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Comment by simo_dax | Hacker News Reader

I'm one of those guys, I still use a Q10 (OS10 family) as my daily driver. I felt in love with its ux e.g. the hub which acts both as notification center and timeline, full gesture-based navigation (back in 2013!) and an app permission system which allowed you choose which one should be granted to the app (again, back in 2013! Android had to wait years before this was implemented)

Apps are scarce, many don't work anymore due to obsolescence, but the main ones are there: I mantain a Twitter and a Twitch app, and keep updating them to follow Api changes. Spotify and Whatsapp can be used through the android layer, the native BB maps are still functional. Another nice guy on Crackberry mantains a youtube app.. I feel I can say that if you don't have many requirements it's still a solid phone, it can't do much but what it does it does well.

Also, the privacy is unmatched

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The unified message centre has not yet been topped.

> full gesture-based navigation (back in 2013!)

Only two years behind the N9.

Which also had the unified notification/message centre too.

The N9 was so far ahead of its time it’s not even funny. Easily my favourite phone of all time.

> unified notification/message centre too.

All of which also post-date first Ericsson phones, which UI later was later copied by Nokia, Siemens, and everybody else.

I do remember my R520 from 2001 had something similar.

The N9 was only two years behind the Palm Pre!

Man WebOS was ahead of its time. Palm just couldnt put out a piece of hardware that wasnt riddled with defects.

I guess it lives on in LG TVs but for the year or so before that palm pre broke it was great.

So far ahead it’s actually still a better UX than even today’s iOS, just phenomenally well done.

As a sibling post says - I also still believe its UX and likely current responsiveness is better than anything out there now.

I would probably still use webOS if there was still minimal open source development, some phone to put it on (or I guess I’d be fine getting a Pre 3) and the App Store not being shut down with all apps gone. The homebrew apps weren’t really meant to replace the App Store if I recall.

A world where webOS has 5-10% market share as a stable 3rd place would be amazing.

I've still got a Z22 that I charge once in a while, and it blows me away with how responsive and useful it is.

I'd probably still use it if calendar and notes sync were working. I should investigate...

> Only two years behind the N9.

Symbian still alive![0,1,2] (Not sure about Maemoo/MeeGo)

[0] https://github.com/mrRosset/Symbian-Archive/issues/10

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/symbian/new

[2] https://github.com/search/?o=desc&q=symbian&s=updated&type=R...

A I miss my N9, in fact I would still be using it if the battery hadn't failed suddenly. The story behind axing the N9 still makes me shake my head, how could that have been something else than MS planting a trojan horse at the top of Nokia to take over their mobile business. The incompetence or malice displayed by Elop still makes me shake my head to this day.

Hello fellow q10 fan! Small question: if someone were to start a company to maintain q10 and q20 devices, how valuable would that be to you at a monthly subscription rate?

I do not want to see these devices fall into obsolescence, and they are simple/old enough you could reverse-engineer the parts or get in touch with the asian companies who did some of the production runs for RIM.

I can safely say that you can't make money out of this platform anymore, the user base is just too small. If I had to live with the donations coming from my apps for BB10 well, let's say I would have already starved to death ;)

Not the original poster, but I have a hard time imagining you'd be able to meaningfully maintain the OS and integrated software (e.g. Hub, supported TLS versions for mail, etc.) via "mods" of any kind.

What _might_ be useful and actually possible would be an up-to-date maintained "rebuild" / "rewrite" of the native browser app, since there you can vendor pretty much all the important components you need.

Gosh, how badly I miss my Q10.

Had to switch to major OS because of banking and few other apps.

Every single device since then sucked, including BB Android based crap.

The last time I've something like that was when I switched to 9900

I held on to my Q10 for a long time. That feeling of being able to type text with one hand because of the physical keyboard was so awesome. Alas, I finally had to drop it when an application I basically couldn't live without stopped supporting BB platform and I needed the latest version of that App.

You can install apks on Q10s manually. I did that when WhatsApp was discontinued for BB 5 years back.

Which is your Twitter app? Now that m.twitter.com no longer works in the BB10 browser, I need one.

Bird10! It's open source (https://github.com/SimoDax/Bird10) and you can find it here https://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-10-apps-f274/bird10...

> Also, the privacy is unmatched

Unless nation states or mercs are in your threat model, that is.

You're still gonna be Mossad'ed upon.

Need magic amulets and submarines in that situation.

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf

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