Pitch Black: New BlackBerry Classic is aimed at the old-school How can a phone maker sell out of its new smartmobe in advance when no one even knew what was inside? BlackBerry has somehow managed that feat. Click to enlarge pics Back in February it announced the Classic, which be could be ordered online last month, and until today nobody knew the specifications. “Too many things …
What I need to know:
* How much RAM does it have?
* Does it has a Mini SD Card slot?
* Can I install Android apps without much hassle?
* How long will BBRy produce updates for it?
In the past that is what mostly killed Blackberry**, if they have solved all of those, I'll get me one.
**Not the lack of SD card slot though.
> Can I install Android apps without much hassle?
The Android apps will come from the Amazon market place. So they won't come from Google Play. I have some paid apps on Google Play, so don't know if I still access my paid-for apps from Amazon, but it is not a big issue, as the apps were cheap.
In the UK, there is n't a single Android phone with a QWERTY keyboard. So this is where Blackberry have my attention.
Well, no,. you can't. I have paid apps on Google Play too (which I ditched with the HTC ChaCha- stupid POS phone, only thing they got right was the QWERTY keyboard). I recently sideloaded Amazon AppStore onto my Q5- and nope, I had to re-buy stuff I've already bought on the Play Store. On a side note tho, you can try sideloading Snap, which allegedly gives you access to the Play Store and your old apps tho. Although you have to think it through- do you really want to give a third party proxy service your Google password?
Blackberry World has a few Android apps too, but they're mostly crapware or badly outdated (ie eBay. Apparently no one told them that 10.2.1 supports newer versions of the their Android app).
There is a way round this if you still had the Android phone. You can download some software (sorry I have forgotten the name) to you PC, connect the Android phone a d it will copy the .apk file for that app to your PC. You can then install the .apk file on the Blackberry effectively side loading it. Not exactly convenient though.
BlackBerry bought a company called Movirtu earlier in the year. This company created a virtual sin card solution. You can have two or more numbers running on the same device with only one physical sim card, as the others are, as I mentioned, viryusl.
This hasn't been implemented yet, but it's in the works.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/11/blackberry_buys_movirtu/
"GSM is encrypted. It's a basic component of the standard."
Only problem is the encryption has been provably broken since 2006 though probably long before that. It might protect you against a casual listener but it won't protect you against a government agency.
Can I delete the million emails and text messages that I receive on an hourly basis without going tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap?
Android and iPhone don't seem to have this sorted out. At least on Z10 you can do "Delete everything prior to this date" - but it deletes from handset, not server, meaning you still have to go home and delete from your computer. What's the point in that?
On the Bold 9700 (oh how I miss thee) it was simply hold shift, drag down on the track pad, and press the backspace key. Voila. And no double-delete required, too, they just disappeared straight off the server also.
When you delete a message from the Hub it asks if you want to delete it just from the handset or the server as well, and gives you the option to remember that setting, stop asking, and always apply it (this can be changed later under settings). So yes, if you always want to delete it from the server as well, or if you want the option on a deletion-by deletion basis, then BB10's got you covered.
Then sold, thanks.
Regarding the hold-date thing; yes, but this selects all prior emails. Chances are I don't want to delete all prior, just today's crud (or yesterday's, or last week's if I've been being lazy).
Regarding the "just change a setting" to delete off server/handset; yes, I know, but the hold-date thing only deletes from handset regardless of setting.
I've always liked the tactile keyboard and my present phone is a little old side slide out LG feature phone. I'm thinking my next phone will be a Blackberry Classic or Passport.
My little feature phone is all I really need but it is always fun to have an upgrade.
I may be wrong about this but I think that the problem with sliders now is how to design them while still allowing the cpu to be close enough to the air to keep cold and prevent throttling. That is why so many phones are now large, thin and metallic. It's difficult to design a slider which doesn't have the electronics in the middle.
- with an e-ink screen (I care more about outdoor readability and longevity than colour or fast updates)
- ideally an open-source operating system (Android preferred; although maybe BlackBerry's Android emulation might be "good enough".)
- antenna jack (for areas of poor coverage, capacitive coupling doesn't count)
and maybe you've got a sale. It's nice to see a phone that recognises the utility of an actual tactile keypad over a capacitive imitation.
Sadly, if you want a decent keypad, Blackberry is one of the few, almost no one does an e-ink screen (Yotafone aside) and nearly every manufacturer assumes you spend all your time in good mobile coverage. (I live in Brisbane but do like to get out occasionally.)
Sigh. The Classic looks nice, but why did they have to make the keyboard straight? BB keyboards were always curved and small enough that they were reasonably easy to operate single-handedly.
It's like bringing back "Coke Classic" but with "almost the same taste as before, but not quite" :-)
I would still prefer to have a device with a real keyboard. Let's see if this catches on.
It looks like it could and should have been released 3 years ago. Oh wait, it literally could have with those specs. It's almost as if BlackBerry died 5 years ago and now just shambles along as a rotting corpse slowly collapsing under its own weight. How do you release a new phone with a 3 year old processor? HOW!
As a added note, I bout a Nexus 5 more than a year ago. It cost me $400, this is $465 and worse in every single conceivable way. Slower processor, less storage, worse screen, smaller battery, less apps, it looks like a phone released 5 years ago. BlackBerry, just surrender. No one even wants to buy you anymore.
Yes, because one needs a veritable supercomputer to handle voice calls, email, and light document editing. It's a business phone - it doesn't need to have the horsepower to run a bunch of flashy stuff. Spot on with the screen and battery though - I remember the much (much) earlier blackberries, they lasted forever with that bulky expansion battery. I think a number of us would be perfectly happy if they re-released the phones that made them the business toys of a generation, just with the antenna upgraded to maintain compatibility with modern networks.
Jonathan,
do you ever:
- wear the same clothes as everyone else?
- have the trendiest hairstyle?
- follow colours that are 'really in this season'?
- go to the same place every year for your holiday/vacation?
- only listen to 'new and hot' music?
- always order the same food in the same restaurant
- have any opinions of your own?
Just wondered...
J
Perhaps you aren't interested in functional phones, Jonathan 27, but for many people we want a phone that doesn't need recharging every 5 minutes, handles voice and text communications, that one can set alarms on and take simple notes on. Anything else is icing on the cake. If it's games that interest you, then buy a games machine. Me, I just want to communicate, and have something that reminds me what I need to be doing when. If it were still working (it died 3-4 years ago) I'd still be using my original Blackberry and be utterly happy with it.
Hmm, have you actually used BB10? It's actually very efficient. And while we're on the subject of specs, go out in the street and ask any Sony, Sammy, HTC etc owner what specs their phone has. I doubt very much if a) any of these people actually know and b) that they give aa shit. You'll probably get a few blank looks when you mention Android ("but mine's a HTC").
BlackBerry are a known quantity - rock solid email and built to survive a nuclear war. People know it for what it does, much like they do for iphones. I hope BlackBerry do well with this.
Your points:
1. Looks. Yeah, right. That's what every business user really needs.
2. Processor. Does it work? Yes. Is it smooth and usable? Yes. And your point is?
3. Less storage than a Nexus 5. I think it has plenty for 99.99% of the target market.
4. Worse screen. Again the dpi is sufficient for the size of the screen. And your point is?
5. Smaller battery. It's a smaller phone with a smaller screen. The battery may last longer.
6. Less apps. Okay, how many essential apps are not available? Or did you mean games?
Jonathan. You are like an innocent child that has wandered into the room and tries to be part of the conversation, when you have no frame of reference and don't know what the bloody hell you are talking about.
Stick to the kids stuff. The adults are talking about a business phone, not the latest toy.
When blackberry went mad and started designing crap phones our firm moved to android phones with touch keys on screen. Shit!
Typing speed went from 2 thumbs fast to 1 finger slow with no tactile feedback. The email client to Exchange is also shit.
A BB with a decent keyboard and apps plus decent Exchange client will be a major hit in the corporate world for those of us who want email functionality over 'bragging rights' from having pretty but useless alternatives.
Calendar works better than on JesusPhone, no event that is 4 weeks past its date when you reschedule. The iPhone seems to get lost when you re-schedule an event which has a repetition ... the iPhone simply sets the "last modification date" as the date for the event ... at least, my manager has that problem with his iPhone - he might be doing something wrong, I dunno - he is a senior dev, though so I doubt it is human error on his part.
I feel your pain.
We switched to a fleet of 'sheet of glass' phones (I've had em all personally too - iPhone to Nexus blah) and they're shit. MDM is worse. Typing is worse. Build quality is worse (9900 to S5 being compared. S4/5 are very brittle).
The only thing missing, which seems to be the main thing people complain about with BB phones, is the numerous stupid, infantile ways to waste minutes of your life that Apple and Android offer - what everyone refers to as 'apps'. When they say that they don't mean 'ways to work', they mean they want to play with toys.
Anyway, whatever - idiots always seem to win in the end. All hail the rise of the idiots with their handheld twit machines. I'll stick with my Passport. The wife wants a Classic. Blend is excellent BTW.
BB10 missed a lot of things off OS 7 that I couldn't understand why they dropped. Profiles, vibrate-this-many-times and for-this-long for different app/message notifications, auto on/off timer, the low-power battery saver mode, all stuff which I found incredibly useful on OS 7 and missed like a limb on the Z10.
However, I've had a Z10 since its release and it's come on leaps and bounds since version 1 of the software. So hopefully, maybe they will continue to implement what is missing, and what is needed, and hopefully in some sort of sensible order...
@Andrew
I agree it's incredible, but basically RIM fired 95% of the BBOS developers and had the QNX staff designing things they had no experience with, e.g. email, with little oversight from the few remaining BBOS devs. Ergo, they flubbed a variety of things, like basic RFC2822 email formatting errors and so on.
Luckily the most egregious of those errors have since been corrected over the last 1.75 years, but there are some omissions that remain. The Contacts app is one of the worst of those - clearly the devs had never designed any PDA apps before. At this point the only solution would seem to be completely abandoning the current codebase and starting over from scratch. I refuse to sync BB10 contacts with any other online/cloud entity (or even Outlook) unless I want a complete debacle on my hands.
That said, I'm actually considering a Classic as a secondary device to replace my current secondary device, especially since my carrier never offered the Passport. I'm still a sucker for a BlackBerry. :D
+1 for the BB Bold being shit. I had one as a company phone a few years back and it would lose cell towers and and wouldn't pick them up unless you rebooted and the thing saw more crashes than the M25 on a Friday. Mind you it did give me the silver lining of excuses when the sales director was trying to get hold of me.
The Blackberry Bold is possibly my favourite handset ever: It just felt right - solid, great keyboard, nice touchscreen. Know it wasn't the fastest, smallest, or "Best" at anything, but it was one of those pieces of kit everyone who touched wanted.
For most of 2012, my "Ideal Phone" would have been a Blackberry Bold 9900 running Android OS.
By all logical reasoning, BlackBerry should have crashed and burned after the Z10 and Playbook fiascos. Luckily for them, they had an enormous cash pile to burn through first.
It seems that BlackBerry have given up trying to recreate the days when they shipped more smartphones than anyone else (excluding Symbian). Being smallers and more focussed might ensure survival of some sort, but it remains to be seen if BlackBerry can thrive again.
>I didn’t have time to install third-party apps or Android software, but it’s unlikely these will support the trackpad at all, and you’ll need to use the touchscreen.
They do support the trackpad ... the pad is just a pointing device ... I plugged a mouse into my Z30, excuses to jealous android/winPhone/iPhone lusers, and it works just like you would expect ... I must say that it does not rotate with the device, like when you hit Ctrl+<arrow_up> on Windows, but that is not really an issue, simply rotate the device when it is upside down.
> " I plugged a mouse into my Z30, excuses to jealous android/winPhone/iPhone lusers, and it works just like you would expect "
Not quite sure what your point is here - why would Android users be jealous? I've had a mouse plugged in to my Android tablet and a friends Android phone, and that too "works just like you would expect".
Might be worth checking your facts before trolling in future.
I've never owned a BB, but always hated Android/iPhone type touch keyboards. Typing on them was like pulling teeth....
...until I tried the Android built-in 'swipe' keyboard functionality. It's really weird and disconcerting when you first try it but it's actually quite good, once you kind of 'get into the groove' with it. I no longer dread having to type anything more than a sentence or so long on my Android device and, from a tactile point of view, sliding your finger around on a sheet of glass just feels so much nicer, smoother and more effortless than tapping away at the unyielding surface, that I *almost* enjoy typing that way now.
Give it a go. It might surprise you.
The BlackBerry predictive and swipe virtual keyboard is superior to the Android Swype keyboard, and yet it's still not as good as the BlackBerry physical qwerty.
The physical qwerty plus touch sensing and swipe keyboard on the Passport is superior to anything else out there.
Perhaps it is you who should give a BlackBerry a shot, being that you don't have experience with them ;)
I would absolutely consider a BB with a proper keyboard, but I'm probably too invested in Android now to switch.
It is baffling why there is no single manufacturer turning out an even half decent QWERTY equipped Android phone. In fact I made a pretty radical decision last month to downgrade (or perhaps sidegrade?) my original Samsung Galaxy Note to a Motorola Verizon Droid 4. The decision was purely because I missed having the slide out keyboard for the last 2-3 years. I'd fallen in love with the keyboards on the G1 and G2 (Desire Z) and had settled for the Note as the only logical way of retaining some of the power-user functionality once it was clear that nobody was going to be making decent QWERTY sliders anymore.
People wibble on about why one would need a physical keyboard when the onscreen keyboards are good enough and to an extent I would agree that for input they're not bad with something like Swype. The real charm of the physical keyboard though is in the speed with which you can flit around apps. Keyboard shortcuts to the browser, phone, email, calendar and sms applications make it a doddle to whiz around jumping from one to the other. Also you're not using up a whole heap of screen real estate with a virtual keyboard, making it much easier to take in information and input text into forms etc.
I'm still getting used to the Droid 4 and it is a little disappointing in some respects. The display is pretty nasty by today's standards and the unit does have quite a heft to it, but it's so easy to forgive these little annoyances for the utility and feel of the great little keyboard that is tucked away under the screen. If they ever release a Droid 5 I'm in.
It is baffling why there is no single manufacturer turning out an even half decent QWERTY equipped Android phone.
1. The modern smart phone market seems to be wedded to a screen-size arms race, obsessed with making phones with screens bigger and shinier than everyone elses. Physcial keyboards reduce the possible screen size.
2. Physical keyboards cost money in materials and build costs. Android phone makers have VERY tight margins and probably can barely afford the extra costs, for likely less sales. (see above).
People wibble on about why one would need a physical keyboard when the onscreen keyboards are good enough and to an extent I would agree that for input they're not bad with something like Swype. The real charm of the physical keyboard though is in the speed with which you can flit around apps. Keyboard shortcuts to the browser, phone, email, calendar and sms applications make it a doddle to whiz around jumping from one to the other. Also you're not using up a whole heap of screen real estate with a virtual keyboard, making it much easier to take in information and input text into forms etc.
Exactly… dedicated physical keyboard means a few things:
- Screen isn't occupied by it, so more screen real-estate for the app.
- Tactile response, once your muscle memory stores the keypad layout, you don't even need to look at the keyboard to type and will be much faster at data entry.
1. The modern smart phone market seems to be wedded to a screen-size arms race, obsessed with making phones with screens bigger and shinier than everyone elses. Physcial keyboards reduce the possible screen size.
"The superior man understands what is right, the inferior man understands what will sell" — Confucious.
Make the keyboard slide-out, then you can have a nice big screen. For me, the screen size on my ZTE T81 is about right width wise, but if it were made shorter to make it 4:3 aspect ratio with the space beneath replaced by a tactile keypad, it'd be a much nicer device to use.
2. Physical keyboards cost money in materials and build costs. Android phone makers have VERY tight margins and probably can barely afford the extra costs, for likely less sales. (see above).
No one makes a phone with these features because it's perceived that no one would buy one. It's therefore considered a cost. Undoubtedly it will be more expensive to manufacture — but I'd buy one anyway. However, I can't: they don't exist.
The manufacturers won't listen, and so we're stuck artificially inflating the "popularity" of other phones which really aren't what we're looking for, but we buy them anyway because we simply have no choice.
Non-removable battery? That's a deal-breaker. Been using a Bold (with the ball trackpad - not the modern touchy thing) for many years. Been through four of them 'cos the USB socket always fails so they will not charge. I use an external battery charger for the latest, to avoid its USB charging socket also failing.
I've alway found the BB keyboard slightly moronic - you have a direct key for the near useless dollar sign, but need to shift to use the essential full stop (I know you can double space, but why have to do that when the full stop should be a single press.)
One other issue with BB is BBM, I don't use it but it's buggy and often consumes over 60% of my battery but cannot be disabled/deleted.
Given where BlackBerry is based, while I personally agree with you I doubt its main target market does. As for the double space full stop, it actually prints a full stop followed by a space, which is almost always what you want, so it's still two clicks.
I don't use BBM nowadays, but I do restart the phone every two weeks to avoid potential problems.
why oh why would anyone want a phone from ancient history, this comeback from Blackberry is like watching an old horror movie with some terminally ill actor staggering about failing to lay down and die, if t wasn't nailed to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies, please will someone give it a lethal injection and let us all look forward to a life without buttons. The shareholders would have been better off if they had forced it to close the doors and take the remaining cash but now it seems they will drag it out until the very bitter end.
I originally got a Blackberry Q10 because I simply couldn't find an Android with a decent keyboard.
Having used it for a year and change, I do not want to go back to Android, even if I find a nice slider. I vastly prefer BB10 to Android or iOS.
I want a phone 'from ancient history' because it's better at being a phone.
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