THERE.....
    02-28-14 02:24 AM
  23. Omnitech's Avatar
    If the Q20 is released with the tool belt, I will be buying it outright. The 99xx was the best device, BB10 is the best OS out there, the best of both worlds!

    Well it's a relief that you're not banging the drum for the legacy OS, anyway. I was wondering if this item would pique your interest again, heh.

    I'm a fence-sitter. I like the call/end buttons and trackpad, don't see much need for the menu/back keys. Maybe for Android apps.

    But they need to fix the BB10 UI so it doesn't further handicap the small square screen. When I spent some time with a Q10 recently I was a bit shocked about that.



    Well said. I'm sick of the "I don't like it so you shouldn't buy it" mentality.

    People need to respect the choices of others.

    That's not really the point.

    The company needs a vision, and the vision needs to be consistent. They need to represent something so they can develop a following. Right now, they are all over the map.

    Secondly, resources are very limited with this company right now. They simply cannot afford to build a dozen different devices to try to appeal to every tiny niche group of users. (Or 45 devices, like Samsung does) So whatever they choose to sell, it behooves them to ensure that they will actually sell a lot of them. This is a large part of what people are wringing their hands over. (In addition to the usual simplistic partisanship)



    The majority of die-hard BlackBerry users appreciate the belt and the trackpad,

    I doubt you have the statistics to back that up. Unless of course you simply define "die-hard Blackberry users" as people who prefer the old layout.



    just like Windows users who appreciate the Start button and traditional desktop screen.

    The problem with the Metro UI is not simply that it is different, it is that it is a piece of garbage productivity-wise, no matter how you slice it. It is inferior to OS-X, it is inferior to Linux/KDE/Gnome, it is inferior to almost any decent desktop UI. What it is is basically a touch interface shoehorned onto a desktop OS, and it's a complete disaster. What made it even more ridiculous is that when Windows 8 came out, a LARGE percentage of essential system tools were not even available in Metro, you STILL had to go back to the legacy desktop to use things like the disk management tools and so forth. Microsoft totally shot themselves in the foot with that one.

    Sometimes the old stuff is better just because it's better, not because it's old.

    And some of the key reasons why people are pining for the legacy BlackBerry layout is because the new OS is poorly implemented. BB10 does NOT have to have lousy cursor management and copy/paste functionality, but because it does, it plays into these stereotypes of "touch interface bad, legacy interface good" for people who have their mind made up anyway.

    And in the "shooting one'self in the foot department" - it took Blackberry months after release to finally get around to providing a way to use the Q10 keys as direct speed dial shortcuts - an obvious feature that was around for years with legacy devices, but inexplicably wasn't available when the Q10 was introduced.
    02-28-14 03:06 AM
  24. bhrgvr's Avatar
    The announcement of the Q20 has really been eating away at me since I heard about it earlier today. I genuinely am struggling to understand how this benefits the brand and how this shows that John Chen is anything but totally behind BlackBerry 10. There are two main reasons why this got me burning.

    1. At the core of BlackBerry 10 is the gestures. Swipe up, swipe down - everything is just a swipe away. I understand that there are many legacy users still out there but manufacturing this phone is kind of like giving up. I reckon give most of these legacy users an existing BB10 device for a less than a month and not many of them are going to want to go back. The gestures render the toolbelt useless, and this phone makes me feel like BlackBerry are taking a massive step backwards.

    2. I am currently using a Q10 and I would love a similar phone with a bigger screen. I think it's safe to say most Q10 users would. I realise that the screen on Q20 is bigger but the toolbelt is just taking up room that could have given us the perfect screen size. I really hope we will still see a Q10 like device with a bigger screen and that this toolbelt doesn't hinder any plans or progress to making this happen.

    BlackBerry smartphones prior to BlackBerry 10 were terribly behind the competitors in terms of what was available then. They were old, outdated, slow - everything that a phone in today's market cannot compete with. Taking one of these features from those phones and putting it on something great doesn't sit well. At the end of the day, the belt takes up room I'd rather have with my screen and with BlackBerry 10 a toolbelt is just simply not required.
    If BlackBerry had come with the belt initially would this have even mattered?

    Posted via CB10
    02-28-14 03:19 AM
  25. xBURK's Avatar
    My guess: On the day the Q20 is launched, this will all be forgotten and everyone will want it.

    Posted via CB10
    RJB55 likes this.
    02-28-14 03:42 AM
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