[anon(10321802)]

Our 99's were considered expensive in 2011. Of course the "plan price" concealed much "outright" price. I recall something like $20/ month for BIS... which represented a major portion of high margin revenue for RIM and helped to pay for the flagship handset. Apple's market model differs from RIM but they might now be experiencing market share slippage somewhat analogous to RIM's situation in 2011???

If so, Apple's market shrewdness might lead them toward a more professional oriented "high margin low volume" niche. ?? A niche that BB foolishly abandoned by abandoning the fully featured professional oriented 99, imo.

Some professions can easily justify investing a premium into security and privacy orientation. Those of us engaged in professions demanding real time availability inevitably get trusted with many clients' personal contact information, for example. Information inevitably stored on a handset. How much $$ is it worth to keep Google's eyes from my client's personal contact info?? A responsibility that I, myself, take very seriously.

I have not yet entrusted that private list to ANY Android handset. Some of my clients live under relatively invasive conditions. They express appreciation that their personal contact info is not haphazardly tossed about over cloud services nor available to Google. I'm just an engineer but can't imagine how so many attorneys, for example, store their client contact info on clouds & Android... ??? Another motive for keeping my "pro grade" 99. . If forced to abandon 99, iOS's developing privacy reputation would top my list for consideration. Too bad BB abandoned that niche so readily, imo.

Apple are masters of the high-margin, low-volume game. They’ve been doing that with their Mac products for ages, so I’m sure they could do it with iPhones, too.

[Chuck Finley69]

Apple are masters of the high-margin, low-volume game. They’ve been doing that with their Mac products for ages, so I’m sure they could do it with iPhones, too.

But we agree, they're happy as high margin high volume iPhone sellers, right?

[anon(8063781)]

I think you all -- and Tim Cook -- underestimate people's capacity to sacrifice other things (like, say, children lol) to have their status phone AND their boutique coffee at said boutique.

But holy hell, that's a lot of loonies!

[RaybanRJ]

The acidic UK press seized on the $1000+ cost of the xPhone calling it extortion. (Don't forget to add $150 for a Burberry case, and $199 for AppleCare.) Tim Cook, purveyor of iDreams, said you could own one for the price of a daily boutique coffee:

" I think you would find you could buy an iPhone X for $33 a month," said Cook. "And so if you think about that, that's a few coffees a week. It's let's say less than a coffee a day at one of these nice coffee places." (CNBC)

You can't put a price on status symbols. :-)

At the other end of the scale there is (in Yoorop) a growing fanbase of Shenzen-built Androids, as low as €30. There's a trend for the lads to take a cheap flight to Shenzen for the weekend and bring back a case-full of Cubots, Xiomi's, iClones, and Doogees to sell in bars in Amsterdam and Paris.

The Yoorop Customs people are impounding them at airports as counterfeits, though you can still bring in one for personal use.

A new boxed Bold 9900 is just £79.95 on Ebay here.

“I’m not using the iPhone 6S, that’s the phone of the poor!”

https://www.cnet.com/products/vertu-...touch/preview/

Too bad about Vertu, the luxury British phone maker, but I guess they had a good run of around 10 years before going out of buisness just a few months ago. I always found it odd that they stuck with Nokia for most of their pieces but they did dabble in Android by the looks of it.

They sold around 350,000 units a year and they weren’t exactly budget priced

[idssteve]

Apple are masters of the high-margin, low-volume game. They’ve been doing that with their Mac products for ages, so I’m sure they could do it with iPhones, too.

Yep, Apple's certainly no stranger to thriving in niche markets... at least with Jobs' guidance ... They're also masters of short learning curves. Interesting to note that both my youngest daughter and most grand children were indoctrinated to Apple products from kindergarten up, in public grade school. AND still carry a deep fondness and trust for those old Macs. An ingenious indoctrination strategy on Apple's part. They're also masters of value perception. I happened to be working at NASA (a previous life) when they transitioned from Mac to PC, late 90s. You've never heard such groans of anguish!!! Lol. PC proved more generally versatile but at the cost of reliability. Reset buttons suffered great wear... lol. Apple ultimately survived and thrived. Anything is possible but I'd be pretty shocked to see them following RIM's lead into oblivion by abandoning their natural niches. Nvrknotho. Lol.

[Sue-zz]

idsteve: "
I have not yet entrusted that private list to ANY Android handset. Some of my clients live under relatively invasive conditions. They express appreciation that their personal contact info is not haphazardly tossed about over cloud services nor available to Google."


There's an Android app: TrueCaller which uploads your all your contacts to a database 'somewhere' and uses this for call-blocking. It was installed as a default dialler by Brit smartphone-slinger WileyFox, amongst others.

My own private mobile number doesn't appear in Google searches, but of course it must be logged somewhere. Skype hooks into it, and BlackBerry ID uses it, stored on their servers. BBID moans if you change your SIM card.

Presumably anyone wanting real privacy is buying a burner-phone and chucking it in the river after each call: 'Pay-As-You-Throw.'

[anon(8063781)]

Presumably anyone wanting real privacy is buying a burner-phone and chucking it in the river after each call: 'Pay-As-You-Throw.'

This brings back memories of those episodes of "The Wire" where the drug dealers travel from convenience store to convenience store buying as many burners as they can, but only a couple at a time, so they won't end up on anyone's radar.

[RCJ28]

I don't think iPhones (or even iPhone X's, though only time can tell at this point) are as much status symbols as people make them out to be. Or, rather, they don't remain status symbols for very long before becoming ubiquitous after only a matter of weeks. I guess I did just fawn over a coworkers launch-day iPhone X not an hour ago for a good ten minutes, but that will fade quickly with time.

I had a launch day iPhone 7 Plus which got some attention for a couple of weeks before no one cared and everyone else had one as well -- though that might not be a good example as they had the same form factor, at first glance, as an iPhone 6 Plus. Interestingly enough, since I set aside that 7 Plus for a new iPhone SE a month or so ago, I've received more attention on behalf of that bottom-rung phone than I ever did when I had the flagship model. Though it's probably not the attention you would want from a status symbol! It's more of the "how could you use such a tiny iPhone!" and "you are crazy!" variety.

I wonder what people will say tomorrow when I bring in my "new" 9930...

[RaybanRJ]

I don't think iPhones (or even iPhone X's, though only time can tell at this point) are as much status symbols as people make them out to be. Or, rather, they don't remain status symbols for very long before becoming ubiquitous after only a matter of weeks. I guess I did just fawn over a coworkers launch-day iPhone X not an hour ago for a good ten minutes, but that will fade quickly with time.

I had a launch day iPhone 7 Plus which got some attention for a couple of weeks before no one cared and everyone else had one as well -- though that might not be a good example as they had the same form factor, at first glance, as an iPhone 6 Plus. Interestingly enough, since I set aside that 7 Plus for a new iPhone SE a month or so ago, I've received more attention on behalf of that bottom-rung phone than I ever did when I had the flagship model. Though it's probably not the attention you would want from a status symbol! It's more of the "how could you use such a tiny iPhone!" and "you are crazy!" variety.

I wonder what people will say tomorrow when I bring in my "new" 9930...

Of course if everything is produced in mass numbers interest fades because everyone will have one eventually. But Apple has only made between 2 to 3,000,000 iPhone tens, this is not enough to keep up with the demand even though people were screaming they would never pay the price they sold out quickly, and now there’s about a five week waiting list.

I drive a Buick, it’s nothing special. Remember when Buick used to put “limited” on every single Buick they made practically lol, there was nothing “limited” about them. And like Seinfeld said they made “millions” of them. (For a joke) But limited numbers of anything ensures the exclusivity and keeping people demanding more is exactly what they’re hoping for I bet because then people pay more, and they have.

Of course, If you consider that Apple sells their older Devices as the more budget friendly tools, then it’s true these ones are not status items anymore, but this is why they make a new model every year.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/ipho...samsung-2015-1

[RaybanRJ]

Sidenote: an iPhone X is certainly nothing that I want, not only because of the price but because I really hate gestures to navigate. When I bought my 9900 I knew what I wanted because I tried the Q 10 and I have nothing but frustration with gestures and I had no interest in learning it. I like things to stay the same I’m not one that gets bored with a device if it works good. I got used to the home button and that’s what I want to stick with.

[idssteve]

I don't think iPhones (or even iPhone X's, though only time can tell at this point) are as much status symbols as people make them out to be. Or, rather, they don't remain status symbols for very long before becoming ubiquitous after only a matter of weeks. I guess I did just fawn over a coworkers launch-day iPhone X not an hour ago for a good ten minutes, but that will fade quickly with time.

I had a launch day iPhone 7 Plus which got some attention for a couple of weeks before no one cared and everyone else had one as well -- though that might not be a good example as they had the same form factor, at first glance, as an iPhone 6 Plus. Interestingly enough, since I set aside that 7 Plus for a new iPhone SE a month or so ago, I've received more attention on behalf of that bottom-rung phone than I ever did when I had the flagship model. Though it's probably not the attention you would want from a status symbol! It's more of the "how could you use such a tiny iPhone!" and "you are crazy!" variety.

I wonder what people will say tomorrow when I bring in my "new" 9930...

Haha... let them say it with a single thumb without involving "coffee mug hand"... lol.

I, myself, have never achieved optimal proficiency with slabs (9 months on a Z, once) but can see where larger is better for slabs. Smaller is better for pkb, imo. Trackpad & toolbelt make size pretty, if not totally, irrelevant. A concept mostly lost on glass phreaks who've never really achieved optimal proficiency with 9900's fabulous configuration. Including BB's post BBOS handset designers themselves, it seems.

I get quizzed fairly frequently about my "old Blackberry". Curiosity frequently enough grows into lust after witnessing productivity that "tiny" handset is capable of...

[RCJ28]

I get quizzed fairly frequently about my "old Blackberry". Curiosity frequently enough grows into lust after witnessing productivity that "tiny" handset is capable of...

But never enough to make the leap, I imagine.

[idssteve]

But never enough to make the leap, I imagine.

That 6 year abyss of oem neglect represents a leap too far for most, it seems. At least one of our vendors jumped from Apple to Classic after experiencing exposure to my crew and our 99s. They are still great fans of Classic but losing dropbox was a bitter bite for them. They're now trying to "love" K1 but I suspect they'll wind up back in iOS. Such a shame but entirely BB's doing. Letting "glass phreaks" design PKB handsets is about like letting Boeing design a bus... , imo. Lol. (Grumman did design a disaster they sold as a bus... decades ago.... lol. )

I've been experimenting with bluetooth mouse on K1. Tames the giant thing, somewhat. Considering a "ring mouse"... idk. Privacy aside, K1 could be SOoo much better with a toolbelt. Glass phreaks will never understand, tho. Lol.

Just too bad BB never saw fit to provide a true upgrade to 99. They were never going to clobber the market but handset division might have survived within a professional niche Apple seems to be falling into... imo.

[idssteve]

idsteve: "
I have not yet entrusted that private list to ANY Android handset. Some of my clients live under relatively invasive conditions. They express appreciation that their personal contact info is not haphazardly tossed about over cloud services nor available to Google."


There's an Android app: TrueCaller which uploads your all your contacts to a database 'somewhere' and uses this for call-blocking. It was installed as a default dialler by Brit smartphone-slinger WileyFox, amongst others.

My own private mobile number doesn't appear in Google searches, but of course it must be logged somewhere. Skype hooks into it, and BlackBerry ID uses it, stored on their servers. BBID moans if you change your SIM card.

Presumably anyone wanting real privacy is buying a burner-phone and chucking it in the river after each call: 'Pay-As-You-Throw.'

Yep, no perfect solution. You'll notice that very few engineers ever proclaim anything as "safe". Only "safer". Lol. First strategy of "safer" is to minimize exposure. I suffer no delusion that some adequately motivated malefactor can gain access to anything. Easier with more exposure points, imo. Despite Google's demonstrated ethical deficiencies (too many old friends at SUN, I guess) my primary "tin foil" concern rests with exposing my data to any outside malefactor who might target Google's tasty mountain of data. Remember Yahoo... lol.

It's worth pondering just how much info modern handsets can provide... microphone, TWO cameras, messaging & browsing history, purchases, banking, passwords, CONTACTS, .... etc, etc.... including real time GPS coordinates... most, if not all, available to be collected in real time and possibly archived "some"where... at Google??? And so few seem concerned at how many eggs are in THAT basket... just waiting for the plucking... Haha...

Finding real tin foil isn't so easy these days. Probably no better as a Faraday shield than aluminum any how... haha...lol.

[David Tyler]

@Sue-zz: thanks for the update. It's not a very nice picture where we are heading to. What my future option would be, when I don't want to go iOS and Androids is kind of wide opened.
Anyway, always enjoy reading your posts. Do come by from time to time.

Posted via CB10

No; it's _not_ a nice future (or present, for that matter). With my beloved Passport getting wonky, I'm now on an Android LG V20 (still using my Bold, OF COURSE).

It's taken a good deal of effort to lock down this beast against the constant covert snooping by The Goog, but not leading an app-centric life is certainly a big help.

I'm digging the replaceable battery (I have a 3200 mAh spare battery and a 6000 mAh "Fat Boy" -- it has its own "Fat Back" cover, just like my Bold), and I like the always-on strip display at the top of the main screen, a neat take on the LED notification light. There are a lot of things I miss about the Passport; it's been a big part of my professional and personal life for three years now.

I'm very glad the Bold is still with me. I use it every day, and putting the Passport out to pasture makes it all that much more important to me.

[David Tyler]

It's worth pondering just how much info modern handsets can provide... microphone, TWO cameras, messaging & browsing history, purchases, banking, passwords, CONTACTS, .... etc, etc.... including real time GPS coordinates... most, if not all, available to be collected in real time and possibly archived "some"where... at Google???

Indeed. The mobile communication revolution was foreseen by very few. I remember watching Kubrick's "2001," and that famous "phone booth" scene on the space station. "Video calls," we all thought, amazed. "Wow..."

Now it seems everyone on the planet can do that.

We're stuck here on Earth -- no bases on the moon, no manned missions to Jupiter; but hey -- at least we have Facebook... >sigh< If that was a trade, I think we chose badly.

[Sue-zz]

The other left-field choice for owners of Dead-Berries are the later/last Windows phones like the Lumia 650. These were updated a fortnight ago to the latest WP10 x.1709 software, and although I can't actually (yet) get into the transmission logs, they are not sending much data out at all. (less than 1MB per hour.)

The downsides are that the app-famine is not much better, and newer developments like Signal Messenger for WP10 are still absent, though WhatsApp is supported. For a 'work-phone' for the Windows-desktop centric they are superb devices.

(Excuse security leak of covert cat photo.)

[idssteve]

Indeed. The mobile communication revolution was foreseen by very few. I remember watching Kubrick's "2001," and that famous "phone booth" scene on the space station. "Video calls," we all thought, amazed. "Wow..."

Now it seems everyone on the planet can do that.

We're stuck here on Earth -- no bases on the moon, no manned missions to Jupiter; but hey -- at least we have Facebook... >sigh< If that was a trade, I think we chose badly.

Well, just getting to the moon demanded extraordinary coordination of effort. Coordination of skills, trades, economic system, resources, etc, etc... Communications, crude as they were, played essential role in that coordination. I can see the potential of "facebook style" communications to assist in coordinating future efforts... assuming users can muster adequate communications maturity... lol.

Getting to the moon was a "cake walk" compared with what will be demanded to get just to Mars, let alone to Jupiter. SOME day, billions of years distant (hopefully) our local thermonuclear heat source (our Sun) will run out of fuel. Humanity will respond or perish. I'd like to think we'd evolve adequate technology to move by then. Not so confident that humanity will evolve adequate maturity to coordinate the required technologies, tho... lol. Current "social media" trends lend questionable optimism... Haha...

Hopefully, we wont still be occupying BOTH hands for those communications... lol

[David Tyler]

Well, just getting to the moon demanded extraordinary coordination of effort. Coordination of skills, trades, economic system, resources, etc, etc... Communications, crude as they were, played essential role in that coordination. I can see the potential of "facebook style" communications to assist in coordinating future efforts... assuming users can muster adequate communications maturity... lol.

Going to the moon was, in my mind, the single greatest thing ever done by humans. I'm sure there are some positive things about WasteCrook; it's just I'm not aware of any...

[danfrancisco]

This mega thread has gone too ridiculously big so I'm doing a faux pas and asking what I hope will be a relatively easy question.

I'm looking at you @ralph!

I recently picked up a 9900 for a friend who loves her 9780 and is unwilling to move off of BBOS. She only uses her phone to talk and text so apps and web browsing are of no use to her (she's of the baby boomer generation).

I gave her the 9780 last year when her flip phone died and it was a PAIN transferring her contacts and SMS messages over! I'm hoping there is a much EASIER way of transferring her contacts and SMS messages over from the 9780 to the 9900. Is BB Link really the only way to go?

[RaybanRJ]

This mega thread has gone too ridiculously big so I'm doing a faux pas and asking what I hope will be a relatively easy question.

I'm looking at you @ralph!

I recently picked up a 9900 for a friend who loves her 9780 and is unwilling to move off of BBOS. She only uses her phone to talk and text so apps and web browsing are of no use to her (she's of the baby boomer generation).

I gave her the 9780 last year when her flip phone died and it was a PAIN transferring her contacts and SMS messages over! I'm hoping there is a much EASIER way of transferring her contacts and SMS messages over from the 9780 to the 9900. Is BB Link really the only way to go?

Haha well when I got a new white 9780 in August 2011 I loved it (I never knew about CB back then I don’t think) but I always regretted not paying that extra $100 to get the then new that month 9900. I don’t think they offered the 9900 in white until several months later (someone can correct me if I am wrong) but if she loves her BBOS and she is happy with what it does, it’s cool.

As for contacts all I did to transfer contacts was I made sure I stored my important contacts onto my Sim Card directly, (with the 9780) so when it came time to swap to the 9900 all the contacts still were there with the same SIM card. You can do that manually contact by contact, does she know about this? I remember having to Google exactly how to do it. And once you did it there was no confirmation on the device that I can recall, so you just assumed they were saved, and they were.

When I got my iPhone 5C in Feb. 2014, the guy at Rogers automatically uploaded all my contacts from that old Blackberry SIM card and then transferred them all to the new Nano Sim for the iPhone. So I have basically never used any type of file transfer service or program, etc. I usually did it all from scratch each time even when I had several Motorola Razr’s and a Nokia C3. I have not had a Microsoft PC since 2010 and so now I am glad for things like iCloud to automatically re-install all my contacts whenever I get a new device, etc.

Last year I gave my white 9780 to a friend who said he needed a cellphone and he was going to get Rogers Pay as you Go cards each month (Prepaid) but he never did activate it. I can imagine that original battery is now toast from sitting in a drawer for over a year or more now. Shame really. But it had 3 camera modules changed on it and eventually they all failed so there must have been something causing a short or something but everything else worked perfectly on that 9780.

I miss the 9790 I had in 2013 for 4 months before it jammed and I had to get rid of it. It didn’t like the latest software updates and I should have told my repair shop to install an older version but I just didn’t think of it, nor did they.

Do you still have your 9900 and does the red light still stay on solid when charging?

-Ralph

[danfrancisco]

If I recall, the SIM card can only hold about 250 contacts (if that) and she's got way more than that. It also won't help with transferring all of her SMS messages either.

[anon(8063781)]

If I recall, the SIM card can only hold about 250 contacts (if that) and she's got way more than that. It also won't help with transferring all of her SMS messages either.

You mentioned Link in your previous post, but that's not the software you need. BlackBerry Desktop is the software for backing up / restoring / transferring BB OS device data. Link is for BB10 devices.

The nice thing is that BB Desktop works very well. Link is far less stable and reliable.

[idssteve]

+1 for BB Desktop. I'd upgrade to latest OS while at it, first. Then "Switch device"... should transfer contacts, messages and maybe some apps...

Some apps transfer address book... but BB Desktop is hard to beat, imo. I have no experience with it on Win10 but works nicely on Win7, for sure.

[danfrancisco]

Thanks for correcting me. Yes, I meant BB Desktop and not Link. But I haven't used BB Desktop since 2013 so its ease of use is a distant memory for me! BB Link on the other hand... I still have the scars permanently etched on my memory!

Thanks for the input, guys! I'm looking forward to taking a trip back to ole memory lane!