Is there a name for the formula that blackberry and others follow?
1) successful consumer business
2) lose in the market so pivot to b2b
3) slow long decline
4) sell brand / assets to somebody else
5) new money results in a “hey we are going back to our roots” and launch products they originally were known for
6) finally go out of business for real, or sell remaining IP to a troll
God I wish BB10 was open sourced. Today the biggest problem with phones is their bloated runtimes, android being the largest offender. I want something with the form factor of the q10 running a QNX-based os I can ssh to and use rsync to copy music, contacts, and a calendar to.
Relatedly I find it amazing that Planet Computers has found a niche and developed multiple cell phones with tiny qwerty keyboards.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...
As someone currently with a Key1 and have stubbornly held onto physical keyboards, I am hopeful this pans out. But other phone with physical keyboards have been promised and never come to fruition
I would be super into a phone with a physical keyboard, but I am on Google Fi and I am hesitant to switch.
I've given up on swipe typing. I have been using it for almost a decade and I still cannot type effectively with it. I am ready to go back to physical keys.
I remember a few years ago Samsung selling a keyboard case for one of it's phones [0]. If I recall the phone would detect it and scale the UI so that the keyboard wouldn't cover any important part of the screen.
Sounds like the ideal tradeoff. I've never seen one in real life however, so that tells me how big the demand for a physical keyboard is.
[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/samsung-keyboard-cover-for-gal...
Been using BB10 Passport for past year as a daily driver. I wished a next gen device with BB10 would be available in the same format.
How is it possible that the key announcement of this development includes absolutely no photo of the purported keyboard?
What percentage of the market for phones come with physical keyboards? I know some cling to the idea but I think the technology has progressed far enough to mostly eclipse it in every practical way, certain holdouts not withstanding, and the market reflects that.
Coming before that: A Psion Series 5-inspired keyboard for PinePhone.
Wondering if this is Nokia/HMD or more like previous BB/TCL.
No actual device announced, just a licensing agreement for the Blackberry brand to a Foxconn subsidiary "to deliver a new 5G BlackBerry Android smartphone with physical keyboard, in the first half of 2021 in North America and Europe".
Bad title, the original is "OnwardMobility Announces Agreements with BlackBerry and Foxconn Subsidiary FIH Mobile to Bring BlackBerry 5G Smartphones to Market" which I might summarize as "Foxconn Subsidiary Licenses Blackberry Brand".