[johnnyuk]

Posted via CB10

[bobauckland]

You don't actually know the difference between talking about FACTS that have black or white, yes or no, true or false, right or wrong, correct or incorrect answers and opinions, do you?

Whether or not you "like" your iPhone is your opinion. It can not be disproven with factual evidence, it is down to you and what you think.

You thinking that BlackBerry forced Vodafone to only offer you a 4G contract with your Q10 is not opinion, it us just you being factually incorrect.

You thinking that BES10 doesn't support BBOS devices is not opinion, it is just you being factually incorrect.

You think that BBOS could have its fundamental kernel flaws fixed and retain compatibility with previous software is not opinion, it is just you being factually incorrect.

Posted via CB10 on Z10 STL100-2 on EE, UK - Activated on BES10.2

Lol, you thinking I'm Belfast is an opinion, not fact!

Posted via CB10

[johnnyuk]

Lol, you thinking I'm Belfast is an opinion, not fact!

Posted via CB10

Haha! Sorry mate, I went on the b of the Bang! Lol it's late and my eyes are tired.

I'll scratch the post.

Posted via CB10 on Z10 STL100-2 on EE, UK - Activated on BES10.2

[Bbnivende]

So true!

Mind you some people can tell the difference between iOS 6 and 7 because 7 looks like it was designed by a 12 year old as "my first smartphone/tablet". Day Glow!!!!! Woo!!!

Posted via CB10 on Z10 STL100-2 on EE, UK - Activated on BES10.2

BB10 may be a great OS but few would call it good looking. Very dull ,dark and boring. Very low appeal in a display case. More of a business phone look I guess but the UI shows that BB needs better designers.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using CB Forums mobile app

[johnnyuk]

BB10 may be a great OS but few would call it good looking. Very dull ,dark and boring. Very low appeal in a display case. More of a business phone look I guess but the UI shows that BB needs better designers.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using CB Forums mobile app

Well it doesn't need the bright neon day glow coloured and overly simplified icons of iOS 7 that's for sure but it could do with looking a bit more interesting.

If I have to pick faults BB10 is very flat looking and I'm not overly keen on the solid chunky stark white on black look of the Cascades menus. They could be slimmer and a gradient fill rather than solid black, or translucent when they pop across from the sides would be even better. The active Frames screen could do with a more 3D look to it maybe with some transluceny again.

There's room to be "inspired" by iOS 7 but actually get it right instead if looking like a child ate a packet of fluorescent marker pens and then puked up on the screen.

Posted via CB10 on Z10 STL100-2 on EE, UK - Activated on BES10.2

[howarmat]

another thread requiring a break. come back tomorrow!

[Omnitech]

BB can still turn it around if they adopt the android app solution

That is both a blessing and a curse, and I'm not sure it's not more of a curse than a blessing to be promoting openly.

bring out a big screen QWERTY , high spec all touch phone

1. If Apple users cared about comparing spec-for-spec with Android they would never buy iOS devices.
2. A large screen QWERTY device would likely require 2 hands to operate, which defeats the purpose. This is why Apple does not produce giant iPhones.

and a cheap but good Jakarta for their traditional BBOS markets.

The low-end market will be a real challenge when you have nowhere near the economy of scale of your large competitors like Samsung. Foxconn will help but they will not help the extra cost associated with lower volume component orders.

The USA market will be hard to crack. Their next batch of phones will have to be better than the competition.

The devices already are "better" in a variety of objective measures.

What is important is the perception of superiority, and while demonstrable product quality is part of this (and could certainly be improved), MUCH of that is basically down to mass psychology and herd behaviour.

9810 was att exclusive,,, 9850/60 was available other carriers...

Verizon never carried a BB slider and I wasn't about to switch carriers over that, especially since what I really wanted was a better 9930, not a slider with a mediocre keyboard that was worse than what I already had.

You and many others seem to believe that web browsing would had to have been tied to laggy BIS compression in future phones. I see no reason why there couldn't be an option to use BIS for web compression or not. User choice.

IMO, it would be a simple option in the browser settings: "Route web traffic through BIS" "Yes/No"

Just because BIS compression was forced on you in the past does not mean it would have to be in the future.

You need to understand better how the technology works and what the business model is before assuming such things.

It's your opinion that BIS email was inferior to other forms of email. It's my opinion that, for certain users and usage scenarios, you're wrong.

For "certain users and usage scenarios", a clay tablet is a superior form of communication.

There is no simple "inferior/superior". I have made my specific points about email on the legacy devices and I stand by those things.

[Bbnivende]

If a Q10 had a one inch taller screen and the same width it would operate just as easily as the current model or they can continue what they are doing and fade into obscurity. Apparently the Q10 is not selling as is.

[Omnitech]

I still maintain the time to switch the phones to the new QNX based platform was early 2011, when PlayBook splatted on to the scene. Stupidly RIM did everything the wrong way around and instead released the tablet first with no pre-built up app ecosystem to make it an attractive proposition (in addition to a few other flaws at launch). Like every other mobile OS pusher it should have been the phones first that don't rely entirely on an app ecosystem to be useful, let the ecosystem build up, THEN make the tablets that purely rely on that ecosystem. Doh.

Personally I can't resist the sense that the PB was mostly a half-hearted attempt to get into the tablet market, while its primary purpose was as a proof-of-concept for BB10.

QNX is fine for a mobile OS kernel. All of the things you see as problems in BB10 are the things BlackBerry have coded to run on QNX. They haven't done everything right, there is one big glaring design flaw in that they haven't implemented a virtual memory or hybrid app suspension system meaning devices need more RAM than their competitors to do similar things.

Hence the 2GB RAM minimum for BB10 devices meaning no low end BB10 phone for over a year after the launch of the Z10 (if the Jakarta phone ever materialises) and no BB10 for PlayBook. Oops.

Actually I think the main reason the devices need more RAM than their competitors is that they are running 2 OS's side-by-side.

Take out the Android VM and you would have to eliminate the ability to run 70% of the so-called BB10 apps in BlackBerry World.

Here are some Android apps that I downloaded directly from BlackBerry World and are installed on one of my Z10s:

• Poynt
• Skype
• Slacker Radio
• Kayak
• Candy Bombs
• CIDR Calculator
• DNS Tools
• Free BSSH
• FreeCell
• Ghost Commander
• GPS Status
• httpmon
• IP Network Calculator
• K-9 Mail
• PrintHand
• SecuriSync
• SMS Rage Faces
• SplashID Safe
• timetrack
• timr
• UnixHelper

[Omnitech]

Trying to revive BBOS now is kind of crazy, but continuing on with BB10 is even crazier.

I see absolutely no evidence for this.

Among other things, legacy BBOS benefitted from the fact that app developers 5 years ago were already used to developing for Java ME because they had done a bunch of apps for platforms like old Nokia featurephones etc that had Java built-in. So it wasn't such a leap to tweak such apps to run on a BlackBerry which also ran Java ME.

But that's all changed now, there is very little mobile phone development targeted at Java ME, Nokia has abandoned it for the most part and that app symbiosis is gone. Those were mostly ridiculously rudimentary and ugly apps anyway.

Just one of many reasons why "reviving" BBOS is silly at this point. The world has moved on.

BlackBerry sticking with BBOS as long as they did has destroyed the name BlackBerry. People associate that name with BBOS, and most associate BBOS with negative views (slow, laggy, app-less).

I think this is closer to the reality.

In my experience what Enterprise users WANT in 2013 is what 99% of smartphone customers buy in their personal lives: full touch large widescreen smartphones running modern mobile OS's be that Android, iOS or Windows Phone.

Thanks to BlackBerry they don't know about BB10 until IT show it to them and then they are so impressed by its ability to access their work files and intranets in such a simple way that no other mobile platform can match that they WANT it.

And what the vast majority want from a BB10 phone is full touch Z10s and Z30s. 96% of my users who went from physical Qwerty BBOS to BB10 phones back in May CHOSE Z10s over Q10s after trying both and everyone since has CHOSEN Z10s and Z30s over Q10s or Q5s. Coincidence? Don't make me laugh.

Reality. It hurts some people's brains sometimes.

[appeal of BBOS] ...to the cash strapped teenage children of working class parents in the UK (lack of a BB10 phone cheap enough to sell to them) and to those in emerging markets around the world where data is atrociously expensive and BIS actually still has some relevance.

From what I have heard recently, carriers in many of those places have gotten very aggressive with service pricing promotions for other platforms, to the point where BIS's service price advantage has evaporated in many of those places anyway.

And of those emerging markets as soon as their carrier's networks improve and data prices come down they move away from low cost BBOS phones to, with no low cost BB10 phone out there yet, low cost Android. We have seen that happen in South Africa over the last couple of years and in India recently. It happened the same way it happened in the western consumer world, once there was a choice of something "better", i.e. full touch and more apps, for the same price BBOS was dropped like a stone. What's been hurting BB10 all year is no low cost BB10 phone to move from BBOS to.

Yep, and yep.

[belfastdispatcher]

I see absolutely no evidence for this.

Among other things, legacy BBOS benefitted from the fact that app developers 5 years ago were already used to developing for Java ME because they had done a bunch of apps for platforms like old Nokia featurephones etc that had Java built-in. So it wasn't such a leap to tweak such apps to run on a BlackBerry which also ran Java ME.

But that's all changed now, there is very little mobile phone development targeted at Java ME, Nokia has abandoned it for the most part and that app symbiosis is gone. Those were mostly ridiculously rudimentary and ugly apps anyway.

Just one of many reasons why "reviving" BBOS is silly at this point. The world has moved on.

Reviving BBOS might be silly but reviving the BBOS UI and experience on the BB10 platform is not. It's the only hope existing users will make the switch.

Call it a BBOS Theme if you wish.

[Omnitech]

There is an enterprise market for BB10, but BlackBerry has botched the entire rollout. Government ready BES10 was late, BB10 was late.

Correct. This was a major, major problem.

Like or not, this core BlackBerry end user base you seem to think loves BBOS, not the company buying them, hate BBOS and the name BlackBerry because of the lame smartphone experience it provides. What has kept BlackBerry alive is also giving them a black eye and a bad name every time some end user picks up the locked down work BBOS device and then goes to the internal complaint forums for the company/government and ask why they can't get a modern smartphone to get work done.

I have said many times and I'll repeat it again here: this is a MAJOR reason why I think it is so difficult for BlackBerry to make headway in the mass market. There is a HUGE amount of negative mindshare out there, much of it due to 10 years of bitter ex-BlackBerry users who continue to associate BlackBerry with "That horrible, locked-down, slow, laggy thing imposed on me by my former company, that I will never forgive them for."

In fact, I think that a signficant amount of otherwise inexplicably incessant Wall Street negativity about the company actually stems to some extent from the same entrenched bitterness that people harbor about the company from those historical experiences.

The enterprise end user is the company, it doesn't matter what the employees actually want.

If that had ever been true, then "BYOD" would have never existed.

That reality is long past, I'm afraid. The Consumer I.T. tail is driving the Enterprise I.T. dog in many ways, now.

There is some indication that there may finally be some pushback against it (due to all the BYOD horror-stories), but it's still an open question.

One thing that I know is limiting BB10's appeal in workplaces is that for a few years now many have already been running BES5 and A.N.Other cross platform MDM solution for Android and iOS. They are reluctant to keep 2 MDM solutions running indefinitely and are seeing the inevitable death of legacy BBOS and BES5/Express as a convenient time to ditch BlackBerry completely so they can focus the one MDM solution that is already taking its place.

Correct, and this was another mis-step that cost them dearly this year. In fact, they may never recover from this.

Sorry that first sentence is nonsense. The z10 launched to a wave of publicity as media outlets were genuinely curious about the BlackBerry comeback.
If you are in the UK and you tell me that the BlackBerry 10 launch was ignored then I will come out and call you a liar.
The problem is that the z10 did not sell. The price was too high.

It may have gotten slightly more attention in the UK but by-and-large, the average customer in a developed country either doesn't know about, or doesn't care about, Blackberry. Here in the USA, just mention it and 8 out of 10 people will immediately mock you or at the very least look at you with this incredulous, amazed "Really? That old thing??" look. I am not exaggerating this in the least.

The price was not too high either. It was in line with various other smartphones of its time. The problem is that the product was unfinished, full of bugs, lacking in apps, poorly marketed, poorly documented, and poorly supported by carriers.

Again there was a marketing failure here, not necessarily a lack of marketing, but the right kind of marketing bolstered by retailers etc, I read the Metro a lot (free newspaper distributed in train stations) and so many times, I've seen carriers advertising the iPhone, not Apple directly, carriers, also Samsung (not just the latest but even low end) again a lot of indirect advertising in addition to the direct.

That's an interesting point and not one I think I've seen mentioned much in the incessant "advertising is nonexistent" gripes.

It's not just the manufacturer, but if 90% of the resellers and 99% of the advertising square footage are primarily pushing Android/iOS devices, then those advertising impressions will blanket you and it will seem as if BlackBerry is nonexistent even if on a manufacturer vs manufacturer advertising space basis, they're still competitive.

Momentum is a beyotch.

In fairness, none but the hardcore android user knows an ice cream sandwich from a jelly bean. Same holds true for iOS 6 and 7.

Correct. Which is why I always get a laugh when people try to claim "If only BlackBerry had a phone with competitive specs, they'd sell like crazy...".

Apple in particular has gone to the ends of the earth to remove any kind of references in model numbers in their products and logos on them and so on, anything about their actual hardware specs. It's not an "iPad 4" it's "The NEW NEW NEW iPad".

They do those things for a very specific reason. They are continuously trying to DISTANCE their customers from "buying specs".

So no, the solution to all of BlackBerry's market problems is not to play specsmanship p*ssing wars.

[belfastdispatcher]

Correct. This was a major, major problem.





I have said many times and I'll repeat it again here: this is a MAJOR reason why I think it is so difficult for BlackBerry to make headway in the mass market. There is a HUGE amount of negative mindshare out there, much of it due to 10 years of bitter ex-BlackBerry users who continue to associate BlackBerry with "That horrible, locked-down, slow, laggy thing imposed on me by my former company, that I will never forgive them for."

In fact, I think that a signficant amount of otherwise inexplicably incessant Wall Street negativity about the company actually stems to some extent from the same entrenched bitterness that people harbor about the company from those historical experiences.






If that had ever been true, then "BYOD" would have never existed.

That reality is long past, I'm afraid. The Consumer I.T. tail is driving the Enterprise I.T. dog in many ways, now.

There is some indication that there may finally be some pushback against it (due to all the BYOD horror-stories), but it's still an open question.





Correct, and this was another mis-step that cost them dearly this year. In fact, they may never recover from this.





It may have gotten slightly more attention in the UK but by-and-large, the average customer in a developed country either doesn't know about, or doesn't care about, Blackberry. Here in the USA, just mention it and 8 out of 10 people will immediately mock you or at the very least look at you with this incredulous, amazed "Really? That old thing??" look. I am not exaggerating this in the least.

The price was not too high either. It was in line with various other smartphones of its time. The problem is that the product was unfinished, full of bugs, lacking in apps, poorly marketed, poorly documented, and poorly supported by carriers.





That's an interesting point and not one I think I've seen mentioned much in the incessant "advertising is nonexistent" gripes.

It's not just the manufacturer, but if 90% of the resellers and 99% of the advertising square footage are primarily pushing Android/iOS devices, then those advertising impressions will blanket you and it will seem as if BlackBerry is nonexistent even if on a manufacturer vs manufacturer advertising space basis, they're still competitive.

Momentum is a beyotch.







Correct. Which is why I always get a laugh when people try to claim "If only BlackBerry had a phone with competitive specs, they'd sell like crazy...".

Apple in particular has gone to the ends of the earth to remove any kind of references in model numbers in their products and logos on them and so on, anything about their actual hardware specs. It's not an "iPad 4" it's "The NEW NEW NEW iPad".

They do those things for a very specific reason. They are continuously trying to DISTANCE their customers from "buying specs".

So no, the solution to all of BlackBerry's market problems is not to play specsmanship p*ssing wars.

All this explains why BB10 is not selling, however, it doesn't explain why BBOS is still outselling it 3 to 1. After all, BBOS gets no advertising at all and the specs are less then basic.

With some 10s of millions of active BBOS users out there does it really make sense to try to push them to the new platform if the new platform is nothing like what they're using now?

[Omnitech]

Because you and few other people had an email problem with BB10 doesn't make the OS unusable.

There was actually a serious SMTP sending bug, but I can't tell if the thread he created refers to it because A) he never explained anything in that thread, and B) it looks like the only person that ever read it besides him was one of his buddies.

Here is the thread I created about the SMTP sending bug back in March, and there were a variety of other threads about that and related problems.

However note well: the reason MOST people probably never ran into this was because MOST people weren't using email services that would have exposed this issue.

The most common kinds of users complaining of it were people with small businesses who had hosted their domain and email services with a company like Network Solutions, Yahoo or Go Daddy.

[Omnitech]

Yep there's at least one country left where their name isn't yet mud. Let's watch how BlackBerry screws that one up somehow! Lol

Have you heard the phrase "big in Japan"? Well it's like a less impressive version of that, BlackBerry are "big in Indonesia" lol.

Here's a fun fact I never knew about Indonesia until watching the BBC coverage below: Indonesians are apparently the most avid Twitter users in the world. I wonder if this dovetails with their appreciation of BlackBerry in some way.

BBC News - #BBCtrending: What Movember means to Indonesians

[belfastdispatcher]

There was actually a serious SMTP sending bug, but I can't tell if the thread he created refers to it because A) he never explained anything in that thread, and B) it looks like the only person that ever read it besides him was one of his buddies.

Here is the thread I created about the SMTP sending bug back in March, and there were a variety of other threads about that and related problems.

However note well: the reason MOST people probably never ran into this was because MOST people weren't using email services that would have exposed this issue.

The most common kinds of users complaining of it were people with small businesses who had hosted their domain and email services with a company like Network Solutions, Yahoo or Go Daddy.

While you didn't see too many people complain about it on CB at the time there were many early adopters complaining on BB's Facebook page and they all said they were forced to go back to their old BB or something else.

BB never offered any explanation or tried to help in any way. They basically ignored the issue.

I ended up back on my 9900 too.

[Just Me]

Because it was an efficient OS. BBOS7 4ever.

Need some POW.

[Omnitech]

It's the Internet dude. No ones wrong, no one's right, everyone has opinions.
Why do you keep berating other people for having wrong opinions? You do realise the other side of the argument is shaking their head at your posts and thinking the same thing I hope.

Everyone's entitled to have an opinion.

No one is entitled to make up their own personal facts.

Tolerance or promotion of the latter is basically the definition of insanity or reality distortion.

Now I realize that humanity has a sordid history with reality distortion, however the technological field is rather hostile to such things because among other little details, you can't build a technology product that actually functions based on silly fantasies. It requires, you know, science, to actually work.

[Omnitech]

If a Q10 had a one inch taller screen and the same width it would operate just as easily as the current model or they can continue what they are doing and fade into obscurity. Apparently the Q10 is not selling as is.

Always entertaining to read when certain posters proclaim that the only viable path for the company is to produce precisely the low-appeal device they have personally designed, or else the company is doomed, DOOOOOMED.....

There's room to be "inspired" by iOS 7 but actually get it right instead if looking like a child ate a packet of fluorescent marker pens and then puked up on the screen.

I think we agree on that.

Iphone 5 actually, no other alternative. Couldn't go back to bb7 and I can't trust the Q10 anymore.

So there you have it, one of the biggest BB fans now on iphone.

Well isn't that interesting.

You did buy that new BB7 model (9720?) that was released this year, then had problems with it and I guess returned it then?

My Q10 deleted all my SMS and 3 months of work emails, received and sent, all gone down a black hole.

Yeah, I heard about that issue, it may have been a bug for OS's between around 3/2013 to 9/2013 or 10/13. I haven't heard reports of it lately.

BlackBerry has had some very serious issues with software quality this year.

[Omnitech]

Reviving BBOS might be silly but reviving the BBOS UI and experience on the BB10 platform is not. It's the only hope existing users will make the switch.

Call it a BBOS Theme if you wish.

Well, I don't know if a BBOS theme would be useful - especially without all the key hardware buttons / pointing device - but I do think that they could take elements from the design and incorporate them in useful ways.

Some of this was done recently, ie the "delete on handheld / delete on server" - but were poorly implemented.

Others that made NO sense at all to me include the revival of "PIN Messages". I just cannot imagine that 99% of the userbase gives the slightest rat's *ss about such a feature and would rather they invested those development resources elsewhere.

They should implement an optional virtual trackpad or at least dramatically improve their very mediocre cursor / text handling.

They should implement a useful way to save an email message locally if desired.

Etc, Etc.

[Omnitech]

All this explains why BB10 is not selling, however, it doesn't explain why BBOS is still outselling it 3 to 1. After all, BBOS gets no advertising at all and the specs are less then basic.

Because as has been explained multiple times now:

1. BB10 was a flop
2. BBOS is running on pure momentum, in places not inclined to change quickly. (ie developing world, where they simply cannot afford it)
3. BB10 sales were so low, it takes very little to exceed them

While you didn't see too many people complain about it on CB at the time there were many early adopters complaining on BB's Facebook page and they all said they were forced to go back to their old BB or something else.

BB never offered any explanation or tried to help in any way. They basically ignored the issue.

And that encompasses 3 of the reasons I already put forth here why BB10 flopped:

1. Poor product quality
2. Poor support
3. Poor documentation and communication with customers

Many of which were at least significantly due to corporate downsizing and chaos.

Thorsten Heins was dealt a bad hand just like Barack Obama was. Hard to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

At least Heins kept enough of a lid on expenditures that the company was not completely in hock by the time a new CEO was appointed. It could have easily gone very differently, and there would have been nothing left to salvage.

[belfastdispatcher]

Well, I don't know if a BBOS theme would be useful - especially without all the key hardware buttons / pointing device - but I do think that they could take elements from the design and incorporate them in useful ways.

Some of this was done recently, ie the "delete on handheld / delete on server" - but were poorly implemented.

Others that made NO sense at all to me include the revival of "PIN Messages". I just cannot imagine that 99% of the userbase gives the slightest rat's *ss about such a feature and would rather they invested those development resources elsewhere.

They should implement an optional virtual trackpad.

They should implement a useful way to save an email message locally if desired.

Etc, Etc.

Saying that there was a bit of an outcry when pin messaging wasn't included in BB10 and promptly made a comeback.

Little known fact but the Storm had a sort of virtual trackpad, more like a virtual mouse, if you held your finger on the screen a mouse mould appear just above your finger and it would move with your finger in the screen.

[belfastdispatcher]

Well isn't that interesting.

You did buy that new BB7 model (9720?) that was released this year, then had problems with it and I guess returned it then?

I did buy the 9720, it's a cheap and nasty excuse for a legacy blackberry, had less application memory then the 9700, really loud clicking keyboard, cheap plastic and it broke after 2 days. It's so underpowered that it struggles to play a photo slides how.


I returned it for a Q10 but the new data plan doesn't allow BIS services so can't go back. Shortly after I got the Q10 an iphone 5 sort of fell in my lap (free) so I'm using that now, I can't afford for more of my work emails to disappear.

[Omnitech]

Shortly after I got the Q10 an iphone 5 sort of fell in my lap (free) so I'm using that now, I can't afford for more of my work emails to disappear.

I could see resigning yourself to that if you were on a lousy freebie email service but I would be shocked if your work email staff have no backups they could have restored those emails from, especially if you had notified them in a timely manner.

[belfastdispatcher]

I could see resigning yourself to that if you were on a lousy freebie email service but I would be shocked if your work email staff have no backups they could have restored those emails from, especially if you had notified them in a timely manner.

There is no staff, just a small business.

The emails have disappeared completely, sent and received, and they're not in the delete folder either. Just vanished, never seen anything like it. Gone from my laptop and server.

Thinking back I should've turned wifi off on the laptop and moved the emails somewhere else, too late now though.