Wake up! BlackBerry QUIETLY updates BB10

Some BlackBerry users have enjoyed an unexpectedly peaceful weekend for once. Late last week, the Canadian company rolled out its biggest update for a year, but the otherwise technically impressive upgrade left some sleeping through alarms and missing phone calls. The volume for the device's alerts and alarms is now so low, …

[The FunkeyGibbon]

There are still Blackberry users?

Really? Wow.

[Big_Ted]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

Oh ha ha

Plonker comment used as nausium.....

As bad as all the fanbois / android / M$ stuff so many still are deluded enough to think is funny.

Oh and Yeh I have a blackbery 10 as well as an LG G2, both great in different ways.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

Yes. I have both a BlackBerry Q10 and a large screen Android phone (still on 4.4.4) and I have no hesitation in using the BB as my primary communicator.

The update to 10.3.1 has introduced some annoying eye candy - I am not a fan of coloured buttons - but it also puts BB somewhat ahead of iOS and Android as a communicator right out of the box. No additional apps needed. I get a single threaded view of every communication if I want it, integrating phones, texts, email and various messengers; flawless car integration, and it seems able to hold a signal where many phones don't. That, and a genuine 2 day battery life. How many Android vendors will be upgrading 2 year old phones to Lollipop?

And not a single annoying ad in sight.

[Sykobee]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

"How many Playbook vendors will be upgrading 2 year old tablets to BBOS 10?"

None. They took an OS that used to fit on a floppy disk, and somehow made it require more than a GB :/

[Eddy Ito]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

Yeah, yeah, many many moons ago DOS fit on a single floppy once too. What's your point?

[Big_Ted]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

What a load of rubbish.

BB10 is built on QNX, the most secure full linux distro there is, its why its used so often in places like nuclear power plants.

Try google first, you might learn something

[Waspy]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

Agree with everything you said, but puzzled by your 2 days battery life - I love my q10 but the 10 hr battery life is a sore point and one of the main reasons I was looking to change up to a passport. Do you have maany things turned off for this kind of battery life?

[seacook]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

More battery life - disable LTE under network mode. Crap LTE coverage - poor battery utilization.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There are still Blackberry users? - @waspy

I don't really have anything specific turned off. I've just checked and after 14 hours battery is on 75%, BT, wifi both on. I have 2 email accounts live, and Linkedin. I'm not a heavy user, I think fairly average. Gsmarena quotes the battery life as 56 hours for average use, and I get around that. I have a good wifi signal, though, and the local EE signal is strong. The battery does tend to run down faster in a weak signal area, and very occasionally if I don't reboot about every 2 weeks the thing gets warm until I reboot it. I have a 32G SD card, so I don't think that is your problem.

[Waspy]

Re: There are still Blackberry users? - @waspy

@arnaut the less

sounds about the same as me, 2 live email accounts too, I probably use my q10 more in the day from the sounds of it though but even left on the side it seems to drain pretty quickly. I also have a 64gb sandisk card so no cheapie. Oh well, might try a full reset when I have the time, thanks for your reply.

[Captain Scarlet]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

"q10 but the 10 hr battery life" - hmm my Battery life is a day and a half.

I find Bluetooth goobles more power than 4G but with only 3G and Bluetooth off I easily got 2 days.

Like most users now I tend to use the phone less, more texting/emailing

[Mark Dowling]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

check out Settings\Battery Saving Mode and Settings\Advanced Interaction in 10.3.1. Personally I think Location Services should be default OFF in Battery Saving Mode.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

Not a Blackberry connoisseur?

No problem, presumably you are happy with your existing phone, so continue to use it.

[The FunkeyGibbon]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

You too sir. I have a distaste for the Blackberry but I am not against others using it, just surprised people do given it's lack of stand out features.

[Eddy Ito]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

...just surprised people do given it's lack of stand out features.

Other than the wowee features like fingerprint readers than can be easily defeated or 'look away' to pause, what are the stand out features? Granted the S-pen on the wife's Note is nice but my old wacom tablet does just fine for the odd artwork I do and my Passport recognizes the characters I write with my finger just fine when I need to input another language that isn't as convenient on the keyboard.

I guess it comes down to what you think is a stand out feature. I kind of like the keyboard and square screen but I'm going to guess you don't feel these stand out and I'm ok with that. Personally I like to be able to read more than 30 words of text at a time and the fact that it isn't a choice of either 2.5 normal length lines of text or a dozen abbreviated lines with two or three words each.

[Vince]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

Yes, because if you care more about productivity, devices like the Passport really hit the spot.

I wouldn't swap my Passport for any other non-BB device, I've tried them all and it just isn't as efficient - and efficiency of getting things done is a big deal for me.

Sure, it isn't for everyone, but I certainly am glad I can have a decide that suits my needs well.

[fruitoftheloon]

@ The Funkey (can't spell) Gibbon: Re: There are still Blackberry users?

The FUNKY Gibbon,

It may come as a surprise to you but some people on the planet have different sexual proclivities, tastes in food, favourite colours, preferred brand of automobile or indeed phones COMPARED TO YOU....

Please do us all a favour and climb back under your rock for a good long, lie down, with a bit of luck and a following wind I am sure you will figure it out eventually.

Fyi I don't have a Blackberry, but am looking forward to getting a Passport in September.

Regards,

J

[asdf]

Re: @ The Funkey (can't spell) Gibbon: There are still Blackberry users?

>It may come as a surprise to you but some people on the planet have different ... tastes COMPARED TO YOU....

Yeah you don't see the BB folks taking shots at the Symbian or even the Amiga folks do you? Birds of a feather ...

[fruitoftheloon]

@asdf: Re: @ The Funkey (can't spell) Gibbon: There are still Blackberry users?

Asdf,

Well spotted! Perhaps because they can't be arsed?

Cheers,

J.

[The FunkeyGibbon]

Re: @ The Funkey (can't spell) Gibbon: There are still Blackberry users?

I'm well aware that my handle isn't spelt correctly. Have you also sent an email to Flckr and Netflix to point out their egregious spellings or have you worked out that in the Internet age sometime accurate spelling is sometimes sacrificed for uniqueness?

I wasn't actually berating people for their choice in device, just surprised given how Blackberry have been sabotaging their own brand and producing uninsipiering products for a while now that anybody was interested enough in them to part with actual money for them. QNX licensing aside they aren't exactly providing much competition to the other players in the market, something the stats bear out.

But don't let that get in the way of a bit of self-righteousness, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There are still Blackberry users?

"Really? Wow."

Yep a few, but dropping rapidly. No one wants to be using such a dead end platform - and there have been 55 security holes in BB10 already. Windows Phone has seemingly jumped in that space - it now has 26% of the UK enterprise market for new devices, just behind Apple on 28%.

[Jes.e]

Re: 55 Security holes

Um.. Seeing that there are 55 security holes, could you please give a source for this claim?

Also how many of these flaws are in the 10.3.1 which BlackBerry just upgraded all (non-playbook) BB10 devices to?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 55 Security holes

"Seeing that there are 55 security holes, could you please give a source for this claim?"

http://secunia.com/advisories/product/45971/

Affected By 55 Vulnerabilities

"Also how many of these flaws are in the 10.3.1 which BlackBerry just upgraded all (non-playbook) BB10 devices to?"

Unpatched 11%

Most Critical Unpatched: The most severe unpatched Secunia advisory affecting BlackBerry OS 10.x, with all vendor patches applied, is rated Moderately critical

[Mark Dowling]

Re: 55 Security holes

"Unpatched 11%" - you left out that that refers to a single notification (out of 9) re OpenSSL. It is stupid of Blackberry not to have updated KB36051 since June to reflect elimination progress though - and it looks like there was progress. http://developer.blackberry.com/native/downloads/releasenotes/#ssl_change

[Anonymous Coward]

CxOs who can afford Passports etc. have people to wake them up

[Anonymous Coward]

And Blackberry Assistant

Assistant and Cortana would be great except for one small feature that SIRI has

the OFF button

I don't want them, why do I have to go in and switch off every stupid part of them, wheres the NO DONT WANT IT button

[James 51]

Re: And Blackberry Assistant

Part of it is stuff that was there before e.g. typing 'txt xyz This is a text' sent the text for you. You have to agree to the voice recognition and I didn't so it isn't running.

[Kevin Johnston]

Any updates on this?

I upgraded my Q10 with none of the sound issues so I wonder how widespread this actually is.

[fruitoftheloon]

@Kevin Johnston: Re: Any updates on this?

Kevin,

The alarm on wifeys Q5 was barely audible this morning, which does suggest either a lack of testing or some poorly defined reqs.

Regards,

J

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Any updates on this?

Q10 and Z10 got the 10.2.x update, not the 10.3.1 update which is the focus of this article.

My Z10 got a pleasant facelift over the weekend - there have certainly been quite a few nips and tucks implemented throughout the UI! Definitely no issue with ringtone or volume ... in fact not only is the ringtone as audible as it always was, but they've fixed the previously useless vibrate function, which is now really effective.

Also Blackberry Blend was an unexpected addition, which I'm only just trying out - not sure that its useful given that it puts a window on my computer which mostly shows me emails which I already see in my email client ... might be more useful if your phone isn't sitting right next to the computer like mine usually is (I opted for USB connection rather than Wifi because I always forget to switch Wifi off again when leaving the house and inevitably pay a price in battery life) - then you can see text messages et al without having to look at the handset.

[bazza]

Re: Any updates on this?

"Q10 and Z10 got the 10.2.x update, not the 10.3.1 update which is the focus of this article."

Z10 on Three UK got 10.3.1 over the weekend. 10.2.x was a long time ago...

[Grade%]

Re: Any updates on this?

" (I opted for USB connection rather than Wifi because I always forget to switch Wifi off again when leaving the house and inevitably pay a price in battery life)"

I have a similar issue. In order to circumvent this I programmed an NFC tag with a profile to switch off the Wifi and turn on the cell radio. When putting on my coat I place the phone against the tag I've helpfully stuck in the coat closet and the profile is changed. Upon returning I place the phone there again and the profile reverts back to home use. Pretty neat except that my device is a Z30 and has a separate control for cell data that I then have to toggle. Since the device is in my hand and the memory problem is solved and I switch on the data. Fun for the novelty of it.

[JLV]

Re: Any updates on this?

My Z10 has the issue, just tested. You can use the preview play button in the alarm to check.

Turns out it's the 'Sunrise' alarm tone that is most affected. You can pick another tone and volume is ok, but sunrise is unfortunately the default and I didn't see how to set another as default.

[mdava]

Action bar customisation?

A plea for help - tangentially related to the article and after extensive googling:

Does anyone know how to change the action bar, specifically the action bar as shown when viewing an email that makes "reply all" rather than reply (a terrible idea) the main/obvious action?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for everyone

I updated my Z10 to 10.3.1 on Friday and have seen (heard) no problems with the alarms at all, the 4 different alarms I have set have all gone off correctly at the normal volume, so I don't know if it's to do with leaked OS versions, handset models etc.

The only issue I found is that one of my e-mail accounts is set to appear on the lock screen but give no notifications (either tone, vibrate or LED), but it seems to want to always give me an LED blink for it until I unlock the phone. Just a minor niggle though in an otherwise brilliant update.

[Blank Reg]

Missed alarms after an update? I guess they are trying to copy Apple now ;)

[ifraser]

BB 10.3.1

Having ran this from the 1st leak i cant say i have ever had a volume issue, thats with it

on a Q10, Z30 and now a passport.

Yes there are still many Blackberry users and the amount is rising thankfully due to the

quality of the new products.

Amazed its taken them this long to release the update.

[sodium-light]

The Blackberry Classic...

...is quite simply the best phone I have ever owned.

No problems with volume after update.

[Bronek Kozicki]

Re: The Blackberry Classic...

Ditto.

My wife has Sony Z3 Compact - hardware close to perfection, very light and amazing battery live. However every time I do something on my BB Classic she mentions "it's so simple on your phone, I wish I could do that".

[Oninoshiko]

As someone who lives two blocks from a rail line, I assure you, amplitude is not enough to awaken me. Only things that my sub-conscious recognizes has "has to be dealt with" are up to the task. I do sometimes wish that category was a little wider.

[Sandy Ritchie]

I run a z10, been testing beta 10.3.1 for months, its very nice. I've surprised myself I'm still using a 2 year old phone as my daily but there just isn't (in my view) a phone OS to beat it right now.

[PhilDin]

Just my own 2c as a Q10 owner. After the upgrade, it started chewing through the battery like crazy. It was fully charged around midnight and woke me up at 04:00 to till me it was going to sleep as the battery was out (thanks BB). A reboot appears to have sorted that out and apart from the ring volume needing to be turned back up, no other problems to report, everythings a little bit nicer and faster and the battery life seems to be better (36 hours in and 40% remaining).

[Hans 1]

>customisable LED notifications.

I have had that with PowerTools on 10.2.x (cannot remember). I turn off wifi with geofencing ... as soon as I move 100m away from my house, wifi turns off.