Originally Posted by
JudeR Hi, can anyone help me.
I essentially won't to get rid of my Nokia 8 smart phone and get a feature phone or something less intrusive I can just use mainly for calls and texts.
I like the look of the blackberry passport because it is unique looking.
I need to know if it is worth me essentially downgrading without going as far down as a dumb phone.
My main question is once the blackberry world app store goes down will the GPS be killed?
I want to use the black for 5 main things. Calls/Texts/GPS navigation/Camera/One or two apps that might work side loaded, whatapp maybe?
I will need to look into all that.
Any information you anyone has from there experience as of 26/11/2018, Please let me know.
Thanks!
Jude.
Jude, the Blackberry Passport is the most satisfying smartphone I've ever owned. After breaking my black model about a year ago and switching to an Android device, I decided the extra conveniences of Android, including their full app library, were outweighed by the sheer fun I had using the Passport. I purchased a new white-edition Passport last month and I plan on using it until BB OS 10 expires. (#TilTheEnd)
That said, a year of non-support for the OS has made a noticeable difference in the Passport's effectiveness at rendering certain websites. Just in the last month I've encountered several websites which simply won't render properly -- or at all -- on the Passport.
(For example, I was recently able to NEARLY complete a purchase on E-bay, but the Passport could not handle the task of changing my shipping address and returning to the checkout screen, thus I had to finish the task on my laptop.) It's a very small number of sites mind you, and none of these sites are what you would consider "major" ones; still, one has to think that given the Passport's unique display, the operating system is going to fall further behind without consistent support from Blackberry.
I'm not attempting to dissuade you from purchasing a Passport. I LOVE mine in spite of its limitations. I'm still able to do MOST of the things I want to do when web-browsing, and text / e-mail / voice communication is still seamless. I'm still able to run Facebook through the Hub due to the Face10 "hack" app available in Blackberry World. Most people I meet have never seen a modern Blackberry smartphone, or any phone with these dimensions, and it's always a conversation piece. I recently even had a young lady ask to take a picture of my square-ish phone with her rectangular one. I also had a young man at a grocery store ask me why I was "talking into a calculator". People react as if I'm carrying around a cloned dinosaur, as if it's some relic from the past which shouldn't exist and somehow does. I absolutely LOVE these interactions.
Regarding your specific needs: The GPS functions well and I use it at times, although in my experience driving around in rural Texas, the maps are out-of-date, so areas of new construction may present issues. I have an external GPS mounted to my dashboard that I use instead (I hate draining my phone battery with GPS anyway, and having calls interrupt the navigation display.) As for WhatsApp, I looked around online, and indications are that many are able to get this to work, but again, you have to wonder for how long. I've tried side-loading a couple of Android apps from the Amazon store; one would not download at all, and the other, after downloading, flashed an error message saying that this device wasn't compatible. The Blackberry World "app store" still exists; I put quotation marks around it because it's a veritable ghost town of nonfunctioning, deceased apps. (Again, Face10 still works marvellously. and I believe the same creator also has a hack for WhatsApp, perhaps Whats10? There's an audio recorder called Parrot which works great as well.)
Bottom line: you can still talk, text, e-mail, take notes, record audio, use Facebook, and browse the web like it's 2014 on your Blackberry Passport, although the latter is beginning to show its age. And you'll stand out in a crowd as long as you own it.