7 ms·

I am not falling for BB again ! In my last iteration of smartphone purchase, I bought a latest-at-the-time Iphone 3GS for my wife and the latest-at-the-time

I am not falling for BB again ! In my last iteration of smartphone purchase, I bought a latest-at-the-time Iphone 3GS for my wife and the latest-at-the-time Blackberry Bold. Since then I have watched in envy as my wife could get so much done on her phone than I could on my BB. My BB never did much beyond email and BBM ( I love BBM ) In this iteration, I recently placed an order for Nexus 4 and a Iphone 5. maybe if they are still around in 3~4 years from now, sure I could consider going back to BB.

kunai 14y ago
Did you even read the review? This isn't related AT ALL to the old OS7 Bold or any other Blackberry line, which were awful. BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience.
- untog 14y ago
  It's still relevant. Increasingly, mobile OSes are less about where they are now than where they will be. Apple have been outstanding in that regard- providing OS updates to really quite old phones. Vanilla Android has been just as great, but individual Android manufacturers less so. MS has been terrible. BB has a history of being terrible. So, Blackberry's past is relevant. No, they might not repeat it, but absent of any other evidence, we can only judge them by past conduct. just as productive while providing a rich media experience. I don't even know what that means
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - dean 14y ago
    "Apple have been outstanding in that regard- providing OS updates to really quite old phones." Yes, like the iOS 4 update for my 3G -- which made my phone so slow as to be almost useless. Came close to smashing it in frustration many, many times. So in my case at least, Apple providing an update to an old phone is definitely nothing to brag about. However, it did force me to upgrade the phone, and I'm guessing that was the point.
    - MBCook 14y ago
      That wasn't a good upgrade, but at least the option was there. The phone came with 2.0, received 3.0, 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2. Every one of those was available day one. Most android manufacturers aren't releasing updates, or they're months behind. WP updates were often stalled months by carriers/manufacturers, and phones bought last year can't get WP8.
      - yareally 14y ago
        >Most android manufacturers aren't releasing updates, or they're months behind HTC finally released the Android 4.0 update for the HTC Thunderbolt (Verizon's variant of the HTC Desire HD). I guess 14 months after Android 4.0 was released is better than never, but it kills me it takes that long for some Non-Nexus devices.
  - soperj 14y ago
    BB is also making good on that now, updating things that can be updated like their playbooks, even though they're several years old.
    - MBCook 14y ago
      I'll say I was very impressed that they're going to update those tablets. That was an excellent show of good will. So many manufacturers would have released a new tablet (even if it was only cosmetic differences) and told their existing customers "Thanks for your last purchase, here is the new hotness, buy again."
  - zmonkeyz 14y ago
    Then I can only judge Apple by OS 7.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - eropple 14y ago
      Mac System 7 was released in 1997. The earliest BlackBerry Bold (assuming that's the one under discussion, which I'm not clear of) was released in December 2009. One of these things is not like the other.
- dublinben 14y ago
  The Palm Pre was an incredible phone, but that doesn't matter if the company dissolves. It's entirely realistic to not expect Blackberry (the company) to not be around two years from now.
  - shawn-butler 14y ago
    The Palm Pre hardware was far from incredible unfortunately. The slider was notoriously broken. The case would crack with any wear. It wasn't exactly a premium platform to showcase the software innovations. I think you really should look at Blackberry financial statements and revenue targets which have been very realistic if you believe the company is not going to be around in two years. You are making some pretty forward looking predictions that are not at all in line with either market analysts or blackberry estimates. HN should be about facts and well-considered opinion not FUD. Just my $0.02.
- dholowiski 14y ago
  Brand new OS, brand new hardware, what could possibly go wrong? Last time they did this (Playbook - new hardware, new OS) it was a gigantic hit, right?
  - purephase 14y ago
    The re-brand is telling. This is not the same organization that launched the PlayBook. I also believe that the PlayBook is an extremely under-valued product. I, and quite a few people I know, use it all the time. For the price point it is a great device.
    - serge2k 14y ago
      For the 200 dollar price point. When it launched it was what, twice that? Also came missing basic features. That's what lead to the failure. I got mine as a gift, it's a nice device. Main complaint is no suffort from bigger third party companies (i.e. netflix, skype).
      - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
        The 7" Blackberry PlayBook 16GB cost $499 when it went on sale in April of 2011. That's the same price as Apple was selling its 10" iPad 2 16GB for. Five months later, RIM slashed the prices of the PlayBook. The 16GB model was sold for $199, $6 below the Bill of Materials costs. RIM sold 700,000 PlayBooks before they lowered the prices, and even when they were selling them at a loss, they only managed to sell 1 million more. Aside from its price point, it's not hard to see why the PlayBook flopped. When it launched, there were hardly any third party apps for PlayBook, the OS lacked autocorrection, the onscreen keyboard was barely usable, there was no integration with cloud storage, the default search engine was Bing, it had no store for media content, and of course: it had no standalone e-mail and calendar software.
  - jmduke 14y ago
    So if a company ever messes up then they're doomed to endlessly flounder? Hey, you remember the Apple Lisa?
- brown9-2 14y ago
  I interpret "I have watched in envy as my wife could get so much done on her phone" as regarding how many apps are available for one phone and how few were available for his Blackberry. It's great if the phone at launch has all sorts of modern features, but this same sort of device/feature envy will exist if Blackberry can't attract significant developer attention.
  - kunai 14y ago
    Well, if the incentive is there (I haven't researched much into the SDK yet), I'll develop for BB10. I really see the potential here and how this OS can really make an impact on the mobile landscape. I hope other developers will share the same sentiment after using the phone itself... Really, what isn't to love about it, judging from the reviews? It's a great platform and I'm planning to buy one as soon as it's released. I think other developers will see the value in BB10 as well and create apps for it. We all know the big companies like Rovio, Facebook, Amazon, and Mojang will obviously at one time or another port their apps to work with BB10, but if we can get the smaller, part-time developers on this bandwagon, we have a very viable contender here.
    - scrabble 14y ago
      How can we know that the big companies will port their apps? Many of the top apps were missing from the previous BlackBerry OS. What indication is there that they will be coming to BB10? BlackBerry says they are in talks with Netflix, but they said that about getting an app for BB7, and that never happened.
  - stevenameyer 14y ago
    This. In my opinion BB10 will live or die on third party support. You can have a great OS, but people won't adopt it without a good number of high quality apps. I haven't looked into development for BB10. But I know that previous versons were horrible to develop for. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've heard BB developers curse over having to have dev build signed by BB servers. Especially during heavier server times, where the servers went down for long periods of times. fixing this alone would do wonders in helping BB10
- manishsharan 14y ago
  I think it is not the device but the ecosystem that supports the device that is more important. Like a certain CEO once said "Developers Developers Developers .. ". I would be curious to know how successful Blackberry has been in wooing third party developers. What is the ETA for Skype, Netflix, snapchat, and Uber for BB 10 ?
  - myko 14y ago
    Do the Android versions of the above apps failed to work on BB10? Unless the submission process is extremely arduous I would hope the developers of those apps release their Android versions at the very least on the BB app store.
- wvenable 14y ago
  > BB10 can do much more than an iPhone Really? That's not the impression that I get. It might be able to meet the current features and abilities of iOS and Android but I haven't see anything that indicates it can do "so much more". There doesn't seem to be enough here to justify purchasing a device from a 3rd place manufacturer with brand new software.
  - kunai 14y ago
    Real time task scheduling, a much better keyboard, an excellent multitasking UI, full push email support, a better web browser and better benchmarks, to name a few. The reasons I listed above are directed at BB's biggest userbase: businesses. That doesn't mean that the average consumer won't be able to take advantage of these features, though. QNX is real-time. That is huge. The performance of the OS should be unmatched by both Android and iOS simply because of that. Also, the UI is clean and refreshing compared to the standard crop of boring, button-nav, clone gridmapped interfaces out there. Gestures are the future. We saw them with Ubuntu Phone, and we're seeing them in BB10 now, too. There's a lot of potential here if you look beyond the tangible.
    - garagemc2 14y ago
      "QNX is real-time. That is huge." Why? What's the benefit? P.S. I have a playbook if you can use examples from that (if it has RTOS)
      - MattRogish 14y ago
        I'm interested in this, too. I interned at a software company back in the late 90s that ran on QNX (batch control software for concrete ready-mix plants) - so I have some exposure to QNX. It is a pretty interesting RTOS (the Neutrino microkernel was pretty neat, architecturally). QNX is cool and all, but what "huge" advantage does "real-time" have on multi-core mobile devices? I also have a PlayBook somewhere (got it for free at a conference) and there was nothing particularly impressive about the multi-tasking that wasn't either obviated by OS design or otherwise simulated "good enough" in other tablet operating systems (the perennial real-time vs. preemptive multitasking argument). I'm not saying that there may be some interesting things that are made easier for BlackBerry due to a RTOS - but what "huge" things is a BlackBerry user going to see that, say, an iOS or Android user won't - solely due to a RTOS?
- illuminate 14y ago
  "BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience" It would probably help if you named specific benefits that didn't sound like PR spew, because this means absolutely nothing to me.
ianb 14y ago
Out of curiosity, and having never used it, what is cool about BBM?

kunai 14y ago

Did you even read the review? This isn't related AT ALL to the old OS7 Bold or any other Blackberry line, which were awful. BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience.

untog 14y ago
It's still relevant. Increasingly, mobile OSes are less about where they are now than where they will be. Apple have been outstanding in that regard- providing OS updates to really quite old phones. Vanilla Android has been just as great, but individual Android manufacturers less so. MS has been terrible. BB has a history of being terrible. So, Blackberry's past is relevant. No, they might not repeat it, but absent of any other evidence, we can only judge them by past conduct. just as productive while providing a rich media experience. I don't even know what that means
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- dean 14y ago
  "Apple have been outstanding in that regard- providing OS updates to really quite old phones." Yes, like the iOS 4 update for my 3G -- which made my phone so slow as to be almost useless. Came close to smashing it in frustration many, many times. So in my case at least, Apple providing an update to an old phone is definitely nothing to brag about. However, it did force me to upgrade the phone, and I'm guessing that was the point.
  - MBCook 14y ago
    That wasn't a good upgrade, but at least the option was there. The phone came with 2.0, received 3.0, 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2. Every one of those was available day one. Most android manufacturers aren't releasing updates, or they're months behind. WP updates were often stalled months by carriers/manufacturers, and phones bought last year can't get WP8.
    - yareally 14y ago
      >Most android manufacturers aren't releasing updates, or they're months behind HTC finally released the Android 4.0 update for the HTC Thunderbolt (Verizon's variant of the HTC Desire HD). I guess 14 months after Android 4.0 was released is better than never, but it kills me it takes that long for some Non-Nexus devices.
- soperj 14y ago
  BB is also making good on that now, updating things that can be updated like their playbooks, even though they're several years old.
  - MBCook 14y ago
    I'll say I was very impressed that they're going to update those tablets. That was an excellent show of good will. So many manufacturers would have released a new tablet (even if it was only cosmetic differences) and told their existing customers "Thanks for your last purchase, here is the new hotness, buy again."
- zmonkeyz 14y ago
  Then I can only judge Apple by OS 7.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - eropple 14y ago
    Mac System 7 was released in 1997. The earliest BlackBerry Bold (assuming that's the one under discussion, which I'm not clear of) was released in December 2009. One of these things is not like the other.
dublinben 14y ago
The Palm Pre was an incredible phone, but that doesn't matter if the company dissolves. It's entirely realistic to not expect Blackberry (the company) to not be around two years from now.
- shawn-butler 14y ago
  The Palm Pre hardware was far from incredible unfortunately. The slider was notoriously broken. The case would crack with any wear. It wasn't exactly a premium platform to showcase the software innovations. I think you really should look at Blackberry financial statements and revenue targets which have been very realistic if you believe the company is not going to be around in two years. You are making some pretty forward looking predictions that are not at all in line with either market analysts or blackberry estimates. HN should be about facts and well-considered opinion not FUD. Just my $0.02.
dholowiski 14y ago
Brand new OS, brand new hardware, what could possibly go wrong? Last time they did this (Playbook - new hardware, new OS) it was a gigantic hit, right?
- purephase 14y ago
  The re-brand is telling. This is not the same organization that launched the PlayBook. I also believe that the PlayBook is an extremely under-valued product. I, and quite a few people I know, use it all the time. For the price point it is a great device.
  - serge2k 14y ago
    For the 200 dollar price point. When it launched it was what, twice that? Also came missing basic features. That's what lead to the failure. I got mine as a gift, it's a nice device. Main complaint is no suffort from bigger third party companies (i.e. netflix, skype).
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      The 7" Blackberry PlayBook 16GB cost $499 when it went on sale in April of 2011. That's the same price as Apple was selling its 10" iPad 2 16GB for. Five months later, RIM slashed the prices of the PlayBook. The 16GB model was sold for $199, $6 below the Bill of Materials costs. RIM sold 700,000 PlayBooks before they lowered the prices, and even when they were selling them at a loss, they only managed to sell 1 million more. Aside from its price point, it's not hard to see why the PlayBook flopped. When it launched, there were hardly any third party apps for PlayBook, the OS lacked autocorrection, the onscreen keyboard was barely usable, there was no integration with cloud storage, the default search engine was Bing, it had no store for media content, and of course: it had no standalone e-mail and calendar software.
- jmduke 14y ago
  So if a company ever messes up then they're doomed to endlessly flounder? Hey, you remember the Apple Lisa?
brown9-2 14y ago
I interpret "I have watched in envy as my wife could get so much done on her phone" as regarding how many apps are available for one phone and how few were available for his Blackberry. It's great if the phone at launch has all sorts of modern features, but this same sort of device/feature envy will exist if Blackberry can't attract significant developer attention.
- kunai 14y ago
  Well, if the incentive is there (I haven't researched much into the SDK yet), I'll develop for BB10. I really see the potential here and how this OS can really make an impact on the mobile landscape. I hope other developers will share the same sentiment after using the phone itself... Really, what isn't to love about it, judging from the reviews? It's a great platform and I'm planning to buy one as soon as it's released. I think other developers will see the value in BB10 as well and create apps for it. We all know the big companies like Rovio, Facebook, Amazon, and Mojang will obviously at one time or another port their apps to work with BB10, but if we can get the smaller, part-time developers on this bandwagon, we have a very viable contender here.
  - scrabble 14y ago
    How can we know that the big companies will port their apps? Many of the top apps were missing from the previous BlackBerry OS. What indication is there that they will be coming to BB10? BlackBerry says they are in talks with Netflix, but they said that about getting an app for BB7, and that never happened.
- stevenameyer 14y ago
  This. In my opinion BB10 will live or die on third party support. You can have a great OS, but people won't adopt it without a good number of high quality apps. I haven't looked into development for BB10. But I know that previous versons were horrible to develop for. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've heard BB developers curse over having to have dev build signed by BB servers. Especially during heavier server times, where the servers went down for long periods of times. fixing this alone would do wonders in helping BB10
manishsharan 14y ago
I think it is not the device but the ecosystem that supports the device that is more important. Like a certain CEO once said "Developers Developers Developers .. ". I would be curious to know how successful Blackberry has been in wooing third party developers. What is the ETA for Skype, Netflix, snapchat, and Uber for BB 10 ?
- myko 14y ago
  Do the Android versions of the above apps failed to work on BB10? Unless the submission process is extremely arduous I would hope the developers of those apps release their Android versions at the very least on the BB app store.
wvenable 14y ago
> BB10 can do much more than an iPhone Really? That's not the impression that I get. It might be able to meet the current features and abilities of iOS and Android but I haven't see anything that indicates it can do "so much more". There doesn't seem to be enough here to justify purchasing a device from a 3rd place manufacturer with brand new software.
- kunai 14y ago
  Real time task scheduling, a much better keyboard, an excellent multitasking UI, full push email support, a better web browser and better benchmarks, to name a few. The reasons I listed above are directed at BB's biggest userbase: businesses. That doesn't mean that the average consumer won't be able to take advantage of these features, though. QNX is real-time. That is huge. The performance of the OS should be unmatched by both Android and iOS simply because of that. Also, the UI is clean and refreshing compared to the standard crop of boring, button-nav, clone gridmapped interfaces out there. Gestures are the future. We saw them with Ubuntu Phone, and we're seeing them in BB10 now, too. There's a lot of potential here if you look beyond the tangible.
  - garagemc2 14y ago
    "QNX is real-time. That is huge." Why? What's the benefit? P.S. I have a playbook if you can use examples from that (if it has RTOS)
    - MattRogish 14y ago
      I'm interested in this, too. I interned at a software company back in the late 90s that ran on QNX (batch control software for concrete ready-mix plants) - so I have some exposure to QNX. It is a pretty interesting RTOS (the Neutrino microkernel was pretty neat, architecturally). QNX is cool and all, but what "huge" advantage does "real-time" have on multi-core mobile devices? I also have a PlayBook somewhere (got it for free at a conference) and there was nothing particularly impressive about the multi-tasking that wasn't either obviated by OS design or otherwise simulated "good enough" in other tablet operating systems (the perennial real-time vs. preemptive multitasking argument). I'm not saying that there may be some interesting things that are made easier for BlackBerry due to a RTOS - but what "huge" things is a BlackBerry user going to see that, say, an iOS or Android user won't - solely due to a RTOS?
illuminate 14y ago
"BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience" It would probably help if you named specific benefits that didn't sound like PR spew, because this means absolutely nothing to me.

ianb 14y ago

Out of curiosity, and having never used it, what is cool about BBM?