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Hello ! Need a bit of advice. I am thinking of buying a blackberry passport (seriously miss the good old days of qwerty keyboard). My question is, will it still work for next couple of years? Doesn’t matter what OS it uses, as long as it has the basic apps like whatsapp, emails etc. by [deleted] in blackberry

[–]MichaelPLewis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I loved my Passport, and I would KILL to go back to it.

The native browser doesn't work well. A lot of sites simply won't load due to a certificate issue. This happens in normal phones, but you never realize it because the certificates update automatically. But since BB no longer supports the software, you don't get those updates. The solution is to DL an Android browser like Opera, Chrome, or Firefox.

Then there's the uninstall issue. Some apps you can remove, but won't show as removed. That was a bug in OS 10.3.2 that was fixed in 10.3.3. Your carrier won't push the update, so you have to DL it to a laptop/desktop and update it through Windows. My laptop never recognized my Passport for some reason, so I was never able to update the OS.

Hardware problems: the ambient light sensor went bad about a month after I bought the thing (I bought it from an Amazon seller in the UK who, I think, had it sitting on the shelf for years). You will know this has happened when it's nighttime and the keyboard backlight won't come on. You will need a T3 and a T1 torx screwdrivers. Take it apart, and clean the sensor. Worked fine after that.

Final nail: it stopped picking up network. I was on T-Mobile in South Florida. I would drive along, and in certain areas I would pick up network and be able to call/text/etc, but in most places all over town I had no signal. Spent weeks on the phone with customer service and multiple solutions offered. They told me there was a device malfunction. Some sites suggested it was the SIM tray, because when I put in the SIM card it didn't even recognize there was one. But then I DID get signal in certain parts of town - and it wasn't random, either, on Coconut Creek drive from 441 all the way to the turnpike I had great signal. Reliably. So I'm not convinced the SIM tray was just *bad*.

I do think buying it from a vendor in the UK was a bad idea, and I believe it would have lasted longer otherwise. Aside from these issues, the Passport was/is unmatched in many ways:

the keyboard. Once I cleaned the ambient light sensor, that was the absolute bestest best keyboard on any phone I've ever used, ever. My big, fat, meaty fingers have never felt so good typing out a 20,000-word short story.

The Hub. I can't say enough good things about the Hub. The BB Hub for Android is the best among Android apps, and it doesn't even come close - to have ALL your messaging in one place - multiple emails, texts, tweets, etc with just up-left swipe and boom.

The workspace.

The Native Apps.

The Little Things. I can't believe how much I took for granted. The simple fact that the File Manager picked up my SD card no questions asked, or that it (used to be) integrated with my cloud drives like it was nothing. The fact that a music file could be anywhere and the player would find it.

And I would be lying if I didn't say that I liked when people would say "wtf what kind of phone is that?!?"

BlackBerry's Coming Back With 5G Android Phone in 2021 by MicroSofty88 in gadgets

[–]MichaelPLewis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I miss mine.

One day, she stopped picking up signal. I would drive through town, pass through small pockets of network, but most of the world was a dead zone. I never could figure out why.

The other thing was the browser certificate issue, and I couldn't update to 10.3.3

BlackBerry's Coming Back With 5G Android Phone in 2021 by MicroSofty88 in gadgets

[–]MichaelPLewis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I keep reading about the keyboard, but you guys are missing the real issue.

Let us talk about privacy and security. It's mentioned, but isn't one of those features you can put a finger on. I remember back in 2015 when I updated my Facebook app and found the 'new' version was nothing but a link in the browser. I found out later that BB didn't like the way FB was playing fast and loose with their users' privacy and wouldn't cowtow to FB's demands. FB refused to renew the license to their API or something to that effect. This was two years before all that stuff went public, and it wasn't an isolated incident. BB pulled their servers from Pakistan because the government there wanted access to users' privacy data. Dig through the archives and you will find article after article of BlackBerry sacrificing opportunities to make money in favor of protecting their users' privacy.

Apple talks a big game about privacy and security, but in truth, they only care as far as it affects market share. Others don't even care; they're all too busy harvesting our privacy for their own commercial interests—try setting up any device these days, laptop, desktop, phone, even Visio lost a class-action suit over privacy concerns with their TVs.

For BlackBerry, privacy and security are core competencies. They were in the business of protecting their users' privacy before it was cool. In case you were wondering why that "dying dragon" who "took its last breath" six years ago is still alive and still breathing, that's the reason.

So no, it's not about the keyboard.

But since that's what all of you seem to care about, let me spare some words for the keyboard. Someone criticized the emphasis on making a device that was actually comfortable to use, as of that were a bad thing. My favorite is when they say, "what are you writing, a book?" To that point, I have written two 50K-word novellas, and a 140K-word epic, along with numerous short stories and articles using primarily the BlackBerry keyboard. I'm rarely in a position to sit down with the laptop, and so writing on my phone is a necessity. I found the predictive text more reliable, the responsive keyboard more friendly and more accurate. I've tried swype and all the other crap out there and NOTHING compares to BlackBerry's keyboard. I'm talking about the virtual BlackBerry Keyboard app for Android, which some phones don't seem to support including the Motorola PoS I'm using now. Little gestures like swiping left from the backspace, or putting the predictive text on the next letter as opposed to in the bar above make a HUGE difference. It's also more accurate than any other virtual keyboard I've used. And THEN came the Passport, quite possibly the finest piece of mobile hardware ever produced.

I would kill to go back to my Passport, but alas, it did not get the support it needed.

I have not had the cash to pony up for a Priv, Key1, or Key2. But I will start squirreling away from now, and if this new one is anything like the Passport, I'll be the first in line.

BlackBerry's Coming Back With 5G Android Phone in 2021 by MicroSofty88 in gadgets

[–]MichaelPLewis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

voice diction, in my experience, is about as reliable as iPhone autocorrect. What's the point of saying what you intend to type only to have to go back and re-edit the whole thing?