[mmrasheed]

I attended one of their Blackberry 10 jam sessions in 2012. While having a conversation with one of their managers, he was emphasizing on the virtual keyboard in Z10 over and over as if that was the magic sauce of a successful smartphone. What I realized later, the physical keyboard was really the magic sauce of blackberry phones. And even though they were stepping into the virtual keyboard era, it was very hard for them to come out of the shadow of their golden time.

Apparently the failure of Blackberry 10 devices has proven that keyboard is not the magic sauce of a successful smartphone anymore.

[bbsuxnblows2]

BB can bog off. They chose their customers - the carriers, over the poor end users. I made the fatal mistake of buying one of their unlocked devices. I always bought unlocked devices, as, I want to choose the settings, not get a locked down set of options the networks prefers. But BB? no, insert a SIM into one of their unlocked devices, and it then subsets the options for those it has agreed up front with the carrier.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Never again BB.

[bane]

I have a couple friends who refuse to give up their blackberries because of the physical keyboard. On the recent news of BB as a company going down they simply went to the local phone store and bought several "backup" blackberries in case the one they're using dies. That way they can continue to use it even if the company is dead.

My mom has a flipphone with a qwerty keyboard on it she uses for texting, and despite having an iPhone 4 sitting in a box for a year, hasn't bothered to activate it and use it since she likes her keyboard.

It's kind of mindboggling, but there really are consumers out there like that and BB as a brand is built around that idea.

The problem is that they needed to be willing to disappoint those customers in order to get into the larger market of people who don't give so much of a shit about.