Recently my mobile contract expired and I could choose a new phone. Although I personally have been using android phones for the last 5 years or so, I think I have a pretty good view on what is available on the smartphone market. I have professional experience with iphones multiple android phone brands and different windows phone nokias. Both windows phone and Iphone are Just not my cup of tea, windows mostly because the lack of apps, Iphone mostly because of the closed nature of their platform and the IMHO high prices.
The reason I did not buy another android phone is because I wanted, no needed a physical keyboard.
Apparently, except from some shady low end devices from 2012 or 2013 there are no more android devices released with physical keyboards.
So why did I not buy a BlackBerry earlier?
In my honest opinion BlackBerries software and especially their app platform has been crappy for very long. However since the release of BlackBerry OS 10.2 their phones are compatible with most android apps and there are easy ways of side loading those.
Since even talking about BlackBerry is causing some people to frown these days I actually took a lot of time researching to make sure it was a wise choice.
But after talking to some other BlackBerry users and checking multiple reviews on youtube I decided to do it
What i have noticed so far:
Pros
- Google play store and therefore all of its apps can be sideloaded fairly easily
- Excellent battery life for a smartphone
- BB OS10 is stable as a rock compared to android and even IOS (didn’t reboot my Blackberry for over a month still fast and stable)
- good, simple interface
- typing on a real keyboard
- Fast native browser
- Blackberry hub (didn’t think I needed it, but its actually very smart)
- Good camera(never having to film holding your phone sideways :p)
- Very sturdy phone
Cons
- Not all android apps work(as expected)
- The square screen Does impact the multimedia experience i was used from big displays(for me not a showstopper i barely whatch videos on my phone anyway)
- If you open up to much apps it gets slower(more than the latest android or ios phones)
