Bucket Tech: Blackberry Passport

Surprisingly, the Canadian manufacturer is still around and hasn't filed for bankruptcy, whats even more surprising is that they're still allowed to make phones but the biggest surprise of them all is that their latest offering is actually quite good, in fact its more than good as it matches and beats most of the top smart phones in the market right now. The only problem with it is that it looks like a freaken tile!

It's called the Passport, because its the same size and shape as a passport in Canada/ USA. It adopts touch screen functionality and Blackbery's trust worthy QWERTY keyboard that made the brand so famous in the early 2000's. This phone is being marked as a turning point for the company as it is aimed at up class business people who need something versatile and smart enough to do things that you can only do on a PC, such as multi page spreadsheets, etc. But we've heard that before from the company, their Z10 (which I have) supposed to be the device that turned things around for them but with it having to use data and not their RIM server which incorporated BIS, people were not too keen and opted for other brands

Now I know what you're thinking, its a Blackbery and it's bound to give you endless shit after 1 year and that damn clock of death will show up sometime in its life span but here's the thing. After the success with the ranges of chat phones, they didn't really do much to improve on it but after the knock they took, they did have to reinvent the wheel. Although the Z10 didn't prove to be the market changer they had hoped it to be, it became the platform to develop from. The Z10 gave birth to BB10 OS which I must admit had it's flaws at first but after the last few updates, the OS is practically faultless. The Passport comes with the latest OS 10.3 which is custom made for the Passport. 

I said the phone matches and in some cases is better than some of the phones offered on the market today, how? Well to start of with, its running a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip set which is the best on the market with a Quad-core 2.26GHz Krait 400 CPU with 3 gigs of ram! Basically you're sitting with the V12 of processing plants when it comes to hand held devices. With this much ram and processing speeds, there shouldn't be a reason for the phone to run slow at all, even with bloatware. 

Memory wise, it has on board 32gig with MicroSD up to 128gig. The Passport comes with a 13 mega pixel primary camera with auto focus and optical image stabilizer. If the camera is anything like the Z10, its bound to be great. Secondary front facing camera is 2 mega pixel, again not bad. 

Cosmetic wise, the phone looks weird, the 4.5 inch square screen with the keyboard below is a first.. It will take a while to get used to a square phone but functionality wise, what is has on paper makes it a game changing phone for the company. Whether people will take to it is another story, the company already has so much bad reputation but like Apple there are some BB loyalist and some of the old users might get drawn back because of the keyboard but for me they're still playing catch up. In terms of quality of product, I think its great but in terms of things like apps for the phone, they going to need to do a lot of convincing to developers to make them create their app for Blackberry devices. It will be interesting to see how this one does as it really is a great phone but how the market will react to it remains to be seen.

Staying on the Dark Side

So on Saturday I bit the bullet, I got the new BlackBerry Z10 smart phone. My cellphone contract was due for upgrade since December and I delayed my renewal, pondering which mobile device I should get. Studying the various deals and devices, seeing which fitted my profile the most and I made my decision. Now one would think after having a BlackBerry for little over 2 years, I would not make the same mistake again but I beg to differ. I had the BlackBerry Bold 9700, which in my honest opinion is one of the best devices made by the company. It was the perfect size, it looked stunning, its features were great but it lacked processing speed big time! The first year I had it, it was fine and worked perfectly, then the dreaded clock started showing up and the general crap followed, phone freezing, restarts on its own and eventually the battery gave in. By the end I was so frustrated with it, I wanted to throw it far away from me.

Now after hearing that you'd think I'd never go for a BlackBerry again right? Well, I'm that guy who decided to give them a second chance, you see like I said in my post a few years ago, I'm not taking sides. To me there is no "Team BlackBerry" or "Team Apple", I like good devices irrespective of whom makes them. The Samsung Galaxy S3 is one of the best devices on the market but apart from is bulky design, I know alot of people who have it and it just seems too delicate for my line of work. The last thing I want is for me to drop the phone and the screen stops working, then having to send it in for 2 weeks to repair. Yes that happened to someone at work. The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is probably the best phone out at the moment but have you seen the size of that thing?! it will never fit into your pocket!

So realistically I only had 2 options, the iPhone 5 or the BlackBerry Z10. Just a quick look up at the specs and you'll see that the BB edges the iPhone in most departments but there is a risk involved. Over the years there have been hardly any complaints from iPhone users but BB's have had endless, so it hasn't got the best of reputations but it has a chance to prove us wrong. When I got the phone, the first thing I noticed there was no home button, in fact there are no buttons on the screen. Apart from the power button and volume controls, there isn't anything else. Everything is touch orientated, so that did take a while to get used to (when I say a while, I mean about an hour). Different way of swiping the screen triggers different things. The screen itself is a beauty, boasting 768 x 1280 resolution and clarity to rival the Samsung S3 it really is a joy to look at. The touch screen is very responsive and quite a pleasure to use,  even typing can be done with ease. Once you master the hub and the menu's the phone is a breeze to use.

Z10's interface is very user friendly, its the layout is very similar to the iPhone but has its own uniqueness with the BlackBerry Hub. The App Store, or "BlackBerry World" is being populated on a daily basis with new and exciting applications. I've downloaded about 15 so far which are great. The phone came preloaded with a few which included your key social media ones such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare. All apps work well but I have picked up a few glitches on the Twitter App which Im sure will be rectified. 

The disappointing thing for now is that I have to wait till March for WhatsApp as their developers haven't released a version for the Z10 as yet. Also just like iTunes you can now purchase music from BB World, the prices are very similar to iTunes, with a single costing R8.99 and an album R94.99. The Camera, finally a decent one for BlackBerry! I'll be honest I haven't played around with it alot but the quality is brilliant, the features are great and 1080 recording! yes please!

Now with the new BlackBerry 10 range it was announced that BIS will fall away seeing that the OS needed a faster network to operate on, thus making you buy data for it. The package I took was the TopUp 200 from MTN which costs R409 per month for 24 months. It includes R200 airtime and 250mb data. I'm new to this data thing so I have no idea if 250mb will be sufficient for me, I will however be making use of Wifi where ever possible as I don't want to take the risk. BIS in general is rumoured to be being shut down permanently in June after BlackBerry purchased RIM and made the decision, this will affect ALL BlackBerry users. Now I'm not quite sure whats going to happen to all those who have taken out contracts which included BIS but I know MTN will be releasing custom BlackBerry deals for their customers. Its yet to be seen if BBM will remain as unlimited data since hardly much gets used by the service. To end off, BlackBerry has an certain future going forward, they were slack in the past but with the 10 series its looking bright but will it be enough to convince everyone else?

Blackberry 10

January 30th will see the global launch of the Blackberry 10 series smart phones. Much has been said about this device over the past year and how it would compare to its major rivals as many of the current Blackberry devices hardly hold a flame to whats out there in the market. I've owned a Blackberry for the past 2 years now, the 9700 Bold to be exact, honestly I think its one of the best phones made. The size, shape, design and capabilities of it is brilliant. Downside to the phone is obviously the battery life but ask any Blackberry user and they would tell you the same thing, another major downfall is the memory, not the SD card but the cache, the phone gets remarkably slow if accessing many applications, then the dreaded clock pops up not allowing you to do anything until it processes what needs to be done.

Blackberry's holding company RIM (Research In Motion) took a major hit in the markets last year especially in Europe and the USA. The advantage Blackberry had with its BIS service almost became null and void since data prices were dropped dramatically, allowing users to purchase other smart phones. Blackberry still did well in regions that still have high data prices, South Africa included but seeing that that was no longer a major draw card, something had to change.

With the 10 series it seems that this change has come and in a big way! No longer will having BBM be a stand out feature of the phone  and I'm hoping they've at least fixed up the processing speed problem, the last thing people would want is a slow phone, especially with Samsung, Apple and Nokia all entering the market with super fast processors and operating systems.

I had the opportunity to look at the Blackberry Z10 Alpha version, the size was similar to the iPhone5 and the OS was the one they used on the Playbook. The developer that was using it said the phone was pretty good but battery life was an issue, there has been a Beta release which differed a bit from the Alpha seeing an increase in size, so maybe a bigger battery?

Blackberry Z10 and X10

There are two phones in the 10 series being launched, the Z10 which is the flagship. A full touch screen phone with all the bells and whistles to compete with the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy's and the X10 which is a half and half, well more like 3/5th's and 2/5th's. The X10 is similar to the 9900 where it has both touch screen and a keypad facility. I like that they still keeping that trend as some people prefer using the keypad to type instead of the touchscreen.

Samsung Galaxy S3, Blackberry Z10 Alpha, iPhone 4

 There are many videos online with reviews on the phone itself and so far it looks rather promising, many seem to think this will be Blackberry's "last hurrah" but if it can capture the market like it did before, how can it be the end? I have spoken to many Apple and Andriod enthusiasts, they all had good things to say about the phone but obviously in an indirect way, so generally speaking we have quite the phone on the way. I've been holding out on renewing my contract purely because I want to get this phone. Not to say I am a Blackberry fan boy, for a person that averages a gig a month on data, BIS comes really handy, especially with data prices in our country! Roll on January 30th and hopefully early release dates for the phone.