It was the inbox that sold me on it. I had to occasionally manually kill background apps; I could feel the phone getting hot in my pocket sometimes, as something burned CPU and battery. It was a bit version-1-point-zero.
But, a good UI, most Android apps worked... but slowly, over time, Whatsapp dropped support, FB Messenger dropped support, and while the Android clients worked, they no longer integrated with the unified inbox, making it all a bit pointless.
For those who never saw it:
BB10 was QNX with a Qt-based GUI on top. It had a global inbox, part of the home screen, and all messages appeared in it. Work emails, personal emails, all chat systems, app notifications -- all in one place, sortable and searchable. It sounds like a lot to deal with but it wasn't; it was much easier than handling notifications and messages on iOS or Android, where they are spread over a dozen different apps.
Android "native" apps are actually Java apps in a customised Java runtime, a modified JVM. This has been completely replaced several times over the lifetime of Android.
BB10 had its own Android-compatible JVM, so Android apps ran on BB10, at peer level with native apps. The big snag was that there were no Google apps, and Android apps assume those are present. So, if an app displays a map, it assumes Google Maps and blindly calls it, and if that app is not there, the exception is unhandled and you get a blank area on screen where the map should be.
Sadly sideloading the Google Apps did not fix this. They worked but they were not where expected, or sandboxed, or something. Some, e.g. Google Translate, worked badly because it assumes an onscreen keyboard but the Blackberries didn't have one because they have permanent hardware keyboards.
I seem to recall that one was fixed down the road and displayed the native map.
> Blackberries didn't have one because they have permanent hardware keyboards
Not the Z10, which was fully touch. This gave a good experience for these Android apps, especially if you sideloaded the Amazon app store and picked from that.
I suspect app developers aren't really a fan of this as half the reason they're building such a tool is to have a branded environment to capture your attention in....
Of course WebOS also died in an ignoble fashion as BB10. Its UI DNA does live on at Google in some ways though as the head of UX at Palm (Mathias Duarte) eventually became VP of design at Google. When Android & iOS eventually rolled out multitasking gestures it looked a lot like WebOS.
The deal that nearly happened between PalmSource and Symbian when Palm was moving to Arm processors is one of the great might-have-beens of the IT industry.
Symbian was a superb OS, with a choice of UIs not of which matched its greatness.
Palm had a very good, widely-loved UI, but a poor kernel underneath.
The combination could have been industry-beating, but the deal never completed.
Now Symbian is FOSS but nobody cares, and PalmOS is buried inside Access Corp, never to be seen again.
I think WebOS survives as the UI of some LG smart TVs...
The software keyboard was incredibly reactive and tactile; I bet QNX played its part on that.
Had to stop using it because of stupid (Android) bank apps deciding to check for root and refused to run.