Blackberry's new Passport is unlike any other

in mobile on 2014-09-25 10:06 (#2SWV)

Blackberry has released a phone that either pushes the boundary of phone design in useful ways, or proposes a new and unusable form factor, according to your personal pre-inclination. The Register reviews it and calls it crazy, but full of great ideas. It's square, for one, a radical departure from the candy-bar form factor so prevalent in modern smartphones. It's also sporting improvements to its QNX-based new OS, a great screen, and reportedly a 30 hour battery life. It runs Android apps natively, with no apparent lag or problem. Lastly, the keyboard doubles as a trackpad - something you'll either love or hate. The Guardian takes a look at it here, and offers some other insights. There are some lovely pictures at The Verge, who conclude, by they way that they don't like it.

[Ed. note: Me, I want one.]

As Android sliders get harder to find... (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-09-25 12:55 (#2SXE)

I've been hoping Blackberry would pull something out of the hat, for a while. There's room for 3 major players in the smart phone market, and I'd sure rather have it be Blackberry than Microsoft. They're unlikely to go away entirely, as QNX powers the computers in many cars.

I've never owned one of their phones, myself, but this one has me considering it. Nice and loud speakers, unlike most phones, would get plenty of use from me. I can definitely see the squarer screen making it a lot easier to read web-pages, PDFs, etc. If Android compatibility really works well enough to run all my many apps, like WiFi Analyzer and VX ConnectBot, the transition would be an easy one. The poor security and lack of updates on Android still remains a problem. And most importantly, it's getting hard just to find a decent Android slider on many carriers, so it wouldn't take much to convince me to try a BB.