When I first saw the leaked photos of the Blackberry slider that eventually was named the Priv I thought to myself, if that phone turns out to be any good at all I'm getting one. I've never owned/used any Blackberry device but I was nostalgic for the physical keyboards of my Treos and Palm Pre and thought the Priv design looked great.
After reading Russell's review Thursday night (and a few others for comparisons sake), I decided I'd take the plunge and check it out. I hopped on AT&T's site and ordered one for next day pickup at the Chicago Michigan Ave store by my office. Apparently it was a good thing I did it when I did, when I went in at noon Friday to pick up the phone I had to wait 20 minutes because they had actually had to go to the other AT&T store down the street to get mine as they were already out (so basically they sold my pre-ordered phone to someone off the street when they opened at 10 AM - nice).
So, what's the experience been like for someone who knows literally
nothing about the Blackberry software experience? First off, it turns out there's a learning curve here with the keyboard that I didn't expect. Not that its essentially anything different than other physical keyboards I've used, but its funny after several years of using soft keyboards like Swiftkey how you get the muscle memory for the punctuation shortcut key - the first time I tried to hit a question mark on the Priv physical keyboard I locked up because my normal gesture of course wasn't available. Now I know it's an alt-key, but I'm old (52) and my close-up vision isn't what it used to be, and it turns out those tiny physical keys are kind of hard for me to make out when I don't have my reading glasses on (the soft keyboard has much larger depictions of the keys). Just something I hadn't thought of.
Also this may by typical for Blackberry users, but for me the alt and shift keys on the physical keyboard are on the opposite spots of where I would expect them. I keep hitting the alt key because its where I naturally expect the shift key. I think I've figured out why the keyboard is laid out like that: most experienced Blackberry keyboard users probably never use the shift key since all you have to do is long-press the letter key and you get a cap automatically. This is actually a cool feature but it's going to take some "retraining" time on my part to make this a natural input mechanism. But if you do your caps that way, then the alt key is really handy where Blackberry put it as you're going to use it way more than the shift key.
I like some of the other shortcut features on the physical keyboard as well, once you learn they're there - I wish there had been a real "manual" on the phone or in the box for us first time users, but I'm finding lots of good stuff on the Blackberry Priv support website.
One thing that initially was driving me crazy was trying to the the cursor control via the physical keyboard capacitive features to work. While the scrolling function works fine, I couldn't get the double-tap function to control the cursor to work at all, and was beginning to think my Priv was defective somehow. Turns out its an issue with Hangouts, which initially was the only thing I was typing in. The only way I can get cursor control while composing a Hangouts text is to actually touch the text area on the screen; then I can scroll the cursor around. I tried it in Evernote and it worked exactly as Russell described it in the review (big relief!), and actually works incredibly well, I prefer it immensely over the long-press and drag on the screen method. Now it just needs to get fixed in Hangouts
Note that I can't get swipe-left to delete to work either in Hangouts, but it works everywhere else I've tried it.
I can see myself using the physical keyboard for replying to work emails or typing longer notes in Evernote, but honestly I'm shocked how good the Blackberry soft keyboard is. Its method of text selection by popping word suggestions over the next letter in the word your typing is brilliant. I haven't even bothered to switch over to Swiftkey even thought it's loaded.
One thing that no one seems to get right in my experience (besides Motorola) is the initial download/transfer of apps. When I upgraded from my Moto X Pure Edition 2014 to my Moto X Pure Edition 2015 I was stunned to see it copied over all of my home screens
exactly as I had them on the 2014 phone. I was hoping for a similar experience with the Priv and even tried the Blackberry transfer program, but it was lame as it basically transfers everything via Google Drive and takes forever, vs. just setting up a peer-to-peer wifi connection and transfering directly between the two devices. I'm still setting up my home screens.
I am re-thinking them however due to some of the cool software tricks of the Priv, particularly the pop-up widgets which are fantastic. I'm basically opting in to all Blackberry "things" (except BBM - I've never used it, no one I know uses it, so why start now?) to give them a fair shot and see if the way they work will really make a difference in my workflow. So far the pop-up widgets are a winner (where they make sense, like Calendar, Pod Catcher, Twitter Mentions), the Blackberry Hub is interesting (although I wish the envelope icons would indicate the account color vs. just that little line on the left side), and I have no idea if I'm really going to use the productivity center. I turned on
hold to stay awake but I haven't noticed it make a difference at all, the screen will still go off after the set time even if I'm holding it.
Overall I like the launcher/app drawer, but am disappointed that if I reboot the device I lose "OK Google" until I've manually launched it once again from the search bar so the OS can cache it. And the power key being on the left side is driving me insane - I keep hitting the volume up button to try and turn on/off the screen. Also the power button is in a bad spot for me when taking pictures, I tend to put my thumb right where it is to support the phone in landscape mode.
Speaking of the camera, it seems fine, slow with the flash/low light as people have said, however I've had it completely lose pictures, meaning I take one, see the preview, take another, take another, and the middle one never actually gets saved. Happened twice last night, which is pretty frustrating. I also don't like how the lens is setup, it "stretches anything in the farther edges of the screen away from the center, so if you're taking a group shot the faces at the edge of your picture are distorted, or if you take a 4:3 picture in portrait mode (to get a full-length picture of someone, for example) they are stretched at the top (their head!) and bottom. I've noticed similar behavior on other phones (my Sony Z3 Compact does this too in certain modes) so its not totally surprising, but unwanted none the less.
I tried the picture password and think its a really cool idea, but honestly its quicker to type in a PIN than hunt for my number and then drag it around and precisely place it where it needs to go.
The wireless charging location is in the lower third of the phone which is unfortunate, since it will work with my LG WCP-700 charging pads that I used with my old Nexus phones but you have to place the Priv high on it so it covers the notification LEDs. The Priv will also charge with the old Nexus "ball" Qi charger, but it really isn't practical as it has to sit so high up on it that the base becomes unstable. The newer Nexus Qi charger (the small square one) doesn't seem to work at all with the Priv, but it does magnetically connect to it and when it does it turns the Priv display on - not sure what's going on there. If I end up sticking with the Priv I'll probably look to see if there's an official Blackberry charging pad.
Which will probably happen, because the Priv is really growing on me. Its a tad wider than I would have liked, but it still feels good in the hand and I really like the look of it. The bottom speaker is plenty loud, but I am concerned that the earpiece max volume seemed low to me on the few calls I've had (that could just be getting used to where to place the phone up to my ear, however). I also really like the charge indicator that runs up the side of the screen. This week I'll be checking out its Bluetooth capabilities, it will need to connect to my LG headphones without "skipping" when in my front pants pocket as I walk the mile from home to work - something that the current Moto X has no trouble with but the iPhone 6s is abysmal at (that's my company/work phone and it's getting replaced with a Verizon Droid Turbo 2 on Monday - a long, strange story in its own right).
To sum it up, so far so good, and it gets better as I learn the intricacies and shortcuts of the device.
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