A new 5G BlackBerry phone with Android and a physical keyboard will arrive in 2021

[RejZoR]

42 minutes ago, Commodus said:

We get it, you love iOS. I prefer it too, but please don't turn this into a platform war thread.

 

The new BlackBerry phones will have to use Android. There's no way around that. It's just a question of whether or not OnwardMobility can offer a version that pleases BlackBerry fans. I quite liked using BlackBerry's in-house software on phones like the Priv and KeyOne, but it wasn't enough to save BlackBerry and TCL in the marketplace.

What "platform war" thread? When is stating facts inciting of anything? Those are literally the facts. Basically any Android phone you take it means whatever bleeding edge hardware and OS that you get at time of purchase is what you are stuck with. If it doesn't bother you running old OS version when there are new ones out there, then great. Or if you buy new model so fast that you don't run out of 2 year updates. If it does bother you, then iOS is just a better way to go as you'll assured of getting updates for at least 5 major versions.

I personally prefer latest software over bleeding edge hardware as I don't really fully utilize high end hardware, but do appreciate new cool software features. Your priorities may differ.

[Commodus]

27 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

What "platform war" thread? When is stating facts inciting of anything? Those are literally the facts. Basically any Android phone you take it means whatever bleeding edge hardware and OS that you get at time of purchase is what you are stuck with. If it doesn't bother you running old OS version when there are new ones out there, then great. Or if you buy new model so fast that you don't run out of 2 year updates. If it does bother you, then iOS is just a better way to go as you'll assured of getting updates for at least 5 major versions.

I personally prefer latest software over bleeding edge hardware as I don't really fully utilize high end hardware, but do appreciate new cool software features. Your priorities may differ.

Because a general discussion of differences in OS update policies has no real bearing on a thread discussing BlackBerry phones, and anyone directly responding to it is just going to devolve the thread into a platform war? It's really not hard.

 

Please, just try to keep things vaguely on topic and actually discuss BlackBerry. We were discussing Android in relation to BlackBerry market share, not using it as an excuse to rant about our platform choices.

[RejZoR]

3 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Because a general discussion of differences in OS update policies has no real bearing on a thread discussing BlackBerry phones, and anyone directly responding to it is just going to devolve the thread into a platform war? It's really not hard.

 

Please, just try to keep things vaguely on topic and actually discuss BlackBerry. We were discussing Android in relation to BlackBerry market share, not using it as an excuse to rant about our platform choices.

Yes it does. Because it's not BlackBerry OS anymore, but is Android. And we also discuss what would make us buy BlackBerry over yet another generic Android variant. And them behaving more like Apple with iOS would be what would convince me to use their device over some other Android phone. As said by my first post in this thread.

[Commodus]

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Yes it does. Because it's not BlackBerry OS anymore, but is Android. And we also discuss what would make us buy BlackBerry over yet another generic Android variant. And them behaving more like Apple with iOS would be what would convince me to use their device over some other Android phone. As said by my first post in this thread.

That's better, but you didn't mention any of that in your post... and like it or not, this BlackBerry will use Android. Railing against OS update policies will not change that absolute fact. There's not much point to grousing about it further.

[RejZoR]

3 minutes ago, Commodus said:

That's better, but you didn't mention any of that in your post... and like it or not, this BlackBerry will use Android. Railing against OS update policies will not change that absolute fact. There's not much point to grousing about it further.

Actually, I have...

 

[mr moose]

10 hours ago, Commodus said:

That's some good data, I'll give you that. Mid-2010 was an interesting time, when Apple overtook RIM and Android overtook almost everybody.

 

I'd say we could look at the iPhone as the warning shot, at least — RIM needed to rethink absolutely everything about the BlackBerry, right away, and instead it assumed that it didn't have to do much more than throw a bone to the touchscreen crowd. Early Android was rough, but by the time the Moto Droid arrived it was clear the company was in trouble. Can you imagine if it had a proper touchscreen OS ready by, say, late 2009? I don't think it'd have held on to all of its market share, but we might still be talking about it as a third viable option.

 

This sort of data and company motive, MO etc is what I enjoy about big corporations.  Not what the consumer wants or says most of time.   Blackberry had it going on in the early days, they definitely thought they were on to a winner and their survey data was largely from an era of people who were happy with hard keys (touch screens still worried a lot people), so it is likely when they said the iphone wasn't going to work and didn't move to the touch screen design it was probably based on good survey data, just didn't account for the difference between the business mindset (who tends to stick with reliable/known/predictable) and the average consumer who in some cases (enough for a product to gain first traction) will buy something new on as little as flashy advertising.

 

1 thing I will always credit apple with (which is also clearly visible in the data) is that apple made smart phones a desired product for people outside tech and business in that period before 2010.  The reason android spiked and just went nuts was because they offered cheaper smartphones en masse around the end of 2009. 

 

I am certain if apple hadn't of existed we would still be int he same place, but the smart phone development and adoption I think would be lagging by about 6 months to a year (a rather long time for tech development at that period).

 

EDIT: just wanted to add I bout the first HTC Desire in 2008/9  2010(I looked it up), it was an awesome phone and still runs today, (just too old for software to work properly).  Which is a shame because  it's a solid well built device and they are as rare as rocking horse shit.

[CephDigital]

On 8/21/2020 at 8:37 AM, bensijm said:

 

I mean, it already exists....

It's got outdated processor and is expensive. If it was cheaper or had an updated processor I'd buy it.

[Commodus]

13 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

This sort of data and company motive, MO etc is what I enjoy about big corporations.  Not what the consumer wants or says most of time.   Blackberry had it going on in the early days, they definitely thought they were on to a winner and their survey data was largely from an era of people who were happy with hard keys (touch screens still worried a lot people), so it is likely when they said the iphone wasn't going to work and didn't move to the touch screen design it was probably based on good survey data, just didn't account for the difference between the business mindset (who tends to stick with reliable/known/predictable) and the average consumer who in some cases (enough for a product to gain first traction) will buy something new on as little as flashy advertising.

 

1 thing I will always credit apple with (which is also clearly visible in the data) is that apple made smart phones a desired product for people outside tech and business in that period before 2010.  The reason android spiked and just went nuts was because they offered cheaper smartphones en masse around the end of 2009. 

 

I am certain if apple hadn't of existed we would still be int he same place, but the smart phone development and adoption I think would be lagging by about 6 months to a year (a rather long time for tech development at that period).

 

EDIT: just wanted to add I bout the first HTC Desire in 2008/9  2010(I looked it up), it was an awesome phone and still runs today, (just too old for software to work properly).  Which is a shame because  it's a solid well built device and they are as rare as rocking horse shit.

The business mindset was part of it, but there were also genuinely backwards priorities where BlackBerry decided that corporate penny-pinching, including for other companies, was more important than a good experience. My favourite: BlackBerry was genuinely baffled that Apple would give users a full web browser when it could have pleased carriers by delivering a crappy, low-data experience instead. There was no functional advantage to BlackBerry's approach -- it just let carriers delay upgrading their networks at the expense of everyone else.

 

The sad thing is that BlackBerry's mindset wasn't even all that unique. Other phone makers would happily neuter features (sometimes even hardware features), install horribly restrictive carrier app stores and otherwise make design choices that were clearly meant to please everyone but the customer. Even if you didn't care for the iPhone, you had to appreciate Apple serving as a cudgel that reminded everyone the user was supposed to come first. That's part of why people were clamoring for work iPhones soon after Apple introduced enterprise features -- here was a phone designed for the user, that acknowledged you were more than just a number in a sales deal or corporate deployment.

 

I don't know if smartphone adoption would have picked up that quickly. Remember, Google's original plan for Android was a BlackBerry-alike. It didn't do more to embrace touchscreens until it saw the iPhone. We could've been in that 2006-style market, where uninspiring QWERTY devices catered mainly to business users and enthusiasts, for entirely too long.

 

On the early Android front, I actually used some of the very early Android devices, like the HTC Magic (aka MyTouch 3G) and Samsung's Galaxy Spica. They were... not so hot. Kind of pokey and no multi-touch. I would say Android only really came into its own between the one-two combo of the Motorola Droid and original Galaxy S... mind you, Samsung's primary goal with the Galaxy S was to copy the iPhone, so that still says something about Apple's effect early on.

[recon_zero_]

I miss my BB keyboard, I was so proficient with it and it was a godsend. But my brain is now hardwired to touch that I can't come back unless the phone is beefy

 

 

[Bombastinator]

My memory is business interest in blackberry had nothing to do with the keyboard or app features or any of that.  It had to do with security.  Android has serious security issues, mostly having to do with google itself choosing to exempt themselves from security lockout, and that the android store tends to be full of malware.  Apple has fewer of them, RIM blackberry had fewer yet. Like nearly none.  There have always been android phones that had buttons. It’s not unique to blackberry.  Several even got reviewed fairly recently on LTT.

If I wanted to sell phones to businesses I would worry less about the form factor and more about security.  

[mr moose]

7 hours ago, Commodus said:

The business mindset was part of it, but there were also genuinely backwards priorities where BlackBerry decided that corporate penny-pinching, including for other companies, was more important than a good experience. My favourite: BlackBerry was genuinely baffled that Apple would give users a full web browser when it could have pleased carriers by delivering a crappy, low-data experience instead. There was no functional advantage to BlackBerry's approach -- it just let carriers delay upgrading their networks at the expense of everyone else.

 

The sad thing is that BlackBerry's mindset wasn't even all that unique. Other phone makers would happily neuter features (sometimes even hardware features), install horribly restrictive carrier app stores and otherwise make design choices that were clearly meant to please everyone but the customer. Even if you didn't care for the iPhone, you had to appreciate Apple serving as a cudgel that reminded everyone the user was supposed to come first. That's part of why people were clamoring for work iPhones soon after Apple introduced enterprise features -- here was a phone designed for the user, that acknowledged you were more than just a number in a sales deal or corporate deployment.

 The reason it wasn't unique was because at the time most of these companies survey data would have been either business who don't much care for web browsing and consumers who had no real experience with it yet.  It's not until after 2010 that mobile internet became an important experience for the average consumer. One of the reasons for that was the cost of mobile data, forget youtube, a podcast could blow your cap.  windows and palm had reasonable browsers (for the time), the general population just wasn't interested likely because websites were not mobile friendly yet and wap sites were a failure for anything but specific data retrieval (like getting the current temp).

 

7 hours ago, Commodus said:

I don't know if smartphone adoption would have picked up that quickly. Remember, Google's original plan for Android was a BlackBerry-alike. It didn't do more to embrace touchscreens until it saw the iPhone. We could've been in that 2006-style market, where uninspiring QWERTY devices catered mainly to business users and enthusiasts, for entirely too long.

I'm pretty sure android was originally suppose to compete with palm and windows, It would have been the other phone makers looking at it as an OS that wanted to use it with physical keys because that's what their market research would be telling them the consumer wants.  There is a reason at that time a lot of fold out keyboard phones were either coming out or demonstrated.

 

 

 

7 hours ago, Commodus said:

On the early Android front, I actually used some of the very early Android devices, like the HTC Magic (aka MyTouch 3G) and Samsung's Galaxy Spica. They were... not so hot. Kind of pokey and no multi-touch. I would say Android only really came into its own between the one-two combo of the Motorola Droid and original Galaxy S... mind you, Samsung's primary goal with the Galaxy S was to copy the iPhone, so that still says something about Apple's effect early on.

Anything before 2.1 I think was a fairly rough experience.  Even 2.1 needed to be restarted every now and then because it would freeze or slow down.  I don't think multi touch was an issue.  Most of the population just don't care about those things, can they play games? does it have  flash light? that's the level of interest smart phones had in the beginning.  It took the whole screen concept 3 years to gain traction.  Companies like apple had clearly spent a lot ore time talking to general consumers about the future of phones and HTC could afford to take the chance (why they were so popular in the first 4 years, BB and nokia gambled on old data and we know how that turned out.  

 

I guess all I am saying is it like most companies,  its really easy to look back with hindsight and tell them where they went wrong, but remembering that at the time they could only operate on the data their research gave them, BB wasn't alone and apple weren't sampling the same demographics (intentionally). Android was genuinely going to be just as good as people remember ios being, but android never had the funding or hardware iphone did and google were not a domestic device maker at the time so they didn't have the brand presence to make it market as well.

 

But again, companies like HTC would not have put as much effort into it if they didn't see people buying the iphone.   This is why I always say the success of one product is nearly always because it is built on the evolution of every other device that came before it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dizmo]

To be fair, it's not really Blackberry making a new phone. It's a new company taking the naming rights, and trying to push out a new device. While I would normally be pretty interested to see where it's going, if you watched their press video on it, it looked like it was done with a (albeit decent) cell phone camera against a meeting room wall. It really didn't instill any kind of confidence in them actually coming out with a decent product, especially in the amount of time they have.

 

There's definitely a target audience for a device like this, it's just very niche, and the company that's making the phone had better realize that going in. Unfortunately that also means it'll likely have mid range specs with a high price tag. I only hope they also got the rights to TCL's keyboard; without something like that they're already dead in the water.

 

On 8/20/2020 at 9:31 PM, DrMacintosh said:

Lol, why. Nobody likes physical keyboards. They don't help you type on a phone and they take up screen space. 

Just because you don't doesn't mean no one does
I'd love a physical keyboard, and I know at least three friends that would buy a phone like that without hesitation.

Not everyone uses their phones as a purely entertainment consumption device.

On 8/20/2020 at 9:33 PM, Tech_Dreamer said:

Why dey still tryin doe?

They're not. They simply lease their name. If people want to fail using their name to make products, why not?

On 8/21/2020 at 12:33 AM, TheUberMedic said:

Sliding keyboards like the Nokia N97 tho. That's where it's at. I'd love to have a 6.8", android remake of that phone.

I...would definitely not. It'd be way too wide to easily use.

On 8/21/2020 at 8:00 AM, Drama Lama said:

And if you really want a blackberry instead of a phone with touchscreen 

It still has a touch screen

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Sure, Android dominates the market through sheer numbers. But the whole Android as an ecosystem is an absolute clusterfuck just like Linux is. 300 billion distros, variants lots of proprietary crap bolted on top, crap updating process with months of waiting for Google to release new version and then months of waiting for individual vendors to release updates for their own devices and poor longevity of updates for individual devices. It's not hard to claim the crown through raw numbers just because anyone can stick Android into anything, even a god damn toaster, but if it's actually good, that's something entirely different. And I can tell you straight away that it's just incomparable to iOS. iOS is this more strictly moderated ecosystem, but it's super unified, especially thanks to long software support, meaning devices in a very wide timeframe have same latest version and not like with Android where entire ecosystem is totally fragmented and plagued by ancient outdated versions. When update comes out it comes out for all devices at the same time.

 

Samsung sort of got my attention with 3 years of updates, but I'm guessing it's only on their flagships. Which means I'd have to buy at least their cheapest Galaxy S model to have that. You feel less pressured by time it takes for vendor to release OS updates if you just have longer term support for it. Where 2 years go by so fast. Though I need to check policies how they word them. Coz there is a difference between 3 years of updates and then you miss the 3rd year by a bit for new major Android version or guaranteed 3 major versions. Which would mean guaranteed 3 versions, whatever time they'd arrive. But I just prefer Apple's handling of updates. You just get every new major update for at least 5 versions. And that's that. No buts or ifs and no asterisks anywhere. The sooner Android vendors adopt this, the higher the chance they'll have more loyal customers who stick with their products instead of jumping between vendors every 2 years.

It's not hard to have the OS come out at the same time when you only have a handful of devices. You can't really compare the two; they're entirely different entities.

 

They didn't promise 3 years of updates. They promised 3 generations of updates. So, this year counts as one, and then you get two more. It's not that much better than they already had. Though, with the work Google has been doing on update packages, it should be a lot easier for companies to release them. I don't think Android vendors really have a problem when it comes to update length, if people were that upset about it they'd have changed by now.

 

[divito]

On 8/21/2020 at 12:31 AM, DrMacintosh said:

Lol, why. Nobody likes physical keyboards. They don't help you type on a phone and they take up screen space. 

False. If there was a Priv with better specs and possibly a removable battery, I'd still be using mine. As much as I like the P30 Pro for its camera and EMUI's BB10-like gestures, typing on a touchscreen sucks.

Outside of my Privs being harder to use due to Android updates, and declining battery, the only reason I was okay with switching was because Blackberry released their suite of apps (mainly, Hub). 

 

TCL did alright with the BB name, but it's not going to be the same as the true thing, and the same is probably the case for this. I will be keeping an eye out for it regardless.