The BlackBerry has finally caught up to the world of touch-screen smartphones. It took time - six years, from the launch of the first iPhone - and it may be too late to save the company that makes it. But the BlackBerry deserves to be taken seriously again.
Though it can be hard to remember, the keyboard used to be a standard feature on smartphones, before the iPhone wiped our minds with its vision of touch-screen Utopia.
Why? Because the new BlackBerry Q10 is a successful marriage of the modern touch-screen smartphone and the iconic BlackBerry keyboard.
Though it can be hard to remember, the keyboard used to be a standard feature on smartphones, before the iPhone wiped our minds with its vision of touch-screen Utopia.
Since then, keyboards have been disappearing from smartphones. Physical keyboards just didn't fit into the design mold set by the iPhone. Palm Inc. created a credible, innovative smartphone with a physical keyboard, but it was a slide-out version, which made the keyboard seem like a burden and an afterthought. There have also been Android phones with physical keyboards, but they haven't been very good, and they've mostly disappeared.
Meanwhile, BlackBerry has continued to make well-designed phones with physical keyboards. But until now, it hasn't gotten the software running them quite right. Even with physical keyboards, modern phones need touch screens to control movies, games and other tasks beyond the BlackBerry's roots in messaging. BlackBerry has experimented with touch screens, but has been partly hamstrung by the pre-touch foundations of its operating system.
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