I have a BlackBerry Priv, and you have questions. It's time to do the thing!

AgeT

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Hello!
How well is the touchkeyboard integrated ?
Can you scroll trough the OS with it or only limited places like browser etc.?
 

anon(9304963)

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From the AC review:

"when this phone would expect to see Android 6.0, but the closest thing we got to a solid answer was "sometime after the new year.""

Any idea how long it took BB to "harden" Lollipop?

One thing I got from my years as a Crackberryhead was that RIM was 100% consistent in their complete lack of ability to deliver timely and reliable software updates. It was so bad that a "battery pull" was a totally standard thing to do. Compare that to most any current Android phone. The majority of them, you can't do a battery pull if you wanted to. But, BB software was so bad that virtually every single BB user accepted that routine as perfectly normal.

If BB is now taking builds of Android from Google and going through a process to "harden" the build before it then adds its own "enhancements" to the build, what evidence is there that BB will be any better with the timeliness of its updates, and the reliability, than it ever has been in the past? I have no experience with BB10, but I watched the original development and launch of BB10 and it was clearly no better (on timeliness, anyway) than RIM ever was with previous versions of their software. Has anything been SHOWN to be different more recently?

However long it has taken BB to "harden" Lollipop, why would we think it won't take them even longer to harden Marshmallow? I mean, right now they don't have any previous Android devices to support. Which means, they don't have any portion of their Android development team dealing with doing updates/bug fixes/patches on devices that are already out in the field. They could devote the whole team just to getting this new release ready. Now that they have actually just released it, part of their team is going to have be spending some time doing updates/bug fixes/patches to their software that is (now) out in the field. That takes away from the resources they can use hardening Marshmallow and updating their own modifications and applications. So, all things being equal, in their Android development team, getting Marshmallow hardened and ready for release could easily take longer than it took to get Lollipop hardened. The other parts shouldn't take so long. Updating their code that works on Lollipop to work on Marshmallow shouldn't be a huge effort. But, again RIM's history makes me highly skeptical that BB will be anything like as timely as even the other Android OEMs, like Samsung, HTC, and Motorola.

The quote that BB will have an update to Marshmallow "sometime after the new year" should be a huge red flag to anyone who has paid attention to the history of RIM/Blackberry. I've got a dollar that says it won't be released in Q1 of 2016....

Take it from an "every-phone-BB-made-after-the-Storm" owner :

BBOS AND BB10 = NIGHT AND DAY

BB10 is so smooth and flawless (if you not add android's apps) that iOS and Android should learn from it.

Just saying. From knowing.

That said (cause I knew), I am currently waiting on my PRIV order. Classic's camera didn't cut it, sent back, TiPhone 6 back to Disneyland with its no "add-file-attachment" option.

But don't trust me and me words, find out for yourself. (Before talking about it)
 

raino

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Nov 18, 2012
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I doubt he even checks this thread anymore, but I'll still ask:

Russell, the Priv you say you were able to use on Verizon, what model was it? And which Verizon network were you connected to when you made phone calls and sent SMS (network band# would be great.)
 

kewely098

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am planning on getting a blackberry priv in 2 days time, can you tell me if the phone is good to use? I have been using blackberry all my life
 

anon(55900)

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am planning on getting a blackberry priv in 2 days time, can you tell me if the phone is good to use? I have been using blackberry all my life

They are a solid phone and the OS is mature and operates quite well. I'm using one now, it's my third one so I can attest to it by having owned three without problems. What else do u want to know?
 

Desynthesis

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How is it as a music player?

I'm thinking of picking up a Priv as a replacement for my very long-in-the-tooth Windows Phones I've owned (hence my attraction to the physical keyboard), but at least half my time with my phone, if not more, is spent as a music player. Is there any "Cracking" or other audio snapping when skipping tracks? Buzzing from the audio digitizer? That sort of thing?

Of course, part of that is also dependent on the music player--and I'm barely familiar with the music playing apps on Android.
 

anon(55900)

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How is it as a music player?

I'm thinking of picking up a Priv as a replacement for my very long-in-the-tooth Windows Phones I've owned (hence my attraction to the physical keyboard), but at least half my time with my phone, if not more, is spent as a music player. Is there any "Cracking" or other audio snapping when skipping tracks? Buzzing from the audio digitizer? That sort of thing?

Of course, part of that is also dependent on the music player--and I'm barely familiar with the music playing apps on Android.

Mine works fine, many have been happy with its external speakers being louder than many others and with ear buds the sound is good, you can insert a 256GB micro SD card to download music to leaving you the 32GB built in for operation. But I cannot compare for you not having used a windows phone, you should be able to pick up a Passport fairly cheap on Amazon if you don't mind slight blemishes.
 

Matty

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Mar 15, 2014
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How is it as a music player?

I'm thinking of picking up a Priv as a replacement for my very long-in-the-tooth Windows Phones I've owned (hence my attraction to the physical keyboard), but at least half my time with my phone, if not more, is spent as a music player. Is there any "Cracking" or other audio snapping when skipping tracks? Buzzing from the audio digitizer? That sort of thing?

Of course, part of that is also dependent on the music player--and I'm barely familiar with the music playing apps on Android.

I think the first positive thing is that the speaker is front facing. So the volume level is quite good. Some smartphone speakers fire downward which isn't ideal and in the case of the Blackberry Leap. It's rear facing completely.

I would give the PRIV an overall 7 / 10 for quality. Voice is nice and clear and can get very loud if you push the speakers. The bass could be better and i think the Blackberry Passport does a batter job. But over all I've listened to many youtube videos and podcasts without thinking 'hmm i wish the speakers were better'. :)

You can always just plug in some head phones or use Bluetooth to litem to music if the speaker isn't as good as you need it to be.
 

Desynthesis

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I think the first positive thing is that the speaker is front facing. So the volume level is quite good. Some smartphone speakers fire downward which isn't ideal and in the case of the Blackberry Leap. It's rear facing completely.

I would give the PRIV an overall 7 / 10 for quality. Voice is nice and clear and can get very loud if you push the speakers. The bass could be better and i think the Blackberry Passport does a batter job. But over all I've listened to many youtube videos and podcasts without thinking 'hmm i wish the speakers were better'. :)

You can always just plug in some head phones or use Bluetooth to litem to music if the speaker isn't as good as you need it to be.

Thank you both for your answers--I should've been more clear, good speakers, while of course appreciated, aren't that important--I'm more worried about the quality of digitizer when listening to headphones (really 1% of my time with a smartphone is spent using its own speakers for multimedia), where some phones do have lower quality digitzers that you can audibly hear switching on and off as necessary (right before the phone actually outputs audio).

Likewise, some phones (like my own Lumia 830) when updated get a really annoying bug for music playback over bluetooth--if you skip a track, the player WILL play some randomly-chosen fraction of a second of the prior song in the gap between that song and the next one, a "CRACKING" noise basically. That's another thing that not everyone notices, which means I'd actually have to check it out upon getting the handset, and hope that an update doesn't add it.

That being said, any information is appreciated--I don't know anything about contemporary Android, so I'd have to figure out how the default music player works, its BT integration, whether it handles podcasts as well, etc., b ut those aren't really Priv-specific issues. Hopefully my music, all tagged in TagScanner for ID3v2.3, would be properly organized, having a bunch of new genres appear always pisses me off.

An easy answer to all these concerns would be, of course, "get an iPhone", as those are pretty consistently competent (if extremely expensive) music players....but the thought alone of using iTunes basically makes me want to find a Creative Zen or Zune HD just to avoid that.
 

Matty

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Mar 15, 2014
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I'm more worried about the quality of digitizer when listening to headphones (really 1% of my time with a smartphone is spent using its own speakers for multimedia),

Ah my apologies. Ill re answer your question then :)

Lets start of by first saying, it does not have a Quad DAC like the LG G6 or V20 does but i think it performs fairly well and i haven't had any complaints. The actual connection isn't gold plated to give it that 'extra' clarity but its still good in my opinion :)

a second of the prior song in the gap between that song and the next one, a "CRACKING" noise basically.

With regards to your concern about 'cracking' i have not heard anything like that. Maybe my volume is a little lower so it's not audible? Maybe that specific song had some 'crackling' at the beginning? Anyway, mine seems really clear :)

If you want to read another persons review, you can click this link. It will take you to a sister site 'Crackberry' :)
 

Desynthesis

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Thanks for all your useful answers, Matty--having studied the phone longer, I've actually figured out a whole new set of questions to answer that have to deal with issues unique to Android (mostly) that I had never even considered--so I better ask them now.

1) So, it seems like most people here own unlocked AT&T PRIVs (STV100-1), with all the AT&T branding, startup screen, etc. On one hand, physical branding is mostly a nuisance whereas the actual tech branding could really screw you over--I'm a T-Mobile customer, so being barred from Marshmallow and stuck on Lollipop (it'll be a while before I get used to those names) because of that will go from nuisance to a real problem. Is this a real problem, or something easily bypassed on Android?

2) Is there anywhere to actually buy an unbranded phone except B&H Photo?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...tml/BI/20079/KBID/13844/SID/UUacUvbUpU5716149

Really they were the only people I could find who seemed to clearly spell that out. I wish I could buy it off Amazon simply as a matter of convenience, but it really looks like all of those are AT&T models? Or not? Anyone have experience with that.

3) Which ones have wireless charging? Okay, that listing above seems to have it, but apparently the T-Mobile branded model doesn't?

Yeah, those are a lot more annoying questions--and I appreciate the patience of anyone who is willing to deal with them. So far BH seems like the only place you can actually get a "from Blackberry directly" actually unbranded model--except I guess BB's own webstore, which isn't great.