[ankenn]

I have been a Blackberry user for years. I use a Classic right now and which is for me the perfect phone. Yesterday I went into a couple of major stores in my town and just pondered the question of phone hardware. I played with all the sets on display and watched others doing the same, something which I had never done before. My knee-jerk reaction to Blackberry disses had been based on nothing but my own prejudices. First things first. I had been to 4 Carphone Warehouse shops in London a few weeks ago to look at the Priv. In no shop was there a working set to examine. The only working set I found in London was in Dixons in the airport, and there the salesperson complained bitterly about Blackberry phones requiring more charging the others to display them working, and said that Blackberry has never ever sent proper charging connectors to display its phones. It had never been sent a Passport to display. and neither had the Carphone Warehouse shops. Fast Forward to FNAC yesterday. Only Two Blackberry phones were on display, Classic and the Priv and neither were working. The prices marked against each looked like a joke given that they were dead (419� and 789� respectively). Meanwhile the display was buzzing with people playing with sparkling Samsung models some with separate display units all to themselves. The Samsung models all look beautiful from afar. Their screens luminous and responsive. I took out my Classic and compared side by side. Now I understood why some reviewers said the Classic was a nice incarnation of a way out of date handset. It is out of date, and that was then. It is heavier than almost all the handsets on display which is significant if you like putting it in a shirt pocket. It is heavier enough to drag the pocket down and make you look like a nerd. It is also thicker than just about every handset on display which gives it an old fashioned feel right there. I like the way it feels in my hand but then I am not a buyer looking for a fashionable new item. The prospective buyers around me were interested in testing three things only: the photos, browsing to youtube and messages. It is clear that those who really work with their phone is a small constituency, those who use their phone for fun is by far the largest group of users. I use my classic for messaging far less than I use it to email, browse research documents, read pdfs, and share links. This is way out of the usage pattern for most young. Adolescents I know don't use email at all. Photos on the Classic are an afterthought, while for many users, photos are obviously a big reason to choose a handset. I have played with a Priv and it as far as photos are concerned it provides a good experience if you don't worry about the shutter lag. On the Classic I don't care about that, but on the expensive PRIV it is terrible block to taking photos of the moment, which is what the young do all the time. It is not clear to me what the PRIV actually offers in comparison to all these gleaming other phones. I have looked at the PRIV but not lived with it but I can say a few things about it. The blackberry add ons to Android are nice touches, but they are touches only. The keyboard is vastly inferior to the Classic. It is small and with so little travel on the keys you have to program your fingers in the same way you have to program your fingers to use a virtual keyboard. There seemed no advantage to me to have that keyboard on such a large screen device. Apart from text entry, keyboards and all the shortcuts available are useful to improve the viewing experience of the small screen of the Classic, but the extra tool of key shortcuts are not needed on the tablet style PRIV and no one who is used to a large format mobile will switch to the keyboard option, I'm pretty sure. SO it is a wasted development, it seems to me. I will just say that in fact the Classic screen is not small. It is wider than most phones and perfectly pleasant to read documents on, one of the reasons why I like it.

In FNAC was the Apple stand as well, apart from the phone display. The only phone anyone seemed interested in was the new SE, which seemed an astonishing throwback. The screen is tiny and the blocky design also seemed a little old-fashioned. Familiar but from a bygone era. What the iPhone has is a light, fine-lined coherent design and it is very slick. But it doesn't do half the stuff my Classic can do like the hub, or being able to play around with files, NFC, Miracast, textflow PDF, hot swap SD cards for infinite memory, wireless charging... Send a QR code to an Apple person and they hold their hands up and shrug. And yet? What an iphone has is iTunes and an ability to work several Twitter, or Facebook accounts. Again for those who message and who like their music and their Apps, the iPhone is the socialised person's preferred tool.

I should, I suppose finish this post with something positive like, answer the question, How can Blackberry do anything about these points? I am not sure there is any will in Blackberry to do this. They have mysteriously but conspicuously failed to market their advantages over the iPhone in the hardware department. Think of what they could do with what they already have. Make NFC more natural to use. Make it a contact swapping social standard convenience. Improve the story maker video editing software simply by giving control of the transitions to the user and adding a few image enhancement options. Make BBM work with phone numbers as well as with pin numbers, so that people can make contact by phone and then switch to pin privacy if they want. Create music store app that connects with all other music suppliers in the world. Create fund swapping between countries. Sell the fact that BBM and PayPal are connected more strongly. Paying by BBM could be meaningful but Blackberry needs to get on it properly. Everyone has their suggestions to add no doubt. The list could go on. I will end with one point that almost everyone will agree upon namely, price. The prices of every piece of hardware launched since the Z10 has been too high by at least 20%. Take 20% off the PRIV price here in Spain and you have 631� with which it could compete respectively with Samsung's latest. Similarly 20% off the Classic prices it at 335 which is still a bit high but a lot better. One thing I did notice in London was a busy second hand market in Classics and Passports. People still want this phones but they are not going to pay Blackberry prices for them. BB management should take note but I don't think anyone is listening to the market any more. A pity.

[kvndoom]

In FNAC was the Apple stand as well, apart from the phone display. The only phone anyone seemed interested in was the new SE, which seemed an astonishing throwback. The screen is tiny and the blocky design also seemed a little old-fashioned. Familiar but from a bygone era. What the iPhone has is a light, fine-lined coherent design and it is very slick. But it doesn't do half the stuff my Classic can do like the hub, or being able to play around with files, NFC, Miracast, textflow PDF, hot swap SD cards for infinite memory, wireless charging... Send a QR code to an Apple person and they hold their hands up and shrug. And yet? What an iphone has is iTunes and an ability to work several Twitter, or Facebook accounts. Again for those who message and who like their music and their Apps, the iPhone is the socialised person's preferred tool.

Keep pretending apps don't matter. When you can't run 99.8% of the most popular software out of the box, you wind up with 0.2% of the market. You know why Linux doesn't gain any desktop PC traction? Because most of the most-used software packages don't work on it. Yeah there are emulators, workarounds, and "alternatives," but in the end, people value their time and just want software to work. I believe the term is OOBE.

The Priv has android, but the price is way too high (as you said). The upcoming budget Android phones will be the final determination. If the market rejects them as it did the Priv, Chen kills hardware once and for all.

[ankenn]

Maybe you are right about apps in general but I think the 'app issue' it is really about media apps only. I don't believe the 1/4 million app argument would work on iPhone users if you just took iTunes away from them.

[bakron1]

Maybe you are right about apps in general but I think the 'app issue' it is really about media apps only. I don't believe the 1/4 million app argument would work on iPhone users if you just took iTunes away from them.

Thats far from the truth, go into a lot of restaurants and retail businesses here in the US and you will see iPads with custom apps being used to process orders, everyone I know uses banking and/or social media apps as part of their daily routine. iTunes is only a small portion of what folks use their iPhones or smartphones for now in 2016.

To the majority of the population, their smartphones have become their phone, calendar, social media hub and notification center and just see how the consumer and the business world would react if those key apps where taken away?? this is not 2007 when Blackberry was the king of the block with over 50% of the market share here in the USA, they missed their opportunity to retain that title long ago. Apple and Google capitalized on the opportunity and are being rewarded for it.

[togarika]

To the majority of the population, their smartphones have become their phone, calendar, social media hub and notification center and just see how the consumer and the business world would react if those key apps where taken away?? this is not 2007 when Blackberry was the king of the block with over 50% of the market share here in the USA, they missed their opportunity to retain that title long ago. Apple and Google capitalized on the opportunity and are being rewarded for it.

Straight out of the box BlackBerry BB10 phones have the best functionality when it comes to communication. The apps issue is important but is being given to much prominence. Participation of developers is a function of the numbers of device sales. The only way BlackBerry can reduce the app gap is to improve sales of their devices. This can be done by improving the user experience as the OP alluded to.

BB10 or Nothing! BlackBerry Forever!

[early2bed]

Why do I get the feeling that three years from now there will be posts, here, by people who have BB10 devices that are falling apart so they go to the store, try out other smartphones, and then come here to say "I don't get it"?

The last paragraph of the OP is simply a request for apps and other ecosystem elements that they would like to see BlackBerry do. All those social and media apps are meaningless to me. However, BlackBerry should do these other things that I would find useful.

Everyone has their own unique list of things they want to do with their smartphone. That's why you need a diverse ecosystem of apps, etc. It's like saying that you don't need tens of thousands of items to choose from in your supermarket, just a few dozen things and you would be happy. It also works best if each of these individual apps are done by a third party - a company that is dedicated to making the app or service work right and to expand its functionality. It's kind of like your store brand bread vs all of the other kinds. You could ask why anyone would need anything other than your store brand bread.

[Elephant_Canyon]

Straight out of the box BlackBerry BB10 phones have the best functionality when it comes to communication.

So straight out of the box, Blackberry 10 phones have the capability to video chat with 550 million other Blackberry 10 devices?

[tangozulu]

Hardware is hardware and beauty or functionality lies with the beholder. I like a physical keyboard and BlackBerry hardware stands the test of time. My Q10 feels like a phone designed just for me.
BB10 software is simply the best of all for mobile and it is unfortunate app developers have the power to impact BBs ability to compete. The flow is so what makes it all such a nice package.

Posted via CB10

[kvndoom]

Hardware is hardware and beauty or functionality lies with the beholder. I like a physical keyboard and BlackBerry hardware stands the test of time. My Q10 feels like a phone designed just for me.
BB10 software is simply the best of all for mobile and it is unfortunate app developers have the power to impact BBs ability to compete. The flow is so what makes it all such a nice package.

Posted via CB10

Have the power? You make it sound like there's some great plot out there to keep BlackBerry down! These folks are trying to make money, and you make money by offering product to the 99%, not the less-than-1%

BlackBerry Classic non-camera, Cricket Wireless

[SunshineStateFlyer]

Well, the hardware rundown here is pretty accurate. It's hard to defend BlackBerry against the competition because the hardware is that far off the current state of the art. Even the Priv has already aged hardware but it's selling for the price of new top end devices.

The Classic and even the Passport are just ancient when it comes to specs and while BB10 OS may be a well working base, everything around it is just dead. No more apps, no more maintenance, rarely any updates or news. It's just wasteland.

And in addition to all that, BlackBerry seems to not care about marketing at all.

Posted via CB10

[Troy Tiscareno]

Straight out of the box BlackBerry BB10 phones have the best functionality when it comes to communication.

This is irrelevant. Let me tell you why.

So 3.5 years ago I bought a Nexus 4. The day I got it, I went ahead and downloaded the apps I knew I'd want. Those apps became part of my daily workflow. After 3 years on the Nexus 4, it was time to upgrade. I bought an LG G4. I popped in my SIM, connected to my WiFi, and logged into my Google account. My phone asked "would you like to Restore?" I clicked "Yes". 10 minutes or so later, with no interaction from me, all of my apps were installed, all of my data was there (except for a single app, which at the time didn't use Google Drive to store data - it does today), and I was ready to go with the same apps, settings, and workflow that I had on my Nexus.

Who CARES about "out of the box" functionality when you can get your own, customized to your exact tastes functionality with apps, which you don't even need to manually set up if you move to another device? That's what you can get with apps and the Android platform, and far more people find that to be far more important than out-of-the-box functionality.

[StephanieMaks]

What a phone can do fresh "out of the box" only matters when you don't have access to a large, thriving app ecosystem, and current, actively supported infrastructure and software.

As Troy said, for the 99% of the people who do have those things, "out of the box" is irrelevant.

The process he described for upgrading / restoring an Android phone works exactly the same for iOS. It works either through iCloud, or if you don't like cloud-based stuff, it works offline through iTunes on your computer.

[togarika]

So straight out of the box, Blackberry 10 phones have the capability to video chat with 550 million other Blackberry 10 devices?

Yes, you didn't know? I don't blame you if you didnt. The blame goes to BlackBerry marketing department.

BB10 or Nothing! BlackBerry Forever!

[Prem WatsApp]

Keep pretending apps don't matter. When you can't run 99.8% of the most popular software out of the box, you wind up with 0.2% of the market. You know why Linux doesn't gain any desktop PC traction? Because most of the most-used software packages don't work on it. Yeah there are emulators, workarounds, and "alternatives," but in the end, people value their time and just want software to work. I believe the term is OOBE.

The Priv has android, but the price is way too high (as you said). The upcoming budget Android phones will be the final determination. If the market rejects them as it did the Priv, Chen kills hardware once and for all.

To counter that argument of OOBE a little, my BlackBerry was much more OOBE than my wife's Moto, and when you install Linux Mint on a desktop or laptop PC, it's MUCH more OOBE than Windows 10...

DVDs don't play without a paying extra to Microsoft? No office suite pre-installed? (Oh, I might get an OEM / O365 trial shoved up my nose...)
Don't talk about Anti-virus. Go and renew that pre-installed McAfee for $99...

It's familiarity, at least on the desktop. It's apps on the phone. Most people DO NOT even know about Linux, but when I show them, they are convinced of its usefulness, and actually like to have it on there as a second OS, some even as a new primary.

As to the "just want software to work" argument, Windows is so easy to break. Rarely happens on a Linux machine.

It's the marketing aspect. That charger debacle mentioned, I've seen that myself...

Sad, BBRY! :-D



�   There's a Crack in the Berry right now...   �

[MikeX74]

Yes, you didn't know? I don't blame you if you didnt. The blame goes to BlackBerry marketing department.

BB10 or Nothing! BlackBerry Forever!

Does BlackBerry even have one of those?

[bakron1]

This is irrelevant. Let me tell you why.

So 3.5 years ago I bought a Nexus 4. The day I got it, I went ahead and downloaded the apps I knew I'd want. Those apps became part of my daily workflow. After 3 years on the Nexus 4, it was time to upgrade. I bought an LG G4. I popped in my SIM, connected to my WiFi, and logged into my Google account. My phone asked "would you like to Restore?" I clicked "Yes". 10 minutes or so later, with no interaction from me, all of my apps were installed, all of my data was there (except for a single app, which at the time didn't use Google Drive to store data - it does today), and I was ready to go with the same apps, settings, and workflow that I had on my Nexus.

Who CARES about "out of the box" functionality when you can get your own, customized to your exact tastes functionality with apps, which you don't even need to manually set up if you move to another device? That's what you can get with apps and the Android platform, and far more people find that to be far more important than out-of-the-box functionality.

Troy, I couldn't have said it better myself, I have both Google and Apple apps and as with Google, I can log into my Apple account after I buy a new device and it will restore the new device exactly how I left it the last time I backed it up.

No setting up or time wasted, my apps, data and even my homescreen are restored just the way I left it on my old device. That's technology and productivity and are what folks are looking for in 2016.

[Elephant_Canyon]

Yes, you didn't know? I don't blame you if you didnt. The blame goes to BlackBerry marketing department.

Using what service?

[sorinv]

Keep pretending apps don't matter. When you can't run 99.8% of the most popular software out of the box, you wind up with 0.2% of the market. You know why Linux doesn't gain any desktop PC traction? Because most of the most-used software packages don't work on it. Yeah there are emulators, workarounds, and "alternatives," but in the end, people value their time and just want software to work. I believe the term is OOBE.

The Priv has android, but the price is way too high (as you said). The upcoming budget Android phones will be the final determination. If the market rejects them as it did the Priv, Chen kills hardware once and for all.

Yes, but IC design software like Cadence Analog Artist, which is used to design Qualcomm's chips for example, only runs on Linux not on Windows or MacOs.
Linux has been around since 1990 or earlier. It was never intended for the consumer. It lives on and runs the internet.

[sorinv]

To the majority of the population, their smartphones have become their phone, calendar, social media hub and notification center and just see how the consumer and the business world would react if those key apps where taken away??

But BB10 had all of that pretty much from day one. I know because the first thing I deleted on my z10 in February 2013 was linked-in, facebook, twitter and skype...

[sorinv]

To counter that argument of OOBE a little, my BlackBerry was much more OOBE than my wife's Moto, and when you install Linux Mint on a desktop or laptop PC, it's MUCH more OOBE than Windows 10...

DVDs don't play without a paying extra to Microsoft? No office suite pre-installed? (Oh, I might get an OEM / O365 trial shoved up my nose...)
Don't talk about Anti-virus. Go and renew that pre-installed McAfee for $99...

It's familiarity, at least on the desktop. It's apps on the phone. Most people DO NOT even know about Linux, but when I show them, they are convinced of its usefulness, and actually like to have it on there as a second OS, some even as a new primary.

As to the "just want software to work" argument, Windows is so easy to break. Rarely happens on a Linux machine.

It's the marketing aspect. That charger debacle mentioned, I've seen that myself...

Sad, BBRY! :-D



�   There's a Crack in the Berry right now...   �

I agree with everything you said about Linux.
I have been using it as my primary OS at work and at home since 1991.
I had to use Windows at work for 4 months last year. A very bad experience.
Almost as bad as MacOs on my new MacBook 12 inch which I shouldn't have bought last August.
But Linux distributions are difficult to install for the average consumer.

[sorinv]

This is irrelevant. Let me tell you why.

So 3.5 years ago I bought a Nexus 4. The day I got it, I went ahead and downloaded the apps I knew I'd want. Those apps became part of my daily workflow. After 3 years on the Nexus 4, it was time to upgrade. I bought an LG G4. I popped in my SIM, connected to my WiFi, and logged into my Google account. My phone asked "would you like to Restore?" I clicked "Yes". 10 minutes or so later, with no interaction from me, all of my apps were installed, all of my data was there (except for a single app, which at the time didn't use Google Drive to store data - it does today), and I was ready to go with the same apps, settings, and workflow that I had on my Nexus.

Who CARES about "out of the box" functionality when you can get your own, customized to your exact tastes functionality with apps, which you don't even need to manually set up if you move to another device? That's what you can get with apps and the Android platform, and far more people find that to be far more important than out-of-the-box functionality.

Two days ago I came home for an 8-month long trip and I found my backup Passport SE waiting for me. I took it out of the package, I downloaded all 100 BB10 apps or so that I already have on my current Passport OG, I stuck the SD card from my Passport OG in my Passport SE, and there I was, fully operational in a few hours (download time of apps from appstore through internet).

What's the difference? My private files were on my SD card, not Google's, who owns your files if you store them with Google in US.

How long and how much it would have cost you to download 100GByte of data (what I have on my SD card) from Google's cloud?
Your use case is rather simplistic.

[anon(9721108)]

looks like Chen realizes the Priv needed a price cut, $200 off according to this....

unlocked with AT&T ......

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Unloc...ce-cut_id80326

apologies, looks like this article might have been around about a month even though the one I found is dated yesterday.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

[togarika]

Using what service?

BBM

BB10 or Nothing! BlackBerry Forever!

[JeepBB]

BBM

BB10 or Nothing! BlackBerry Forever!

BBM had a declared subscriber base of around 90M a year or so back (BB's own figures!). I strongly doubt that number has increased since then.

I guess from your sig you are heading towards a phone-less future?

[Troy Tiscareno]

Two days ago I came home for an 8-month long trip and I found my backup Passport SE waiting for me. I took it out of the package, I downloaded all 100 BB10 apps or so that I already have on my current Passport OG, I stuck the SD card from my Passport OG in my Passport SE, and there I was, fully operational in a few hours (download time of apps from appstore through internet).

A few hours of manually downloading individual apps vs. 10 minutes for me, only having to click "Restore." See the difference?

What's the difference? My private files were on my SD card, not Google's, who owns your files if you store them with Google in US.

With my files on Google, I have access to them from my home PCs, work PCs, phones, tablets, and I can even get to them from a customer's computer - which I do from time to time. Additionally, my work files consist of shares from 6 different people, who add and update things throughout the day. Using the cloud makes our small company FAR more efficient, and thus gets us a lot more business, because we can move faster and respond to customer's needs faster than our competitors - making us more money.

How long and how much it would have cost you to download 100GByte of data (what I have on my SD card) from Google's cloud?
Your use case is rather simplistic.

I have several hundred GBs of data online - mine and shared - and I don't need to download all of it at once, just the stuff I need at any given time. I also have a 128GB SD card in my G4 full of music and media. And several others that I can pop in at will. Best of both worlds...

As I said, most users want - and expect - the kind of seamless experience that I have - they don't want to have to take several hours to set up a new phone, having to find and re-download every app they have on their old phone. And most people don't have to.