Originally Posted by
duncan86 Greetings Crackberry forums! Glad to be aboard.
I'm probably a bit of an odd duck but I've just gotten my first Blackberry in the form of the Keyone. Maybe that makes me a newbie to the old guard who've been around since before the shift to Android, but I think I've been a Blackberry person all along and just didn't know it. The cell phones and smart phones I've liked best have always had a hard keyboard, and after a long and painful exile to slabland on an HTC that was about as joyful as any given medieval arranged marriage, I heard about the Keyone by chance and began to follow and research it intensely. The more I learned, the more desperately I wanted the phone.
So when it launched on my carrier (such as it is), Sprint, I decided to jump at the chance. After a couple embarrassing false starts trying to order the phone, ordering one with the wrong antenna, and wrestling with my ancient carrier account, I got the phone and I have never ever enjoyed a 'smart' device as much as I have this phone.
I'm a loyalist to the hard keyboard and the audio jack, something of a security wonk, and inimically hostile to the walled garden of Cupertino, so when I found out about the Keyone it seemed too good to be true, that there could be a phone which combined them all in one package. The only bad press I saw on it was a screeching hit piece by known rag Wired, and any other publication worth its salt offered balanced takes which only excited me further.
My first month with it has been outstanding - the battery on Sprint's CDMA model is unfortunately not as good as the GSM variant but still stands head and shoulders above anything I've known before; while it feels power-hungry it nonetheless has an uncanny ability to come through in the clutch where any other phone I've had would have gone dry and died. After familiarizing myself with the Hub, I've loaded it up with my personal and business accounts and it's all wonderfully convenient - I enjoy how the Hub blends together protocols but also works with existing apps to get the job done. I hope at some point Blackberry considers expanding its retinue of Hub integration to other specialist web messengers like Steam or Discord. The keyboard is of course phenomenal - the first night I got to take it for a spin my fingers felt like they were being led out of the dark and dank touchscreen prison to light and freedom for the first time in ages, and the added features of the fingerprint reader, touch scrolling and back lights on the hard keyboard are just delicious icing on the cake.
I'm definitely lavishing care on this phone like I haven't for any before it, and I hope to hold on to it for many years to come.