People Keeping BlackBerry Alive

Re:People Keeping BlackBerry Alive by decafninja on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:06PM (#26006645)

Never understood the raves about the keyboard. I've had several PDA or phones with built in keyboard, including multiple Blackberries issued by work. I've detested the typing experience on every one of them. My hands and fingers are pretty small too.

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Re:People Keeping BlackBerry Alive by SamCritch on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @06:50PM (#26008740)

I'm a huge guy (6'5", big frame), with big thumbs, and my Key2 is the fastest, most productive phone I've ever owned (including various Androids and a couple iPhones). I don't mean fast in terms of raw processing power, I mean in terms of getting things done.

You get used to the keyboard fast. It's soooooo accurate, I can touch-type on it (I haven't had to look at the keyboard once whilst typing this comment), and there are loads of shortcuts, like hitting "w" to open WhatsApp or hitting "t" to get to the top of a list of messages in the BlackBerry email app (called "Hub").

Not only that, but it's an Android phone with a touch screen, so I can use any of the apps anyone else uses too.

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Re:People Keeping BlackBerry Alive by O-stevns on Wednesday February 03, 2021 @05:52AM (#26012504)

Nordic user here, love the ability to easily write æøå together with English, as I mix between my native language and English.

Love the tactile feedback, the ability to write without looking at the screen, not being dependant on an aggressive typechecker, having the ability to use the keyboard to scroll, attach shortcuts to keys and much more.

My current phone is a KEY2 and my previous was a Blackberry Z10. My primary use is private usage but text heavy and somewhat work related (via BlackBerry Hub although the android Hub+ app doesn't beat the bb10 gesture experience) but I do also use it for various app stuff (not games). It fits all my needs.

Imo. The touch keyboard interface simply doesn't beat having a physical keyboard. when that's said, having the touchscreen is still nice because games and apps are optimized for such handling but for text I'll keep looking forward to the next BlackBerry with keyboard (a new one is presumably being announced in q1 this year).

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Re:People Keeping BlackBerry Alive by alpaca128 on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:17PM (#26006821)

Meanwhile I have relatively large hands and really fat thumbs, and the Blackberry keyboard is the only phone keyboard I don't hate. The absolutely terrible UX of almost all virtual keyboards is the main reason I rarely use my current Android phone. It feels as bad and imprecise to use as those old laptop touchpads.

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Re:People Keeping BlackBerry Alive by girvo on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @06:53PM (#26008767)

I didn’t mind BlackBerry keyboards (for a while in the early 2010s I had a prepaid blackberry and matching Playbook).

But the Sony Ericsson M600i is still my favourite phone keyboard. A modern device using that dual-key rocker QWERTY would be amazing IMHO.

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