I need a new cell phone = frustration! I hate cell phones!

[samsonlonghair]

OK, you caught my typo. Fixed.

Now I'm going to bust you out next time you make a typo.

[marurun]

OK, you caught my typo. Fixed.

Now I'm going to bust you out next time you make a typo.

Hey, as long as it's funny : )

[Ziggy]

I want so bad... but $700!

[samsonlonghair]

I want so bad... but $700!

I feel your pain, brother. I want a Priv too; I just can't justify the $700 price tag. That's more than I have ever spent on any phone.

[Ziggy]

It is a powerful phone though. If the iPhone is worth that much, the Priv certainly is. I'll have to keep an eye out, maybe they'll go on sale or start coming down in price?

[samsonlonghair]

It is a powerful phone though. If the iPhone is worth that much, the Priv certainly is. I'll have to keep an eye out, maybe they'll go on sale or start coming down in price?

Initial reports indicate that the Priv is not selling as well as Blackberry hoped. Blackberry isn't forthcoming with specific numbers, but that's an indication unto itself.

We can reasonably predict two (maybe three) results from this.
First, we can expect that at some point Blackberry will have to cut the price a bit to attract more buyers. How much of a profit margin will that leave Blackberry? They can only sell at a loss if they have an alternate source of revenue.
Second, we can predict that (unless sales drastically increase) there will be few Privs available on the secondhand market.
Third, we can (maybe) predict that (in case of abysmal market failure) this may be the last gasp for Blackberry. On the other hand, I have thought that before, and Blackberry has managed to soldier on this long.

[Ziggy]

I could make a new thread, but I think it's funny to look back on the frustrations that I had with cell phones back in 2011.

My last update to this thread was in 2016, but some great things have happened since then. I posted back then that I got the Blackberry Classic, which was a pleasure to use, but that wasn't exactly the entire story. That was a work phone. And although I enjoyed using the classic BB again, the BB OS was kind of a struggle to use since most apps are designed for Android and iPhone. So my own personal phone at the time was some low-ish end LG Android. But then...



I got the Blackberry Keyone around 2017. This was my dream phone. It fully runs on Android OS, but it's built like a Blackberry. So lots of BB apps and privacy settings, but it's Android so everything from the Google Play Store is available. AND it has a BB physical keyboard, which feels just as good as a classic BB. I used this phone from 2017 until semi the beginning of this year. The problem is that the OS version became massively outdated and everything started to run slower and slower. The Keyone was popular enough that BB released the Key2, but even that is now outdated. So earlier this year I came to terms that I needed a new phone. But the Keyone was by far the best phone I ever had (in terms of what I liked using) so it was a hard thing to give up.

It was announced that a new Blackberry Android phone would be released. But it was delayed during the pandemic, like everything else. Then it was silently canceled. Luckily, there's a small company making really niche phones for people like me...



The Unihertz Titan Slim. It's basically a clone of the Keyone, but a little more narrow. This is not as well built as a BB, but if you want a physical keyboard on an Android phone in 2023, this is one of your only options. It took some time to get use to the keyboard, mostly just muscle memory. After getting use to it, the keyboard feels great. Maybe not as good as the BB, but still good. It's using a more modern Android version, but still not totally current. And it doesn't look like it's receiving any more updates, but Unihertz is a small company so I don't know if I can blame them. I mean, the market for this phone is so slim. I'm just glad that it actually exists.

But I'm kind of getting sick of Android. There's just so many quirks and random things that wont work right. You could say it's because I have a weird Unihertz phone, but that wont explain why most other people I know have issues with their Android phones. Or when I Google issues that I have, plenty of others have it too. Even on supposed top of the line phones. I'm really getting sick of things not working as intended. And as much as I still kind of hate cell phones, I completely rely on one in 2023. That's just the way of the world now. I have to use my phone every day for work. Primarily the GPS and the camera. My friends that have iPhones don't seem to have the problems Android users have. Things just seem to work better. So I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually going to give an iPhone a shot.

It's not that I've been anti-Apple. I just don't dig have to pay a shit ton of money for something when cheaper options are available that (are suppose to) work just as well. But that "I bought an Apple because they just work" mentality actually seems to ring true. No one I know that has an iPhone complains about the same things not working as people I know with Androids do. Also, the picture quality of iPhones is amazing. So whatever, I'll give iPhone a try. Why not? If I decide I hate it, they have the best resale value of any cell phone. Honestly, I don't see what I wouldn't like as long as everything works as it should.

The only thing that sucks is I'll be losing a physical keyboard. Of all of the years I've been using a cell phone, the majority has been with a physical QWERTY keyboard. I had a Palm Treo, the original Blackberry, the BB Classic, the BB Keyone, and now the Unihertz Titan Slim. I have had a couple of Android phones with a touch screen keyboard, but it not since 2017. For 6 years now I've had a physical keyboard on my phone. It'll be hard to go back to the touch screen.

I know a lot of people use voice to text now, but that's not always practical. I'm sure I'll get use to the touch screen, at least for the sake of not having to deal with other annoyances. But if BB ever comes out with the Key3 I'll be all over that!

[marurun]

There was a market for keyboard cases for iPhones for a while but that market seems to have dried up. I don’t see anything for phones newer than 4-5 years.

[Ziggy]

I do remember seeing those, but I think the phone would be annoyingly long. The awesome thing about the BB KeyONE (and in turn the Unihertz Titan Slim) is that the overall size is similar to most other modern Android and iPhones, you end up with a slightly smaller screen but the keyboard is always there.

The physical keyboard on the KeyONE also has neat features. Like being able to scroll by moving your fingers vertically across the rows. The benefit of that is that you can scroll web pages or whatever without having your fingers block the screen. So you could scroll while reading, for example. Another neat thing is that the space bar doubled as a finger print scanner. No real point to what I'm saying, just that the KeyONE was such an awesome phone.

One thing that sucks about the Unihertz Titan Slim, so far, is that the paint is already wearing off of the keyboard. These keybaords are backlight, so when the paint wears off of them they are very annoying to look at. My original BB had this issue, and it got so bad that you couldn't make heads or tails of it. I had enough muscle memory with it that I got by for a while, but eventually I had to replace the keyboard. The BB KeyONE never had this problem. In the 6 years that I owned it, the keyboard looks just about as good as the day I got it. The Titan Slim, I got earlier this year and already the paint is wearing off of the keys. I can get a replacement keyboard from Unihertz, but I'm sure that one will start to wear in under a year. Just another reason I decided to try something new.

[Note]

I think you're making the right choice, Ziggy! I was a similar hold out; however, for not nearly as long though. I had a Palm phone around 2008 and 2009, then had a Samsung Android phone with a keyboard for a few years. I began having weird issues with it as well. In the spring of 2014, I switched over to iPhone and have not looked back. It took some time to adjust to not having a physical keyboard, but I got with it eventually. I was already a Mac user, so that made the transition fairly smooth.

I've always went for older iPhone models, sometimes even on the used market in an attempt to save some money. I'm currently using an iPhone 8, which is considered a much older model now, but it does everything I need and I haven't run into any problems with it. I wish the camera on this model was a bit better, but it's not a deal breaker for me. Maybe one of these days I'll get a current phone. Lol.

Looking forward to hearing your about your experience with switching over to an iPhone!