Reply With QuoteYeah, it's definitely a rerun of Novell, complete with the administrators who swear that there's no way anyone could possible run an equivalent network on the competition's tools, despite ample evidence they are.Originally Posted by BaconTastesGood
Is there a decent android phone with the same form factor as the traditional blackberry? If my father-in-law is any indication, a lot of older blackberry users aren't going to want to switch to a touch screen, but they'd probably be ok learning a new device with a similar hardware layout.
Yeah, it's definitely a rerun of Novell, complete with the administrators who swear that there's no way anyone could possible run an equivalent network on the competition's tools, despite ample evidence they are.
HTC ChaCha has a similar layout but I can't tell you anything else about the phone.
What about something with a slide out keyboard? I think somebody (Verizon?) had an Android phone that looked kind of like a BB, but I'll be damned if I can remember.
HTC has a billion models, one of them has a keyboard.
Whether or not they have a keyboard, though, they'll also have a touchscreen.
Yeah, I guess it was almost a rhetorical question. If I was a handset manufacturer, I'd have a team specifically designed at poaching blackberry users, maybe even try to develop on of those UI customization layers to make the transition easier, etc.
For the record, my father-in-law tried a slide out keyboard, but hated it. He didn't like having to open it up every time he typed anything. I don't know if it's something he legitimately didn't like, or hated just because it was different though. I think the key concavity might've bothered him too, although he didn't express it in those terms.
Completely agree.
Funny this thread should pop back up, as I just had a conversation here at work about RIM and Blackberry.
Right now we have maybe 8 people still using a Blackberry. Everyone else in our 50+ person firm has bought either a Droid or an iPhone in the past couple of years. Outside of replacements for existing Blackberry users I've seen nobody that has purchased a new Blackberry or moved from Droid/iPhone over to Blackberry.
Because our users all own their own phones and pay their own bills (no firm cell phones here), we've been using BIS through Exchange to route email. I've got the free Blackberry Enterprise Server, and it was on my list of projects for 2012, but now I'm thinking that might be foolish. Why go through all the trouble of installing and configuring BES Express (which would then put it's hooks into my Exchange install), only to support a dwindling number of users? That's a lot of time, effort and risk for little reward.
The only real reason I wanted to move my guys from BIS to BES Express was the added feature of being able to reach out remotely and wipe a Blackberry if it was stolen or lost. Maybe there is a third-party solution out there that would do this for me so I could avoid BES Express altogether? Of course I could always just tell my remaining holdouts to move to iPhone or Droid, but these are attorneys, you can't tell them anything...
Droid Pro.
The thing is, the way you really poach Blackberry users is by making awesome phones. Most of the people who've left Blackberry aren't doing it because they found another phone that's basically like a Blackberry; they're doing it because they found something that's way better.
Also, your dad won't believe this for a while, but virtual keyboards are actually better than hard ones. It took me some time to accept it, after having three hard-keyboard phones, but it's clearly true.
DISAGREE!
RIM is rotting from within.
RIM's plan is that better marketing in 2012 will fix their woes
Last edited by rei; 12-16-2011 at 10:00 AM.
Ditto.
Yeah, sorry but I disagree as well. I've used a virtual keyboard for over a year and never liked it as much as an actual keyboard.
The Galaxy Txt is pretty much a carbon copy of the BB. It has a touchscreen as well. I almost got this one instead of my Galaxy Plus but I figured I should give the whole touchscreen approach a whirl first.
I'm pretty sure that phones like this will still be around the next time I get a phone. RIM not so much.
I curse Novell every time I get a user request, "Yeah, can you restore this file? It's on S:\Bob's Files"
WHAT THE FUCK IS THE S: DRIVE, BOB?
I'd love to hear the logic behind this.
Well, just looking at the images of the phones above, I'd say that one advantage is that a virtual keyboard is only there when you need it.
There's a ton of wasted space on those 2 phones that could be used for your touchscreen. Instead it's a keyboard that may or may not be used all that often depending on your habits.
Virtual keyboards require no physical space and moving parts, so allow the phone to be smaller and sturdier. They work in both portrait and landscape mode, so if you're reading/viewing something in a preferred orientation, you don't need to flip the phone around if you want to start typing. They are context aware, so if you're entering a number, they can give you a numeric keypad; if you're entering a URL, they can give you a ".com" key, and so on. They have autocomplete, so that if you're typing something like "autocomplete", you probably don't have to hit more than five letters before you can just tap the word you're looking for. They can work in different ways, so if you prefer Swype or Swiftkey or whatever, you can choose the implementation that best fits your way of interacting with the device.
Whereas the advantage of hard keyboards is that it's slightly harder to mistype a letter (though it still obviously happens), and the tactile feedback is slightly more natural than the touch keyboard's haptic response.
Learning to use a touch keyboard properly -- not worrying too much about pinpoint accuracy, and trusting the phone to figure out that "nonlry" is "monkey"; keeping an eye on the autocomplete list so you can tap it and select the best choice well before you're done with a word (or so that you can override its interpretation when it thinks it knows something it doesn't) -- takes some time, and some of those things are implementation dependent (HTC's Sense keyboard is much, much better than iOS in how it handles autocomplete/autocorrect, for instance). But I find it easier to type faster on a virtual keyboard than a physical one, after some retraining.
Except most touch phones aren't actually smaller or sturdier. I've dropped my BB several times without a single issue and I've seen what happens to iPhones when dropped.
Except you probably want to type in landscape mode and if whatever you were doing was in portrait mode you pretty much have to change it. Most devices with physical keyboards tend not to alter the orientation at all, so this is a non-issue.They work in both portrait and landscape mode, so if you're reading/viewing something in a preferred orientation, you don't need to flip the phone around if you want to start typing.
Pretty much all of this is done on devices with physical keyboards also.They are context aware, so if you're entering a number, they can give you a numeric keypad; if you're entering a URL, they can give you a ".com" key, and so on. They have autocomplete, so that if you're typing something like "autocomplete", you probably don't have to hit more than five letters before you can just tap the word you're looking for.
I have the HTC Arrive, and love the slide out keyboard. I use the Virtual keyboard for text messages, but if I need to type more than 10-15 words, an actual keyboard is much better (at least for me).
Yeah, as much as I like Swype on my Evo, the hardware keyboard on my old Samsung Rant was actually a lot easier to use. I hardly ever looked at the screen when I was texting with that phone because I knew what keys I was hitting. I could type faster than the phone could update the display.
I've tried SwiftKey on my Evo but I can't stand the hunt and peck approach since I can't feel what keys I'm on. My attention ends up divided between which keys I'm hitting and the auto-correct list, whereas with Swype I can just be in the general area and it does a pretty good job of guessing what I mean which allows me to focus on the output.
The problem with a Blackberry-like Android phone is that hardly any apps would work for it because they're all based on the typical smartphone screen. I would love to see an Android version of this though:
Hope hotlinking works!
I can't blind type on a virtual keyboard, which I can do quite well on a physical one. That said, I'm perfectly fine with having a virtual only keyboard these days, but I wouldn't call it superior by any means, it's just acceptable.
Poor Rim:
http://gizmodo.com/5869240/rim-has-1...ana-truck-stopLast Thursday, a truck carrying 22 pallets of BlackBerry PlayBooks — that's about 5,000 units — was stolen from a truck stop in Indiana, report The Verge, while the driver was busy, uh, eating. There was no tracking device on the vehicle, so that's pretty much it: they're gone.
Poor thief.
Luckily, they were returned with a note of apology the next day.
Actually I believe it was a complaint, not an apology.
You guys looking for a droid with keyboard or any kind of phone may want to try GSMArena phone finder.
The search engine allows great customization, the database contains lots of phones, the site provides in depth reviews.
On screen keyboards can't compare with good mechanical ones, I used the Nokia E71 and it was great. Still I ordered a Galaxy S Plus as my new phone, the big screen is too convenient and it was a good deal at (250€ limited time offer, sold out on the first day!)
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