BlackBerry Diaries: the prequel
Nic Healey begins a new week-long review series, this time looking at the BlackBerry 10 operating system on the Q10 smartphone.
Both the Chromebook Diaries and the Surface 2 Diaries dealt with devices I used mostly in working life. So let's shake that up a little.
This week I'm changing phones. In fact I'm not only changing phones, I'm changing phone operating systems. I'm bidding farewell to my much-loved Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and to Android 4.3. And then I'm saying hello to BlackBerry 10 and the BlackBerry Q10.
Why? Well, BlackBerry's new CEO John Chen has some big plans for the company, recently saying that the once-dominant smartphone maker will be cash flow positive for the next four quarters and profitable by fiscal 2016.
But people aren't falling in love with BB10 for some reason -- only 1.1 million devices out of the 3.4 million BlackBerry sold in the final quarter of last financial year were BB10 enabled. In fact, the company has even committed to continuing production of the BB07 running BlackBerry Bold.
So, I thought we'd live with BlackBerry 10 for a week and see how the OS stacks up. After that decision, it made sense to me that if you're going to go BlackBerry, you want the true BlackBerry experience and that's a keyboard.
So rather than the Z30 or the Z10, I've gone for the Q10 with its almost-retro physical keyboard .
Given this is my phone we're talking about, this isn't just a workplace decision. Like so many people these days, my smartphone is the first thing I reach for in the morning and the last thing I put down at night. This is a change that's going to impact my after hours life probably more than my working day.
So, this weekend I'll be finishing the set up of the Q10 and by Sunday night I'll be fully moved over to BB10. Let's see how this one pans out.