Blackberry Keyone Review: Part Productivity, Part Nostalgia | Hacker News Reader

Blackberry Keyone Review: Part Productivity, Part Nostalgia

theverge.com

84 pointsrbanffy102 comments

> It was in about the third hour of using the new BlackBerry KeyOne, available for preorder now for $549 unlocked, that I started to question my longtime preference for touchscreen keyboards.

I'm surprised it took that long. Bret Victor explained it best:

I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade. Is that so bad, to dump the tactile for the visual?

Try this: close your eyes and tie your shoelaces. No problem at all, right? Now, how well do you think you could tie your shoes if your arm was asleep? Or even if your fingers were numb? When working with our hands, touch does the driving, and vision helps out from the back seat.

Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It's a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best. And yet, it's the star player in every Vision Of The Future.

http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...

I really hope this is the start of a trend

>Try this: close your eyes and tie your shoelaces. No problem at all, right? Now, how well do you think you could tie your shoes if your arm was asleep? Or even if your fingers were numb? When working with our hands, touch does the driving, and vision helps out from the back seat.

I think this is an awful analogy. I can type just as fast on my touchscreen no problem without looking. The problem with having physical keyboards on a phone is space. You're taking up a solid 1/4th of the weight and bulk of a phone with something that is entirely dedicated to the single purpose of entering text. On top of that keyboards are a vector for dust and moisture to enter, making the phone less durable. There's a reason iPhone is the single greatest selling electronic device in history, and RIM is circling the drain. People want slim, sexy, lightweight touch phones. Not bricks with keyboards.

> People want slim, sexy, lightweight touch phones. Not bricks with keyboards.

I'm 'People' and I don't want that.

You're "person". Sure, I'm being pedantic, but when you take a look at the overall market, the "people" being referenced, they do indeed want that.

Unfortunately I think you're right and not sure why you're downvoted.

Just upvoted him, he's allowed his opinion, even though it conflicts with mine.

I may be a 'person' and not 'people', but imagine if we all had to drive the same car, or live in the same type of houses, just because the majority preferred it that way...

If there is enough of us who want something different that making or providing that thing is viable, then we should be allowed to have it, and have no-one criticise us for that choice. It is after all supposed to be a free world.

Agreed. I use incredibly obscure programming languages, devices, hobby spoken languages, games...in almost everything I do outside the norm, not because I'm trying to be different, but that's what I like. The parent comment is just saying the market (most people) have spoken and we're not it. Just like I doubt you're an avid Java fan on HN (you might be, but I doubt it). The market has spoken on that and Taylor Swift...etc.

Meanwhile I'm an outlier that thinks typing on a Nokia 1100 was more innovative than recreating a typewriter design that goes back to the 1870's

This is a niche phone, if you weren't already aware.

> I can type just as fast on my touchscreen no problem without looking.

either that is an exacerbate lie or you type extremely slow and full of typos when looking.

it's humanly impossible to use a glass screen without looking.

but by all means, if you did develop that skill, please teach the world. you migth even become famous.

(and all BB phones with keyboard of late have the same IPS rating as the iphone. not that anyone care about that)

> it's humanly impossible to use a glass screen without looking.

I disagree. Its pretty easy (with autocorrect), once you've been typing on one for long enough (I've been using an iPhone for about 9 years). After a while it just becomes muscle memory; you memorize where they keys are and press them.

I think what they are saying is not that you can't type without looking at the screen, is that you can't use a touchscreen without glancing it at some time. For example: is the keyboard up? are you on the right app? did you by any chance dismissed the keyboard or is there a modal? You can't infer this type of interaction without looking at the screen. Touching on glass gives you no feedback.

As an anecdote, I have a galaxy note 4 here as my daily driver. The battery has been replaced but still, it doesn't last long. I want my phone to last at least until I get back home, so I decided to change some habits. When I commute to the university, I used spotify to listen to an offline playlist. I decided that listening to music with the smartphone could be replaced with a secondary device. I have a fondness for old minidisc format, so I found my old MD player (a sony mz-r700), recorded my playlists there and started using that while walking. That player has a remote full of buttons, real buttons to control basically all aspects of music playing, from navigation, to volume to anything. With my phone, I would often press play before leaving my building and not interact with it anymore. With the MD player and the remote, I can fiddle with all the controls without ever looking at the player in my pocket or the remote itself. In the end, I use my player features much more than I used the smartphone. I am not only a happier listener but it saves me phone battery.

In conclusion, tactic feedback that allows you to do stuff without requiring visual attention removes friction and encourages interaction. As an exercise to those that find this information disagreable, try typing a novel on a Yoga Book without looking at the screen, it is quite hard. Doing the same on a thinkpad is still hard but it is easier than the yoga book option.

I've been using various models of the SanDisk "Sansa" MP3 player for years for similar reasons. Lets me listen to audiobooks/podcasts all day without wasting phone battery, and the controls I use most often (pause/play, forward, back, volume) are physical and can be located by touch alone. Also, durable enough for use during damp/dirty outdoor activities, and cheap enough not to be a big deal on the rare occasions that I do ruin one. Unfortunately they seem to be on the way out (Audible support for my newest model seems buggy and undocumented, and the SanDisk web site doesn't seem to push/advertise them much any more).

I've been using the clip for years, also. It's basically a much improved Shuffle which doesn't need iTunes, has a minimal screen, good battery life, and does what it needs to do well.

Unfortunately, the manufacturing seems to have gone downhill in the past few years.

I hope another company picks up where they left off about 4 years ago.

The author of this Blackberry review even says that the physical keyboard has not increased his typing speed ability vs a touch screen, it just feels nicer. It's quite well known that a touch screen is just as comparable from a speed perspective.

Nor do I see how memorizing the location of keys would be very difficult.

Ya, I like typing on the iPhone keyboard but the BlackBerry keyboard is very powerful in that it also acts like a ton of shortcut keys that you can use from any application. I think that's actually the more compelling use for the physical keyboard. People who like keyboard shortcuts on their computer might really love keyboard shortcuts on their Android.

This isn't really true. Your sense of proprioception is engaged with physical buttons yet bypassed entirely with touchscreens. You can walk down the street typing without looking at the screen if you have a real physical keyboard. Memorizing... No, you just can't. You can't reliably hit the same key with your thumb or finger (blindfolded) when it's a touchscreen, but you can easily do so with a real keyboard. Physical cues are really important: you can orient with the little bumps on the home row, or find your way from the edge.

This is not going to be a popular statement, but there's a reason why texting while driving is a problem now everyone has a touchscreen keyboard than back when we all had T9 and real buttons.

On a touchscreen you find your way without looking from the edges and corners of the device. You don't need anchor points everywhere.

Violins don't have frets but experts can hit the notes.

I like buttons better too, but there's no need to exaggerate or claim impossibility.

>> Violins don't have frets but experts can hit the notes.

I posit that a fretless violin is more akin to a physical keypad than any traditional touch UI. I'm not a violinist, but I'd imagine these physical subtleties would take the form of neck taper, neck thickness, string pitch, string tension, etc. There's an equivalent feedback loop that stern advocates of the physical keypad simply can't discard, whereas traditional touch UIs are deadly efficient at "quantizing" such physical subtleties away.

As an aside, violinists generally don't have a day-to-day multitasking dilemma, say, serenading while driving.

Johnny Lee best explained[1] that the UX pays a cost whenever a UI fails to capture intent...and it's a cost that we often ignore when adopting new tech. Perhaps this cost may be insignicant to the typical low stakes consumer, but to a professional who spends much time corresponding over mobile, retaining a high level of confidence without visual verification or reducing the average number of errors per stroke or quickly adjusting to a new interface based on its tactile nuances is often all the justification that's needed to make the physical keypad an imperative.

[1] http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2011/07/myth-of-dying-m...

Just consider the difference between a fretted and non-fretted stringed instrument and the analogy is pretty clear.

It absolutely isn't. Sense of touch is very important in fretless instruments, but the real kicker is that you have the infallible feedback mechanism of your ears to help you fine tune pitch by rolling and bending your fingers.

It doesn't compare at all to touchscreen keyboards which have no feedback mechanism at all other than sight.

>> ...there's a reason why texting while driving is a problem now everyone has a touchscreen keyboard than back when we all had T9 and real buttons.

This. Texting while driving is still a risk any way you slice it, but my experience is that it's a manageable one, akin to eating a burger on the road.

I habitually text and drive. It's at least a 45 minute drive to the office on the best traffic-free days. To this day (knock on wood), I have neither been in a texting-induced collision nor can I recall being in any close calls as a consequence of texting. I've never owned a phone which didn't have a physical keypad either, thanks to the market offerings of Palm (if that's any indication of longevity) and BlackBerry. My current phone is a Priv. I feel the most dangerous part of texting on the road with it is the second I have to look down to press send on the touchscreen...it's always at the same position on the screen, but I have to move my right hand out of texting position to reliably touch it, which means I need to look.

>There's a reason iPhone is the single greatest selling electronic device in history,

That reason is called marketing.

There's a reason iPhone is the single greatest selling electronic device in history

That reason might be that, despite its lack of a physical keyboard, the iPhone has enough other outstanding features that users are willing to put up with a shitacular on-screen keyboard with autocorrect that seems to get worse with the passage of time. Or at least that's my reason for continuing to own one.

Does anyone use a Swype style keyboard? I'm much faster with a swype keyboard than with any other type of keyboard, and this is of course impossible without a flat piece is glass.

I'm using it right now. And boy does it suck ass. I mean, the keyboard itself is great. But it takes a long time too load, which I can live with. The ass-sucking part comes from that goddamn "change keyboard" menu. How does it work? Hold it down? Just tap it? I don't get consistent behavior doing either one. That's assuming it even wants to display in the first place. Every time I have to invoke the fucking thing I give serious thought to just uninstalling it.

It's my default keyboard on Android and I experience none of those issues.

Sorry, should have specified iOS. Don't know that it makes a difference, but our two data points say "maybe".

For a more consistent behaviour, I deleted the other default iOS keyboards (in Settings) and just left the swype-style one (Google's now, used Swiftkey before). Occasionally I get an iOS keyboard (without any language) but very rarely, I guess some timeout in opening the swype-style keyboard.

Thanks for the tip, I'll give that a go. I really want to like Swype, but the inconsistent behavior is beginning to break the deal.

> People want slim, sexy, lightweight touch phones. Not bricks with keyboards.

Good bit of weaselwording there... you already assume that the only option for keyboards implies having a brick. Not to mention asserting your own authority about what "people" want.

It's pretty damn naive to think that these design decisions where made with desires and needs of the consumer in mind, instead of with cost cutting for the producer.

But go ahead, brag about how you're good at using poorly designed technology and stop-gap solutions, since this obviously this discussion is totally about you after all /s

I loved keyboards. My last Nokia was the E71/2 (blackberry format) and my first Android the HTC Desire Z (I think Telekom G2 in the US), a fold out keyboard phone.

Why? Because I could perfectly type without looking. But then Swype came around. While swipe-typing had its problems, in the beginning, it quickly matured. Suddenly I could type faster and more correctly without looking at the screen than I ever could with a physical keyboard.

So while I sometimes wished for something like the KeyOne, I'm now very happy with only a touchscreen.

Swipe typing for me has gotten markedly worse this year. I think it's gotten too smart about trying to predict.

I used to use Swiftkey which was amazing. But the more it "learned", the worse the predictions would become (possibly it can't handle me switching between English and German a lot). I replaced it with the google keyboard for now, it's worse than SK at it's best but better on average. If only someone would make a swipe keyboard without any weird emoticon features and instead only some ASCII smileys and text…

I think this is also relevant for VR - now you are touching air and you don't see you actual hands.

Awful analogy.

This reminded me of the astounding UI regression of touch screen interfaces for car audio. Perhaps some readers here will empathize with my following rant.

Before the touch screen based, "Entertainment System" trend started, car audio systems, basic ones at least, had evolved a very efficient interface for adjusting the main parameters a user would need to access.

When I'm listening in the car, in addition to the volume, which is mercifully still adjustable by knob, there are 4 basic parameters I almost always want to adjust: bass, treble, left/right pan, front speaker to back speaker balance.

In the old system, you could adjust these all with a single knob. You would click the volume to cycle through these adjustments. Very fast, all on the same easily accessible knob, tactile feedback on the button presses, and most importantly, you can make adjusts quickly by twisting the knob, and listening to make the adjustment. This twisting motion lets you quickly try different settings to find the right one.

Here's what it takes to make the same 4 settings in my current system.

Locate, visually of course, and press onscreen icon for the "Home" screen.

Locate/Press "settings" icon

Locate/press "Sound" icon. This is a small button, that requires a careful look, and accurate press to hit.

Locate/press "Equalizer" icon. This is a poorly designed icon, in which it is unclear what to actually press, requiring extra attention.

This brings up a five band "graphic EQ" onscreen interface. Now, my goal is to adjust the overall treble and/or bass level.

This has to be done by ear. Each band has a smallish + or - button next to it, which has to be pushed to make the adjustment. The touch screen is also generally not very responsive (it's non-capacitive). So it requires a steady hand, if one is driving, to accurately hit the target.

After a press, there is also a lag before the sound actually changes. To adjust the treble requires targeting four of these little buttons, to adjust the "high band," and the "mid high band" which together comprise the overall "treble" level. The resolution of the gain adjustments is also very low, so fine adjust of the EQ is impossible.

As a small interface win, the bass can be adjusted in exactly the same tedious way, from the same screen. Four non-responsive onscreen buttons, laboriously operated, while looking at the screen.

After the EQ is set, a "back" button must be located, to return to the previous screen. Once there, the button to adjust the panning and speaker button must be located/pressed.

This takes you to a screen with a graph, and a point showing the theoretical current center position of the sound.

There are again buttons to adjust the left/right balance. You have to use the onscreen buttons, the graph is not directly touchable.

The front to back balance is (not so) cleverly split into two components: The "middle" component of the stereo signal, which they label "voice." And the left/right component of the stereo signal, which is labeled "music." (I'm a sound engineer, this is my best guess at what is happening, this type of signal manipulation is common in the audio production world, where it is known as "mid/side" processing. It's a matrix transformation of the left and right signals. I've never seen it implemented in consumer audio before.)

Now, I like to the middle and side components of the stereo signal intact, and not separate them in space, which almost always degrades the sound. So. To adjust the balance between the front and rear speakers requires, again, using four onscreen buttons, and laboriously clicking them, while they jerkily respond to the clicks. To move the balance one tick towards the front speaker, press the "voice" increment button, which will throw the signal total out of whack, until you go to the "music" button, and match the adjustment. Then you can evaluate whether the new position sounds better.

Remember, in the old system, you could simply twist the knob, while listening, and move the sound from front speakers to back speakers. Even on digitally controlled systems, there were usually many more positions to try (finer resolution).

To attempt to make these adjustments while driving is take one's, and others', life into one's hands. I simply have to pull over to make the adjustments. What required eight steps, with a singlae, easy to operate while not looking, knob can now easily require 40-50 clicks on the screen. With no tactile feedback.

The end result is also inferior, as it is simply not possible to try nearly as many different combinations of these four main parameters, which all interact with each other.

Some readers might question why a listener would need to bother with this, and I'm sure that most drives don't bother at all, as the interface is almost unusable.

The reason I like to fuss with these parameters is that I enjoy music, and the car playback system is a highly compromised, and ever changing listening environment.

The speed of the car, the weather, the road conditions, the passengers, all change the perception of sound, so I will tweak, to optimize this limited environment (and usually limited quality system.) In addition, the variation in sound and production values of different songs/albums/artists is exaggerated by the car listening environment.

If your listening to something like Spotify, this variation will make some songs hard to hear clearly.

Interestingly, radio stations employ extreme signal processing to minimize this effect. So listening to music from the radio will be a more consistent experience.

Anyhow, that is my lament. If there is one environment that a touch screen interface should never be used,it is a car.

One factor driving this terrible trend is, of course, the adding of increased functionality to these entertainment systems. This is an inherently challenging problem when it comes to UI, and it seems the designers and engineers have simply given up on designing interfaces that are usable for the given use case. It really blows my mind.

Thanks for reading! I feel better now.

Like the article says: its for a certain niche of people who just get stuff done. I have owned iPhones(6+, SE), Blackberry (9700, Z3, now DTEK60), several Android devices. None of them hold a candle to the 9700 for getting work done. For play its hopeless, but for email, spreadsheets, reviewing docs, it was brilliant because of one single hardware device - the optical mouse 'pad'. I dont understand why other devices cant do something like this (other than patent protection). Life is some much easier when one can navigate quickly without smudging the work, obscuring the work. There is a reason there is a whole bunch of folks out there that like the IBM/Lenovo trackpoint nub (I hate it but others love it). These devices allow a certain style of working that can be productive beyond belief.

But history shows us the spoils dont go to the 'best' as far as consumer devices go. They go to the flashiest, most convenient, lowest resistance (lowest common denominator), that gets enough of everything right to be easy for masses.

iPhones get it right for everything just works and 3 year olds can figure it out. Android is a whole lot better but appeals to the engineer in people - 3 year olds less so. Blackberry is for getting work done or those who communicate in written form far more than anything else. I hope the KeyONE (i like the name because its not boring like 6, 7 or childish like Galaxy, Moto) is a success. Plan to get one near end of the year because i need to break the habit of wishing for progress by buying a new phone phone every 6 months!

For the curious why did i give up on Apple and go back to Blackberry. because iOS would not allow me to set size of system fonts. App vendors decided that everything should be in unreadable 8pt so for a long sighted person that made most apps unusable as my eyes got worse over last year (Im 50+) from programming and aging.

End of rant.

I am really drooling over the OLED iPhone which will supposedly release around the end of the year, but truth be told, I have some reservations for iOS and not being able to change the font size is one of them. I am very tempted by the much better battery life of the Plus iPhones because I am sick of having to optimize my battery usage on my Androids, plus iPhones are objectively quicker at single tasks... but some of the lack of customization is making me hesitate. (Though I do admit, if Apple introduces a dark theme -- and I am 90% sure they will, based on rumours/leaks -- that will seal the deal for me and I'll absolutely get the OLED iPhone.)

As for getting work done on the go, I seriously think a MacBook (the original one from 2015, with the 12" screen) is a much better deal. I can't understand people who need to text 24/7, even if it's for work. And if you really do need to text so much, can't a small laptop like the MacBook or a tablet with a good BT keyboard do a better job? If you're a business person you're already carrying some kind of briefcase or a laptop bag anyway. So if you're on a train, in a car or a bus and if you're not the driver, why not just pull out a laptop or a BT keyboard for a tablet and get your work done even faster?

"The KeyOne is a phone for a very specific person, one that longs for the days when the BlackBerry Bold was the most important device in the office and the majority of business communications happened over email."

Do communications happen over something else now for many/most businesses? Yes, for SOME businesses the majority of business communications happen over something else, but I'm under the impression that for MOST businesses email is still holds the majority of communications still. Am I wrong on that?

Maybe they're just referring to intraoffice communication? Seems these days that's skewing more toward Slack/Hipchat. Business to business, though, I think you're right -- e-mail is still the best.

Except, of course, when dealing with someone who just has to have a muffled GoToMeeting/Join.me conference, and that ends in "I'll send you the details via e-mail" most times as well.

That's what I thought, I don't know that e-mail is still the best, but it's at least what I thought most people at most places still use to do exactly what you described there.

It's not perfect but I do think it's the best for a number of reasons:

It has the lowest barrier of entry (I don't have to train people/myself on how to use the e-mail GUI), don't have to sign up for some new account, don't have to rely on some other company's up-time (or potential dissolution), and don't have to pay a subscription fee.

A company I'm working with now insists on using their Basecamp account as our means of communication and it's certainly less convenient than e-mail would be, and (at least to me) it doesn't provide any features that e-mail doesn't as far as interoffice communication goes.

On that note, i ran into an Android "app" the other day that (ab)used email as the backend for a messaging interface.

Ah, found it:

https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.b44t.messeng...

Professional bloggers often seem out of touch with the rest of the world. They seem to think everybody starts their day out with an hour at Starbucks drinking $5 cups of coffee and replying to tweets, then heads out to the gym to take selfies for an hour before lunch.

Ha! You nearly made me spew my cheap, Maxwell House office coffee all over my keyboard. Not that I'm wasting time on HN at work, I would never do that...

Where do you live that a coffee costs $5? Around here a grande at starbucks costs $2, and even the fanciest of the fancy drinks costs less than $5.

Is your local starbucks charging you 10 bucks for a flat white or something?

Just checked transactions on my credit card. Most of my Starbucks purchases are five dollars and some odd cents. Seems like he nailed it. I'm in Atlanta.

I guess it's not just for single coffee. Either couple of them or sandwiches/croissants.

Here in Switzerland: flat white ~$6, caramel macchiato grande: ~$9.

Where do you live that a coffee costs $5

That really wasn't the point, Captain Pedantic.

But since you asked, a double tall latte at Starbucks here in Seattle costs me about four bucks. Add some sprinkles and syrup, I don't see five dollars being outside the bounds of reality.

The term "chattering classes" came to mind...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattering_classes

That sounds like most iPhone users i see :-)

I long for the days where I could look at my phone, click a few times and put the phone back down again. rather than fingerpeck and frustratingly try to hit backspace to correct a word but instead of backspace you hit either enter or the mic button.

Me too, but I've lost hope. Companies are only interested in selling the next big hit and consumer needs take a back seat 99% of the time.

Plus, natural language processing (talking to your phone) is still in its infancy. Google's voice dictation is alright but makes mistakes often enough to be unusable for me.

I'd buy a phone with a keyboard in a heartbeat, but BlackBerry has these awkwardly shaped keys that never feel right.

I miss the old HTC keyboards, like on my G1 and G2.

God's I miss the G1. That popout keyboard was amazing.

Same. Although the G2 was even nicer, in that the keys were bigger, but you lost the dedicated number row.

I'd honestly be okay with a slab style phone, that's wider than normal, but still fits in the hand, so I can have a solid keyboard.

Something similar to the Peek: https://i2.wp.com/www.amitbhawani.com/blog/wp-content/upload...

Reminds me that Samsung have been offering a keyboard cover of sorts for their recent high end models.

http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/mobile-accessories/phones/g...

Apparently it is not simply a passive device, but one the firmware is aware of when placed above the screen, as the screen actually shrink to account for the area covered by the keyboard.

Edit: That said, i can't help feel the world lost something when the leading light in phone design moved from Europe to USA, and in the process turning every phone into a flat piece of glass.

7 years later and I still miss the slide out keyboard on the original Droid. I've never gotten used to software keyboards and they're an almost daily source of frustration.

It's not exactly what you want, but there's a physical keyboard mod for Moto Z/Play - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keyboard-mod-a-physical-k...

Supposedly it will be available to public in June-July.

I used to love the leyboard in the millestone (droid in US).

It stayed in the back of the screen when not in use, and when needed, you could just use it. Still, I always prefer the ones in the blackberry (or Palm treos for what is worth).

I am a die-hard proper keyboard fan, and I've been waiting for the KeyONE since it was first announced as the Mercury.

All my phones have had keyboards, the last two being the Droid4 and the Blackberry Q5.

I've never been a touchscreen keyboard fan, my fingers are too fat and my nails too long - at speed, the only thing I ever type on them is total gibberish.

I don't care if the KeyONE is underspecced or if the 'media' people don't like it. As long as it runs a mainstream operating system, and the keyboard is at least on par with previous blackberry keyboards - I'll be happy.

However, at $499 the sim-free price is a bit on the high side :(

> I am a die-hard proper keyboard fan, and I've been waiting for the KeyONE since it was first announced as the Mercury.

Mercury sounds like a far better name than KeyONE. KeyONE sounds tacky, not like a corporate executive's phone.

Curious why they changed it. It should be well known as the keyboard device without having to mention 'key' in the name.

Yeah Mercury (and then Rome) were good names for it. KeyONE just... sucks. :(

I have always wanted for Blackberry to put android into the 9700. That would/could be a spectacular success - probably more so than the Q5/Q10. But its only my speculation as I dont have the $ to fund such a venture.

I'm certainly late to the party, but i think i have the last blackberry device I'll ever own in my pocket.

The hardware itself is excellent, I own a priv, and it's literally been driven over.

They have since outsourced their best feature, IMO (now using Chinese manufacturing).

They claim to have the most secure devices on the market, but i haven't had an Android update since February.

Perhaps most egregiously, they shared their BIS private key with the RCMP.

So, they don't care about security, privacy, and now build quality.

I'll buy something else.

odd, since there have been plenty of updates.

I don't know what build quality you were talking about, they weren't exactly known for that. I guess you forgot about dying trackballs, double-typing keyboards and lifting screens.

If your talking about the Priv, then :

Updates: It still gets consistent security updates, as recently as last month.

Build Quality: They already outsourced this a while ago, while maintaining high build quality. (The Priv was designed, but not assembled, by BlackBerry. This KeyOne is also designed, but not manufactured, by BlackBerry). Chinese manufacturing isn't inherently bad -- MacBooks and iPhones get made in China too.

I understand and agree with your concern about the BIS private key, but in terms of execution, BlackBerry really has done as good job with these recent phones.

Updates: I don't know what to tell you. I am running patch version February 5 2017 (While being fully updated).

The Priv was the last device to be assembled by Blackberry. The first device to not be assembled by blackberry was the next phone (DTek50)

>> ...i haven't had an Android update since February.

To be sure, I'm a Priv user and the Android security patch level on my phone is April 1, 2017.

I do miss blackberry keyboards. $549, though, doesn't seem very competitive. Maybe that's just a list price, and actual pricing will be more in line with phones that have similar specs (other than the keyboard) ?

That price sounds pretty normal considering the offering... phones are expensive these days and this isn't a low end device, nor a low end target market (corporate office workers).

A Motorola G5 Plus has the same CPU, same storage, but more RAM, 1920x1080 vs 1620x1080 display, etc.

It's substantially lower in price, at $229.99

I'm no phone expert, but the premium for the keyboard plus a slightly larger battery seems off to me.

I won't disagree that the KeyOne seems expensive. What never seems to get brought up in any conversation that compares the price of devices is the included and future software updates.

I don't know what exactly BlackBerry has committed to in terms of security updates, but if buy this phone and I get very timely security updates for the next 2+ years, that has a lot of value to me.

I thought the price seemed high as well. I assume that they are justifying that with reliability and fit and finish, because at ~$600 they are entering territory dominated by iphones and high end Samsungs.

>> $549, though, doesn't seem very competitive.

Competitive compared to what exactly? The way how I see it, the target market for this device will have two mandatory requirements:

1.) robust physical keypad; and 2.) modern Android OS

All other specs are secondary considerations. In the US, the only this I see this device competing against is BlackBerry's existing product line, in particular, the Priv.

The market of users who absolutely demand a smartphone with physical keypad is surely much smaller than the market of users who would like a physical keypad but are willing to settle for pure capacitive touch UI...which is undoubtedly still smaller than the market of users who couldn't care less. All I see here are market forces at work.

BlackBerry prices come down pretty quickly, and there are always deals to be had. The retail price is really for corporate customers.

The Priv had a higher initial price, but it is now often on sale for $300.

owner of a blackberry priv here.

I can't write without the keyboard anymore.

the phone is garbage. but just being able to do ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v is already enough to make up for all the other bs.

sadly, my next phone will probably be another dumb keyboardless one because the key selection and lack of customization are just not worth having a huge phablet for me.

if it had a tab key. and maybe esc. or heck if it were barelly usable when you select another soft keyboard (e.g. hackers keyboard) then I'd use it even if the form size was a full tablet! but it will completely quit working if you select anything other than the bb soft keyboard. which as you can imagine, is pure shit.

oh, and every update they make it worse. in typical blackberry lack of touch with reality. the last one was that backspace suddenly becomes delete!!! imagine you carefully place the cursor after the second word of a paragraph. hold delete to erase them. and after they are gone, it start deleting the rest of you painfully typed text! and most android apps dont have ctrl+z capabilities.

If you're on Android, install Hacker's Keyboard. All the keys, soft keyboard.

Anysoftkeyboard is perhaps also an option.

https://anysoftkeyboard.github.io/

i even mention it on my message. but as i said, if you have any softkeyboard OTHER than the blackberry crappy one, the physical keyboard won't work!

so either you keep switching soft keyboards every time you open/close the keyboard, or you only use one or another.

I'm looking forward to this indiegogo Moto Z add-on--hopefully it won't be too thick. I kept my Droid 4 for as long as I could...this seems almost as good.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keyboard-mod-a-physical-k...

I love BlackBerry. I bought a Passport just for kicks and have never put a SIM in it. I just like it. I'll probably buy one of these too and just sit it on the desk.

OS 10 Devices don't support TLS 1.2

Hope you don't want to be PCI compliant.

Don't know why i am being downvoted, i guess ill have to elaborate.

The Blackberry Hub in OS 10 does not support TLS 1.2 for email, without a BES policy.

You need a BES server to use TLS 1.2.

I know several Passport owners that basically use them for paper weights as well, because BlackBerry doesnt care.

I have a 6" phablet and I often travel with my "huge" bluetooth keyboard. With connectbot, tmux and vim I have a decent environment for small programming tasks. I can't code without my keyboard. IMHO the strength of Blackberry was its keyboards. When BB has started producing keyboard-less phones, it has killed itself.

They killed themselves when they dragged their feet when the iPhone came along and developed an ecosystem, and went with BB10.

I currently use a bb passport, and look forward to using a KeyOne... when my passport is totally obsolete or broken.

Same here, just with Classic. Sadly it's becoming obsolete pretty quick (Android 4.3 runtime…).

It's an uphill struggle getting Google Play on BB10 devices, and then Messenger and Facebook. I've done it a few times - every time I rebuild my Q5, but it's starting to get really annoying.

I use this for Google Play (and other related Google things) – http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-10-os-f269/cobalts-o...

Never got Mesenger or FB app to work, though. I just use m.facebook.com in a browser.

The version of Messenger which works is:

  com.facebook.orca-25.0.0.17.14-8972666-minAPI14.apk

You'll find it on APK sites (or, I have a copy)

I loved my first blackberry, I think it was the 6710. From there it has all been downhill with possible exception of the Classic. BBRY freaked out when Apple figured out what consumer users want and took over the market. As long as BBRY tries to go head-to-head with Apple / Samsung, they are going to fail.

Are they going head to head with Apple and Samsung? Like they definitely tried that, but this device seems to be moving back to catering to the business person who isn't playing games on their phone or watching videos.

I've had a Blackberry Classic for 2 years now, and I get a lot of flack from friends and family for it... The same people that have their OS lock up constantly, can't hold a charge for a whole day, and get a new phone every year due to planned/unplanned obsolescence.

To be fair, I use iphones and I get ~<2 days of battery and I upgrade once every three years or so.

People love to bash those who aren't in their "club"; you probably are aware it's nothing personal but an instinctive social reaction. I still wouldn't tolerate it however.

Does GPG work in the hub?

Wheres the headphone jack?

It looks to be on the top at the left side

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