From Q10 to Passport to KEYone BE...
My wife's Q10 (assembled from many replacement parts by yours truly) gave up the ghost. We initially tried to migrate her to a regifted Moto Play but it didn't work out on any level, so I gave her my Q10 and she's back up and running again (and was reminded how smoothly the device switch goes when you stick w/ the same platform!) I used my backup Passport for awhile but got annoyed with it -- it's a beautiful device in so many ways but the format makes it unusable long term for me (I'd struggle with the Titan, I'm sure).
This coincided with a nice deal on Ebay for the Keyone BE: $130 CAD with shipping. I decided to go for it. I'm only a day in but here are initial impressions:
- I actually love the build quality. While I prefer the smaller Q10, the BE's size is a welcome change from the Passport. Keyboard feels great to type on and was an easy transition from the Q10 especially. (The capacitive bit is cool but more novelty for me. Likely to be used more as I look things up on the web.
- Android "comfort" still remains to be seen. I decided to disable all the Hub(bub) services as I read varying reports on battery life. I didn't expect to get something as integrative as BB10 hub and other baked in stuff, but Android feels so scattered. I have used lots of versions of Android from 2.3.3 on my first phone, 7.1 on my current TV box (perfect for that), and now 8.1 on the Keyone. I'll give myself more time to adjust. It's funny...I have a tinkerer mentality but I think I've grown to appreciate a phone that works well out of the box. BB10 always did that for me. Android just feels like a project. But I appreciate that they went with a pretty clean version and there's not a lot of bloat to contend with. I will say I'm particularly enjoying Textra for SMS/MMS. Nice app with customizations. And it is pretty cool to be able to run apps natively. Kiwi browser flies too. (One annoyance: I can't see emoji from my wife. BlackBerry 10 issue, I believe, as they didn't use the standard emoji protocols. If anyone has a decent workaround, I'd appreciate it.)
- Absolutely HATE the Content Transfer app. It appears to work but there's no indication that it restored any of my files at all. A reminder that it's best to do a manual migration wherever possible. (SMS Backup worked nicely going from BB10 to Android, though.)
- Battery life...very nice. Phone arrived with a partial charge. It got me through the first day! Haven't put it through the paces too much, but I was doing a lot of first time setup. Very impressed with what I've seen there so far.
- Call quality is serviceable. Sounds is pretty good. Not as tinny as I thought it might be, and I played a video or two and it sounded a-ok to me. I look forward to loading it up with podcasts (open to bPod esque app suggestions too. I miss that app already.) Not sure about reception yet but seemed okay on every call I've made so far.
So, lots of positives, but the overall Android bit is what gives me pause. I have a drawer full of Q10 parts...I'm almost tempted to just jump back into the BB10 saddle and create a Franken-Q10 again. BB10 is like an old comfortable shoe at this point, and I gravitate towards comfort. But I'm going to try to hang in with the Keyone and see how it goes. It's early days, way too early to make up my mind, but I wanted to provide some initial impressions.
Open to any and all suggestions from this great community too, especially anything that helped ease the transition over from BB10. Tried and tested optimizations appreciated, too (I believe @the_boon has some great guidance there), latest autoloader, etc.