BlackBerry not Dead Yet

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
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I would have to say that I was not sure that BlackBerry was still even alive, not that I have kept up with it much. But it would seem that BlackBerry is very much in the mix when it comes to Asia, in terms of licensing its tech to reach 1.5B potential users in India.


We are licensing our device software and brand assets to Optiemus, who will, in turn, design, manufacture, sell, promote, and support BlackBerry-branded devices throughout India and neighboring markets, including Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Together, that encompasses nearly 1.5 billion people, most of whom have never owned a smartphone before. BlackBerry will maintain security on those devices through regular updates.
 
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Ah Blackberry. They're the AOL and Yahoo of mobile phones.

I'm surprised they're still around. I thought they were being bought out.
 
They've got some life left. They've been moving more to software for a while now. BBM has turned into a pile of advertising garbage but it may do alright in emerging markets along with BB branded phones. Regardless I don't see them going anywhere for another couple years at least.
 
I look forward to another Blackberry. Have bought and am trying android M. Only issue I have so far is all the junk apps I had to delete or disable. I've always liked BB quality. If their new phones produced by third parties have the same quality, I'm in for their next upgrade. If their quality goes down, well what can I say.
 
Not surprised i'm still using a Blackberry Z30 for a work phone and nothing beats it.

I''ve used Andriod and Iphones and for emails and texting the berry still wins.

I'm in IT and I actually do support for all these mobile devices at work so this isn't just my opinion.
 
Comixbooks said:
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/blackberry-pulls-life-support-once-114626703.html

Blackberry pulls support on devices.
Click to expand...
It's a bit sad, but at the same time... BlackBerry brought this on itself through hubris and inertia. It was one of the many companies that underestimated Apple, to start... I still remember how the company dismissed the iPhone in 2007 and was more interested in pleasing carriers (look at how data-efficient our phones are!) than customers. And the sheer reluctance to admit that it needed a total, touch-focused overhaul of its platform. BlackBerry OS should've been available in 2010 or even 2009, not 2013!

And then there was the never-ending wave of missteps, like the Storm, the PlayBook (it couldn't natively check email at first!), chaining the company's platforms to Adobe Flash... it went on. BlackBerry was (and is) a stuffy enterprise company that didn't stand a chance against consumer-focused companies like Apple and Google. In a sense, I'm glad the modern company has ditched phones in favor of services; it's at least being honest about its ambitions.
 
Comixbooks said:
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/blackberry-pulls-life-support-once-114626703.html

Blackberry pulls support on devices.
Click to expand...
*sigh*
BB10 is still 1 of the best, if not the best, mobile OS's I've ever used.

Aurelius said:
BlackBerry was (and is) a stuffy enterprise company that didn't stand a chance against consumer-focused companies like Apple and Google. In a sense, I'm glad the modern company has ditched phones in favor of services; it's at least being honest about its ambitions.
Click to expand...
While BB10 was still security focused, it had nothing to do with the other vendors being more consumer-focused and everything to do with developers creating apps for the platform, which happened to WebOS and Windows Phone and had nothing to do with the vendor's approach. As standard mobile operating systems, Android and iOS had nothing on those 3 but what they did have were app developers, which is why Apple and Android happily pilfered features from them as they went under and user fawned over "innovation." (remember everyone talking about iOS gestures when the iPhone X came out and won't even get started on Windows mobile ambitions? lol) But you last sentence is 100% on the mark. A lot of people are more attached to the service which takes us back to the reason the others failed.

It is what it is...
 
jahsoul said:
*sigh*
BB10 is still 1 of the best, if not the best, mobile OS's I've ever used.


While BB10 was still security focused, it had nothing to do with the other vendors being more consumer-focused and everything to do with developers creating apps for the platform, which happened to WebOS and Windows Phone and had nothing to do with the vendor's approach. As standard mobile operating systems, Android and iOS had nothing on those 3 but what they did have were app developers, which is why Apple and Android happily pilfered features from them as they went under and user fawned over "innovation." (remember everyone talking about iOS gestures when the iPhone X came out and won't even get started on Windows mobile ambitions? lol) But you last sentence is 100% on the mark. A lot of people are more attached to the service which takes us back to the reason the others failed.

It is what it is...
Click to expand...

Software aside, BB did not innovate when they had the chance. They had time to react, just chose to remain steadfast on old designs. And before long they were obsolete.
 
jahsoul said:
While BB10 was still security focused, it had nothing to do with the other vendors being more consumer-focused and everything to do with developers creating apps for the platform, which happened to WebOS and Windows Phone and had nothing to do with the vendor's approach. As standard mobile operating systems, Android and iOS had nothing on those 3 but what they did have were app developers, which is why Apple and Android happily pilfered features from them as they went under and user fawned over "innovation." (remember everyone talking about iOS gestures when the iPhone X came out and won't even get started on Windows mobile ambitions? lol) But you last sentence is 100% on the mark. A lot of people are more attached to the service which takes us back to the reason the others failed.

It is what it is...
Click to expand...
I'm sorry, but there's some revisionist history here.

Being consumer-focused meant everything. The iPhone (and later Android) was a big deal precisely because its interface and features were aimed at everyday people, not the enterprise or power users. BlackBerry (then RIM) was obsessed with supporting businesses and keeping carriers happy, and treated features like "a real web browser" and "media playback" as strange concepts that it had to reluctantly adopt. It took the company six years after the iPhone to release BB10, and the handful of nice touches in the OS didn't change that it was still focused mainly on business. BlackBerry just didn't seem to know how smartphone use was evolving.

And you're looking at webOS and Windows Phone through some rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. WebOS' card-based multitasking was outstanding, and Palm was forward-thinking in areas like wireless charging. But webOS also leaned too much on the web, and Palm was still attached to hardware keyboards even when it was clear all-touch was what people wanted (although the Pixi's keyboard worked far better than it had any right to do). And Windows Phone? Honestly, fans oversell it. While I did enjoy using it, live tiles weren't that useful (you often had to wait until an icon 'flipped' to see relevant info), and the People hub wasn't exactly the revolution Microsoft claimed it was. The OS was perpetually behind Android and iOS on key features (no copy-paste in WP7, for example) despite the resources Microsoft could easily have brought to bear, and was sometimes focused more on looking pretty than on providing the information you needed to know.

The best way of summarizing this: BlackBerry, Palm, Microsoft and (since it was a factor as well) Nokia were all guilty of "too little, too late." Palm was smart enough to recognize the urgency, but didn't hit it out of the park like it needed to. The others, however? They first deluded themselves that they didn't have to change, that people would come crawling back; then they realized Apple and Google had some good ideas, and rushed half-hearted efforts to market (BlackBerry Storm, Windows Mobile 6.5, XpressMusic 5800); then they finally turned up with their intended answers, but either misjudged the market or just didn't do enough to court everyday people. And BlackBerry most definitely misjudged the market.
 
Aurelius said:
I'm sorry, but there's some revisionist history here.

Being consumer-focused meant everything. The iPhone (and later Android) was a big deal precisely because its interface and features were aimed at everyday people, not the enterprise or power users. BlackBerry (then RIM) was obsessed with supporting businesses and keeping carriers happy, and treated features like "a real web browser" and "media playback" as strange concepts that it had to reluctantly adopt. It took the company six years after the iPhone to release BB10, and the handful of nice touches in the OS didn't change that it was still focused mainly on business. BlackBerry just didn't seem to know how smartphone use was evolving.

And you're looking at webOS and Windows Phone through some rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. WebOS' card-based multitasking was outstanding, and Palm was forward-thinking in areas like wireless charging. But webOS also leaned too much on the web, and Palm was still attached to hardware keyboards even when it was clear all-touch was what people wanted (although the Pixi's keyboard worked far better than it had any right to do). And Windows Phone? Honestly, fans oversell it. While I did enjoy using it, live tiles weren't that useful (you often had to wait until an icon 'flipped' to see relevant info), and the People hub wasn't exactly the revolution Microsoft claimed it was. The OS was perpetually behind Android and iOS on key features (no copy-paste in WP7, for example) despite the resources Microsoft could easily have brought to bear, and was sometimes focused more on looking pretty than on providing the information you needed to know.

The best way of summarizing this: BlackBerry, Palm, Microsoft and (since it was a factor as well) Nokia were all guilty of "too little, too late." Palm was smart enough to recognize the urgency, but didn't hit it out of the park like it needed to. The others, however? They first deluded themselves that they didn't have to change, that people would come crawling back; then they realized Apple and Google had some good ideas, and rushed half-hearted efforts to market (BlackBerry Storm, Windows Mobile 6.5, XpressMusic 5800); then they finally turned up with their intended answers, but either misjudged the market or just didn't do enough to court everyday people. And BlackBerry most definitely misjudged the market.
Click to expand...

back in the day I owned a pair of entry level windows phones as cheap music players. The one thing they did best at the time was that the base OS and bundled applications ran acceptably on $100 hardware when Android was still a miserable experience below $200.
 
DanNeely said:
back in the day I owned a pair of entry level windows phones as cheap music players. The one thing they did best at the time was that the base OS and bundled applications ran acceptably on $100 hardware when Android was still a miserable experience below $200.
Click to expand...
That's true... you could get a low-end Lumia and still feel like the core OS ran as well as on a flagship. Just not enough to win people over.
 
In my shipyard days the World Tour 9630 was my goto non camera device. It did everything I needed (Email, physical keyboard, great battery life)
I miss those days haha.
 
Yeah, and I like some of their current products (the concept, anyway). It's a shame none are available at retail in the US market.
 
Aurelius said:
That's true... you could get a low-end Lumia and still feel like the core OS ran as well as on a flagship. Just not enough to win people over.
Click to expand...
Yeah, equal parts too many missing apps, and hardware fast enough to run Android acceptably well getting cheaper. (The latter also killed off Mozillas quixotic FirefoxOS project; although the performance work they did trying to get it running on even lower end hardware was largely backfed into the main browser so it wasn't a total loss.)
 
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Jelly said:
In my shipyard days the World Tour 9630 was my goto non camera device. It did everything I needed (Email, physical keyboard, great battery life)
I miss those days haha.
Click to expand...
I miss my HTC Wizard, Kaiser, Hermes, and Rhodium for the keyboards. Rhodium had THE BEST keyboard idc what anyone says. it had space between the buttons and as a large man this helped a lot. It took a long time for me to get any good at the infernal soft keyboards.
 
Aurelius said:
In a sense, I'm glad the modern company has ditched phones in favor of services; it's at least being honest about its ambitions.
Click to expand...
A year or two ago I would've said that Blackberry transitioning to services only was a great move, now I think they may be in the process of botching that too.

We use one of their enterprise products at work for device management. In the past year said software has had two still unresolved security vulnerabilities that required us to sort out ourselves and and provide our own work-around mitigations. Just sloppy on their part. Worse still, the products are not cheap the support has been going downhill generally - something escalated to even a mid tier support rep still lands you at an outsourced technician with dubious understanding of the software or resolving problems.

/rant
 
jmilcher said:
Software aside, BB did not innovate when they had the chance. They had time to react, just chose to remain steadfast on old designs. And before long they were obsolete.
Click to expand...
100% agree. RIM focused too much on enterprise and their classis designs/OS and waited too late to bring BB10 to the market. Same is 100% true with Windows and them going from 6.5 > 7 > 8

Aurelius said:
I'm sorry, but there's some revisionist history here.

Being consumer-focused meant everything. The iPhone (and later Android) was a big deal precisely because its interface and features were aimed at everyday people, not the enterprise or power users. BlackBerry (then RIM) was obsessed with supporting businesses and keeping carriers happy, and treated features like "a real web browser" and "media playback" as strange concepts that it had to reluctantly adopt. It took the company six years after the iPhone to release BB10, and the handful of nice touches in the OS didn't change that it was still focused mainly on business. BlackBerry just didn't seem to know how smartphone use was evolving.
Click to expand...
There is no revisionism in my view of BB10. It wanted to be the best of both worlds and that's why they put the focus on Blackberry Balance and other built in behind the scene things that a consumer wouldn't see or care about but it was lovely for enterprises managing BYOD environments. There was nothing about BB10 that just screamed "enterprise." The closest thing that you could say was 3 device (Q, Classic, and Passport) had hardware keyboards but actually using the device, it worked like a regular consumer device. There were things that marked the doom of BB10 but it wasn't the software. The 3 things that sunk BB10 was
*Being late to the party
*Anyone other than iOS or Android devices needing to be perfect out of the gate
AND THE BIGGEST
*Lack of apps

Aurelius said:
And you're looking at webOS and Windows Phone through some rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. WebOS' card-based multitasking was outstanding, and Palm was forward-thinking in areas like wireless charging. But webOS also leaned too much on the web, and Palm was still attached to hardware keyboards even when it was clear all-touch was what people wanted (although the Pixi's keyboard worked far better than it had any right to do). And Windows Phone? Honestly, fans oversell it. While I did enjoy using it, live tiles weren't that useful (you often had to wait until an icon 'flipped' to see relevant info), and the People hub wasn't exactly the revolution Microsoft claimed it was. The OS was perpetually behind Android and iOS on key features (no copy-paste in WP7, for example) despite the resources Microsoft could easily have brought to bear, and was sometimes focused more on looking pretty than on providing the information you needed to know.
Click to expand...
WebOS could work perfectly fine without the internet, as it was pushing for HTML5 apps. But we can't talk about Palm leaning too much on the web while admitting that nearly everything done on a mobile device is tied to a service. You are absolutely right about WP7, but that was just Microsoft putting lipstick on Windows Mobile 6.5 (and it's funny you say that you use copy and paste as an example when Windows Mobile 6.5 had copy and paste and iOS didn't get it until 3.0). Windows Mobile getting the NT kernel was a game changer and was going to be the bridge between mobile and personal computers but we know how that went. All of their built-ins (especially after buying Nokia) were way better than their counters parts. (Outlook for mail, Office and native Windows app, Here Maps, camera and camera app, etc.). If you go back and look at the flagship devices from non Android or iOS devices, the main thing that they lamented was the lack of apps and we can't say that they didn't try.

Aurelius said:
The best way of summarizing this: BlackBerry, Palm, Microsoft and (since it was a factor as well) Nokia were all guilty of "too little, too late." Palm was smart enough to recognize the urgency, but didn't hit it out of the park like it needed to. The others, however? They first deluded themselves that they didn't have to change, that people would come crawling back; then they realized Apple and Google had some good ideas, and rushed half-hearted efforts to market (BlackBerry Storm, Windows Mobile 6.5, XpressMusic 5800); then they finally turned up with their intended answers, but either misjudged the market or just didn't do enough to court everyday people. And BlackBerry most definitely misjudged the market.
Click to expand...
For the most part, I agree with this but to say that the OS didn't do enough to court the everyday person wouldn't be totally correct because their ad budgets might say something totally different. At the end of the day, apps (and not the vendors) determined the victors of the mobile OS duopoly we find ourselves in today.

Aurelius said:
That's true... you could get a low-end Lumia and still feel like the core OS ran as well as on a flagship. Just not enough to win people over.
Click to expand...
And we all know the reason why...lol.
 
jahsoul said:
There is no revisionism in my view of BB10. It wanted to be the best of both worlds and that's why they put the focus on Blackberry Balance and other built in behind the scene things that a consumer wouldn't see or care about but it was lovely for enterprises managing BYOD environments. There was nothing about BB10 that just screamed "enterprise." The closest thing that you could say was 3 device (Q, Classic, and Passport) had hardware keyboards but actually using the device, it worked like a regular consumer device. There were things that marked the doom of BB10 but it wasn't the software. The 3 things that sunk BB10 was
*Being late to the party
*Anyone other than iOS or Android devices needing to be perfect out of the gate
AND THE BIGGEST
*Lack of apps
Click to expand...

I don't disagree with those core reasonings, but I would say that BlackBerry Balance, the hub and other features reflected the company's continued focus on business — it was trying to go the extra mile for corporate buyers where Apple and Google did little to split personal and work content at the time. I'd also note that half of BB10 phones were keyboarded models. That, to me, suggests BlackBerry was still more interested in the corporate crowd (or at least, what it thought that crowd wanted) than anything. That and the extremely utilitarian designs...

jahsoul said:
WebOS could work perfectly fine without the internet, as it was pushing for HTML5 apps. But we can't talk about Palm leaning too much on the web while admitting that nearly everything done on a mobile device is tied to a service. You are absolutely right about WP7, but that was just Microsoft putting lipstick on Windows Mobile 6.5 (and it's funny you say that you use copy and paste as an example when Windows Mobile 6.5 had copy and paste and iOS didn't get it until 3.0). Windows Mobile getting the NT kernel was a game changer and was going to be the bridge between mobile and personal computers but we know how that went. All of their built-ins (especially after buying Nokia) were way better than their counters parts. (Outlook for mail, Office and native Windows app, Here Maps, camera and camera app, etc.). If you go back and look at the flagship devices from non Android or iOS devices, the main thing that they lamented was the lack of apps and we can't say that they didn't try.
Click to expand...
I should clarify that I was thinking more about web technology than the literal internet. HTML5 could only do so much compared to native code, at least at the time. Some of the apps I tried did feel a bit limited. That and I have flashbacks to trying Firefox OS... web apps made more sense there.

I'd have to disagree on Here Maps, at least. Google Maps got out to a pretty strong start, and if nothing else had the most (and most useful) info. For the longest time I couldn't even use Here Maps for mass transit in my city.
 
Aurelius said:
I don't disagree with those core reasonings, but I would say that BlackBerry Balance, the hub and other features reflected the company's continued focus on business — it was trying to go the extra mile for corporate buyers where Apple and Google did little to split personal and work content at the time. I'd also note that half of BB10 phones were keyboarded models. That, to me, suggests BlackBerry was still more interested in the corporate crowd (or at least, what it thought that crowd wanted) than anything. That and the extremely utilitarian designs...


I should clarify that I was thinking more about web technology than the literal internet. HTML5 could only do so much compared to native code, at least at the time. Some of the apps I tried did feel a bit limited. That and I have flashbacks to trying Firefox OS... web apps made more sense there.

I'd have to disagree on Here Maps, at least. Google Maps got out to a pretty strong start, and if nothing else had the most (and most useful) info. For the longest time I couldn't even use Here Maps for mass transit in my city.
Click to expand...
Windows Phones had a native transit app (Here Transit). I still got my Nokia 1520 Bumblebee stashed away somewhere.... :( Probably the best phone (from a build and feature standpoint) I've ever used.
 
I still use the BlackBerry hub on my android devices. Integrates everything I use well. BB10 while critically late to the party was the best mobile OS I've used. It was very fluid and seamless to move around in a day and age where apple was still using a home button. Nowadays you can setup android with gestures to function as it did back then. What I do hate though with android is having to load custom ROMs to get rid of all the tracking and advertising crap baked in. Battery life always seemed to be better on BB10/QNX than on androids too.

Shame really, BB did have a lot of innovative features that ended up in both android and iphone as well as modern messenger services now.
 
I still miss the old blackberry physical keyboards. I used to send email on my phone far more when I had a blackberry with a physical keyboard than I do now with an iPhone or Android device. That said, the ability to have all that screen space for viewing attachments or other web based media definitely trumps the loss of the keyboard. I'll take my current OnePlus 8 Pro any day of the week over my old BB. But, that keyboard was damned nice. I agree with most that they stuck to their old way of doing things far too long. At the time I agreed with them and scoffed at the iPhone like many people. I really didn't want to give up my BB keyboard back in the day. The change was for the good but I didn't like it at the time and I suspect that BB was just leaning hard on its existing customer base's love of that keyboard.
 
jahsoul said:
Windows Phones had a native transit app (Here Transit). I still got my Nokia 1520 Bumblebee stashed away somewhere.... :( Probably the best phone (from a build and feature standpoint) I've ever used.
Click to expand...
Oh, I know they did — it just took a while to arrive, as I recall, and its data was woefully inadequate compared to Google's (it would miss major routes in my city, for instance).
 
Holy necro on this thread lol. my last post was from 2017!!

I moved off my Blackberry Key one in 2019 still on a Samsung S10 right now.
 
Smashed Ixnay said:
resting

resting right next to LG
Click to expand...
Mind you, LG went out with a bang (the Wing) where BlackBerry left with a whimper (a string of modest phones like the KeyTwo).

Also: I find it very appropriate that we're having this conversation on the 15th anniversary of the iPhone introduction, the device that started BlackBerry's decline. I still find it wild that the BlackBerry CEOs' first thoughts were not "we need to rethink everything," but rather "there's no way they can do that."
 
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I know I went through at least 5 different BB phones from work. That physical keyboard is very much missed for my work emails.

But yeah hubris and management fuckery killed them. Maybe not Commodore level of ineptitude, but definitely in the same ballpark.

And the QNX software... OMG we HATE the stupid Sync OS on my wife's Escape. So poorly designed and so buggy. I cannot tell you how many times the thing freaked out in her car and I had to disconnect the battery to reset it. BS like the rear camera being stuck on all the time, even while driving.... randomly scrambling the presets up for the radio (where the button isn't the channel you want)... to getting stuck in a loop playing audio and can't do anything without turning the car off... AC controls going crazy, it just goes on and on. I don't know if it's Ford or BB's fault.
 
What year is your wife's escape? My 2016, 2018, and 2021 trucks do not do this. Sounds like lemon, flood car or the like.
 
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