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The Passport was a phenomenal device, and nothing like it has been built since. Large square screen and big touch sensitive keyboard, but yet still super manage

The Passport was a phenomenal device, and nothing like it has been built since. Large square screen and big touch sensitive keyboard, but yet still super manageable due to its squat height... if there was a modern Android version I'd go for it in a heartbeat. Not great for watching videos, but it would be super for everything else.

ColanR 7y ago
I wonder if it's still worth using, despite the outdated OS.
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  If you don't need many apps and are okay with a web browser that hasn't received updates since 2015 or so, then sure. BB10 can run Android apps with its embedded Android runtime, but it's limited to 4.2 Jellybean (from 2012), so a frustrating experience. The BlackBerry App store is still running, but it's pretty much dead, with zero new development. All apps are free now. It would make for a great email + basic usage phone, but not for media consumption. And the camera's not great. I used a BlackBerry Classic that also ran BB10 until December 2017, and I still pick it up from time to time and wish I could still use it. The Classic is unique in that it has three independent input methods, all of which work super well: 1. Touch screen: the BB10 OS is actually designed for touch, with fluid and intuitive gestures. Swipe up to go home, swipe up and to the right to go to the notifications hub (reverse the gesture to just peek), swipe left to pull off a screen layer to go back, swipe down from the top to view the settings pane (standard place for settings in every app). 2. Optical trackpad and hard nav buttons, just like on old BlackBerries. You can fully control the phone without touching the screen (great for when you're wearing thick gloves during winter). Works super well for a mouse pointer in the browser. The trackpad even works reasonably well in Android apps, which weren't designed for it (presumably, it piggy-backed on the accessibility focus stuff). 3. Hardware keyboard: typing experience is great—not necessarily faster, but super precise, and no pop-up keyboard getting in the way. Every app is designed with keyboard shortcuts in mind, and the OS makes discovery super easy, so stuff like [C]omposing an email, scrolling to the [T]op of the page, or scrolling to the [N]ext page in a PDF are single click operations. Modern BlackBerries also have great keyboards, but since they run Android, they have none of the shortcuts (except app shortcuts).
MrMorden 7y ago
The problem with the Passport was that it didn't have the Google store. 95% of developers couldn't be bothered to submit their applications to Amazon.
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  Not by default it didn't, but if you had any sort of technical know-how it was fairly easy to sideload it on.
  - joecool1029 7y ago
    > Not by default it didn't, but if you had any sort of technical know-how it was fairly easy to sideload it on. And it was a super outdated Android runtime that ran like dogshit compared to the native BB10 apps. Also, if you wanted any sort of Google Play services stuff, you had to have an app on a laptop/desktop to sign all your apk's the same and remove a specific check... and you'd have to do it all over again every time you wanted to update an apk with play services. Not ideal.

ColanR 7y ago

I wonder if it's still worth using, despite the outdated OS.

frosted-flakes 7y ago
If you don't need many apps and are okay with a web browser that hasn't received updates since 2015 or so, then sure. BB10 can run Android apps with its embedded Android runtime, but it's limited to 4.2 Jellybean (from 2012), so a frustrating experience. The BlackBerry App store is still running, but it's pretty much dead, with zero new development. All apps are free now. It would make for a great email + basic usage phone, but not for media consumption. And the camera's not great. I used a BlackBerry Classic that also ran BB10 until December 2017, and I still pick it up from time to time and wish I could still use it. The Classic is unique in that it has three independent input methods, all of which work super well: 1. Touch screen: the BB10 OS is actually designed for touch, with fluid and intuitive gestures. Swipe up to go home, swipe up and to the right to go to the notifications hub (reverse the gesture to just peek), swipe left to pull off a screen layer to go back, swipe down from the top to view the settings pane (standard place for settings in every app). 2. Optical trackpad and hard nav buttons, just like on old BlackBerries. You can fully control the phone without touching the screen (great for when you're wearing thick gloves during winter). Works super well for a mouse pointer in the browser. The trackpad even works reasonably well in Android apps, which weren't designed for it (presumably, it piggy-backed on the accessibility focus stuff). 3. Hardware keyboard: typing experience is great—not necessarily faster, but super precise, and no pop-up keyboard getting in the way. Every app is designed with keyboard shortcuts in mind, and the OS makes discovery super easy, so stuff like [C]omposing an email, scrolling to the [T]op of the page, or scrolling to the [N]ext page in a PDF are single click operations. Modern BlackBerries also have great keyboards, but since they run Android, they have none of the shortcuts (except app shortcuts).

MrMorden 7y ago

The problem with the Passport was that it didn't have the Google store. 95% of developers couldn't be bothered to submit their applications to Amazon.

frosted-flakes 7y ago
Not by default it didn't, but if you had any sort of technical know-how it was fairly easy to sideload it on.
- joecool1029 7y ago
  > Not by default it didn't, but if you had any sort of technical know-how it was fairly easy to sideload it on. And it was a super outdated Android runtime that ran like dogshit compared to the native BB10 apps. Also, if you wanted any sort of Google Play services stuff, you had to have an app on a laptop/desktop to sign all your apk's the same and remove a specific check... and you'd have to do it all over again every time you wanted to update an apk with play services. Not ideal.