Vulture takes BlackBerry's Passport through customs

Are you using it right?

"It's quite handy to tip the device 45 degrees when reading a web page, and use the QWERTY area for scrolling"

Shouldn't that be rotate it by 90 degrees?

Also not sure why the Paratek antenna would change the volume of the phone? Can't you just increase the volume if it sounding a "little quiet", or is the Z30 speaker better quality?

I have the passport myself, I too wish it had the function 4 line of keyboard, but it's still much better than virtual keyboards, as I don't have to keep lifting my fingers off the screen to see the keyboard, or even look at the phone when typing and talking to someone. Took a week but now quite used to the keyboard, I miss inputting numbers via keyboard and the virtual keyboard for that is on the wrong side imo.

Good

I really hope this saves Blackberry. Android is boring the pants off me, and I fancy a change.

Keyboard won't be a gamechanger for BB

Not because it's not any good, but because if it is other people will copy it. It might be a gamechanger for phones but not BB specifically. Everyone (except iOS) has Swype now. Microkia and Android models with such things can no doubt appear easily enough for those who want them.

So, interesting but flawed then.

Such a shame. I still yearn for a good side-slide keyboard like my sadly deceased Moto Milestone had. For all the marketing BS about it making the phone "Too thick" I can't imagine who it is that's picking up a phone and thinking "God, I wish this were thinner". Now, _narrower_ I can understand, because you can't wrap your hand around it. _Shorter_ makes sense, because otherwise you end up with nasty hacks like the iOS tap to shunt downwards... but thinner? Once you're down around the 12 - 15mm mark it really doesn't matter any more. It's already thin enough!

Using a phone one-handed

I don't get this problem. The only time I use it one-handed is when I am making a call.

The one-handed thing seems to be done by smartphone zombies, whom I despise anyway.

Pretty sure that amazon is blacklisting BB phones for some of the app functionality. It's not possible to use the instant video streaming from inside their app.

A nice in-depth review, given me enough of a nudge to get one of these (not that it needed much). I like the idea of rotating it -90° and using the keypad as a scroll for website viewing or pdf / ebook reading.

Headset

The obvious thing for makers of giant phones to do is incorporate an earpad/bonephone thing thatbparks in the phone to recharge, but can become earhung for conversation.

And yes, I have proposed this more than once.

This fone is...

...funked up and I must simply have it. Must. Must. Must.

I am off to clap like Michael Sheen in the 3rd Twiglet film...

der!

> If it's just a PDA, I wondered, why include a cellular chipset at all?

Same reason I tether my netbook and used to have a Vodafone Mobile Connect card in my portable. In fact the very reason for having a smartphone at all, rather than a disconnected PDA.

I have never wanted a mobile phone, only ever a wirelessly connected pocket sized computer. The ability to make calls as well is entirely incidental.

-A.

Best of both worlds

Unfortunately for BB it looks to me as if, once I get 10.3.1 and Blend, the combination of a one handed operation phone (Q10) and Blend running on an Android tablet is going to be the best possible combination. It's a pity the Playbook was so premature, a modern version with half the weight and twice the resolution, acting as a big screen when needed, would have really done the job.

Surely you are taking the phone through...

Passport control or immigration and not through customs. You don't need a passport to get through customs.

> The only time I use it one-handed is when I am making a call.

Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?

Good article, but a few corrections...

* The frame is stainless steel, not aluminum.

* There is a _swipe_ gesture to go between messages. Use a mirrored 'L' gesture to go to the next newer message:

......^

......|

o--->

or make the vertical part of the swipe downwards to go to the next older message.

* When composing an email, it is not necessary to touch the screen as much as you might think.

'c' to compose.

use the appropriate keyboard letter shortcut to choose the email account you want to use.

simply start typing to select the recipient. Hit <enter> after each recipient.

Hit <enter> to go to (or bypass) the CC: field

Hit <enter> to get to the subject field

Hit <enter> to get to, and begin typing in the text field.

When you've composed and completed your email, reach, for the first time, to the screen, and tap the 'Send' button on the screen.

* While tapping on the screen doesn't wake the phone (as you say) (arguably a good thing, as it prevents pocket dialing and messaging), a simple swipe up from the bottom of the screen does wake the phone. Once you've done it a few times, it seems simple and elegant. A side benefit is that if you swipe up, but don't lift your finger from the screen, you can quickly "peek" at the lock screen notifications, then swipe back DOWN the screen (again, without lifting your finger) and the display automatically blanks. This is great for surreptitious peeks while in a meeting, if you don't want a shoulder surfer gazing at your content, or just to save battery power.

Shift and Function

While there isn't much you could do if you have an odd case of weird casing, such as typing out a javaCamelCaseFunction(), the autocorrect should hopefully get the capitalizations right.

For symbols, swipe down on the physical keyboard, which gives you the symbol virtual keyboard. Note that they map to the 3 rows, and you could hit the physical keys to enter the matching symbols.

Is the touch enabled keyboard good for placing the caret somewhere in a body of text?

The reviewer didn't answer this, hopefully because the new touch qwerty keyboard makes it as easy to place the caret somewhere into position in a body of text as did the old trackpad on the old Bolds.

The was removed in the Q5 and caused all sorts of grief as The Register pointed out: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/10/blackberry_q5_review/

When I got my Galaxy Note 2 with its large screen I imagined tapping in long posts (like this one). In reality the inability of placing the caret back in a body of text to edit it made this too painful. We've got the scrolling ability of a mouse with touchscreens, but not the pointing ability (yet).

I definitely think four rows of keys would have been the way to go. Stick the blackberry logo on the top of the device on the back (like Apple does). Then you'd get a decent width spacebar and function keys.

The next Q10/Z3 iPhone alike from blackberry could or should have a home button on the foot of the device, and it could have the functionality of the old Bold trackpads when typing with the virtual keyboard onscreen (as well as fingerprint ID etc).

Also I don't know how hard it would be in practice, but rather than edge backlighting the keyboard with white LEDS how about having a blue and white LED under each key, with the white LED lighting up the main functions of the keyboard, and the blue LEDs in the top left corner lighting up the alternate keyboard accessed by pressing the function key.

Many critics are starting to realize how much potential BB10 has. It has matured so fast and BlackBerry claims it's just the beginning. Getting my Passport tomorrow. Thanks for the review.

There's clearly some bright and intelligent thinking at BB that didnt get culled or run off to the competitors.

This is an interesting but flawed product from a much leaner company who are smart enough to realise that emulating their rivals is not more commercially viable than creating something unique like this.

Could prove a great live 'test' product, which will lend it's most successful ideas into a more universal form factor (ie narrower) coupled to fully mature OS.

Good luck, BB, there's still room for you at the table.

I'm not sure why everybody and his dog insists on including the word "flawed" everywhere you look. Every product is flawed in some way, otherwise there wouldn't be so much choice on the market, there would be no point.

10.3 improvements over 10.2

Nice to see mention of the LED colours, but does it also re-introduce the auto power off-on timer, the ability for alarms to work when the phone is off and the phonetic non-latin keyboard layouts?

Missed Trick

The physical keyboard - They should have put an e-ink display underneath the keys which changed from the letters to numbers and symbols by pressing say the shift key