BlackBerry's new Motion will move you neither to tears of joy nor sadness BlackBerry's new "Motion" handset is a solid Android with some nice touches that, if it lives up to its battery life promises, will be a solid contender for mid-to-premium handset buyers. The Register got its claws on the phone today at GITEX, the Dubai tech expo where the phone was revealed yesterday. There's nothing …
Have to agree about the lack of USP since the (albeit brief) review to suggest the author struggled to find enough to write an article. I have made use of BB devices for quite some time as I struggle with a virtual keyboard on phones and I currently have a KeyONE which has a physical keyboard.
This may be a niche but it is one which BB/RIM have good background in filling so why fight the full glass slab battle with umpty seven other companies?
At least BB, imperfect though they are, have been reasonably good at getting Android patches out to their customers. Some other manufacturers just don't seem to bother.
So far as USPs are concernced, that alone is about the only thing that would ever convince me to give Android a go.
Hmmm - just announced that nothing before the KeyOne is getting Nougat. Patches on my Priv end next year.
Just hoping MS finally get their act together, but their fabled 'Surface Phone' is starting to look like something that should grace Kick Starter.
"Neffos is owned by networking concern TP-Link, which told The Register it's working to integrate its handsets with its Wi-Fi routers to ensure data flows very swiftly between the two"
That little bit gives me great cause for concern, expect unauthorised telemetry and gaping security holes.
Edit:
However it does come with a compass, so if they can put one in a $100 phone why can't you Motorola put one in a more expensive phone ?
Never mind the security aspects, but if it involves anything outside of standard protocols, consider me fundamentally unimpressed. Faster wi-fi ... as long as you use our routers, our phones, our tablets, etc? **** right off. I'm sick of manufacturers trying to hook people into their little "ecosystems", with features that only work as long as you buy all their kit. My money goes to manufacturers whose gear works best with everybody's kit, and who put there efforts into ecosystem-agnostic improvements, thank you very much.
Faster wi-fi ... as long as you use our routers, our phones, our tablets, etc?
I suspect not, more likely they will share their implementation of 802.11ac firmware with whatever they have in their access points already. Which is standard conforming and works well with all types of devices, nothing proprietary here. However good (or bad) implementation can greatly impact actual achievable throughput and latency, simply because these two are tied to timing, which itself is tied to performance of the code itself (i.e. the standard is quite forgiving because it has to, but the implementation can aim for the best performance)
FWIW I do have some networking kit from TP-Link (e.g. CAP1750 access point, some managed switches, wifi controller etc) and it is good piece of kit - or excellent if you look at the (very small) price tag. They do not spend money on fancy features or loud marketing, and sometimes the hardware may be less robust (looking at old "nano" powerline adapters ...), but it is refreshing compared to Netgear, D-Link, Linksys etc. usual suspects.
why can't you Motorola put one in a more expensive phone ?
Because Lenovo don't want to undermine the more expensive Moto X and Z offerings. It's just the same as car makers option availability - everything is crafted to give a reason to go to the next package up, that way you make the most money.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the EU Moto G's do have a magnetometer chip built in, but disabled at the firmware or driver level.
It's faster to type on a virtual keyboard. Does anyone still use BBM Lol? I just searched for bbm and apparently it means something else on spankwire/xvideos etc.
Assuming this post wasn't a joke....Horses for courses but I find it significantly faster to type on my Blackberry Bold 9700 than any virtual keyboard on any other phone I've got. Yes I and others I know still use BBM partly because it gives a date and time when the message was read. To the best of my knowledge from using Whatsapp it doesn't do that and it's a very handy feature.
It's swings and roundabouts TBH.
I did a head to head with a BB loving friend a couple of years ago. Google's swipe keyboard vs his pointy digits on his BB with its little keyboard.
Result, dead-heat.
We couldn't swap phones to test the results for people using an unfamiliar device however, as my big fingers are completely incompatible with the BB.
He's also spent the last couple of years buying (and then returning) every modern BB offering in a desperate hope it would have a hub that integrates everything he wants, and has all the shortcuts his life depends on. I'm still using the same Nexus 6...
"Although with USB batteries now cheap and chargers omnipresent in vehicles, extra-long battery life seems better suited to the absent-minded than practitioners of any particular vocation"
Perhaps I'm unusual but I hate dragging leads/chargers around just to charge a phone. I want the phone to be live all of the time, so I can plug it in when I notice it's getting low rather than having to plug it in because it'll die on me in the next ten minutes ...battery life should be a boon not a pain.
Oh for an iPhone that didn't need hard-wiring to something for at least a week ... after all, it is supposed to be a *mobile* device.
Don't touch anyone's hip while at the Expo.
At least now its a man dubiously imprisoned instead of women getting jailed for "illicit sex" after reporting being (sometimes gang) raped then maybe the news will finally sink in that Dubai should not be supported by anyone in the West - if tech expos are held there, boycott them.
Its a vile mysoginist place, and as the recent tourist bloke facing jail for brushing someones hip story shows, although women get it far, far worse, any Westerner can fall afoul of their not fit for purpose legal system.
One of (unfortunately quite a few) countries on my boycott for ethical reasons list.
not the only issue w Dubai. they have solid form at exploiting their migrant workers from 3rd world countries. of course, migrants often are contentious and/or vulnerable even in the West, but Dubai goes way beyond low level mistreatment.
probably not quite Saudi level abuse, but then this is a place trying to convince us they're not Saudi Arabia.
best of luck to the gentleman in question getting out of that s***hole.
It looks just like a nasty Sony Xperia
Well, there's not much to choose between any modern smartphone, is there? A thinnish rectangular shape, some sort of bezel, and the nearest to visual variety is maybe a curve to the edges of the screen, or how much of the screen fills the front panel.
I'm not sure BBM is really a huge differentiator, I love my Priv for the keyboard, speedy patching, and the e-mail client, but haven't even signed up for a BBM account - no-one I know has one!
The Priv is a lovely phone, but the lack of a removable battery and of root still rankles, but at the time it was the only keyboard phone. If they insist, like everyone else, in not having a removable battery why don't they make it waterproof?
I'd still rather have an easily swappable battery though, and no, chargers are not the same.
This is a malicious review, In many aspects outperform the expensive i8, and has many specs that equal top notch phones. Some points to bring up: 401 ppi, on a 5.5, 32 GB expandable , 4 GB RAM, water proof and one of the biggest battery Non-removable Li-Ion 4000 mAh.
This is the ideal device for ex BlackBerry users with an iPhone looking to jump ship to a broadly similar UX i.e. vanilla with no toppings, but in a fashion-free shell that you won't need to buy a case for or mind dropping into the side pocket of your rucksack. Have iPhone 6S Plus presently but can pretty much guarantee the Motion will be next.
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