We’re on day 25 of my BlackBerry Passport Challenge. As some of you will know, at least most of you will know, for the last 25 days I’ve been using the BlackBerry Passport as my daily driver. Along the way, I’ve been tweeting and sending Instagram images, trying to keep you up to date as much as I can. And you can find links to all the previous videos of this challenge in the description box down there as well as other videos about the BlackBerry Passport. That includes my review, unboxing, some features going over things like the BlackBerry Blend, the computer software that makes it all nice and seamless with my Mac.
In this video, I don’t really have one specific thing to share with you. I just wanted to share that I’m going to miss once this challenge is over because there’s only 5-6 days left to go. And I do have to send it back. Sadly, it’s not my own unit.
It probably comes as no surprise that the first thing on my list of things that I’m going to miss is the keyboard. I know most people have now moved on to touch screen keyboards because that’s what all the best devices have now. But let’s not pretend that the keyboard on this touch screen device is what actually makes it a good phone. It’s just something they had to do because they don’t want there to be any physical buttons on the phone. And you can understand that more screen means more content, better content and all the rest of it. So the keyboard did have to go. But on the Passport, the buttons are really big, they’re easy to press. It’s hard to get any typing wrong—it’s just a really nice change, especially when I’m typing emails or messages which I like to do every now and then or I have to do because it’s part of my job. I’ll rather reply to an email on the fly using a physical keyboard knowing that I won’t’ be getting any stupid autocorrect errors than trying to reply on an iPhone for instance. So the keyboard is definitely among the top things I’m going to miss.
Number two on my list is the general user interface. That may seem quite vague but it really isn’t. As much as I like iOS and Android, when it comes to the menu system and the way things look in general on the software, I much prefer BlackBerry 10. I like the square lines and the cleanness and the no messing around, no fancy pants going on. It’s clean, it’s minimal. It looks good and it’s not distracting. There’s no bright silly colors anywhere. I especially like the way you can slide in and out of the side menu and down from the top and to the right. It’s just quick and easy. And the gestures make it really nice and simple too. After a while, once you’ve been using BlackBerry 10 and you go to try iOS or Android, you start finding yourself swiping up on the screen to get out of the app or go back to the home screen and realizing that actually you’re not on operating systems that do that from BlackBerry 10. I kind of got used to it.
I think one of the big things that I’m going to miss is probably not a big thing at all. It’s a rather small part of the operating system but it’s something I’ve really loved using over the past couple of weeks. And that’s the sleep screen. BlackBerrys for years have had this. For the old ones, when you used to dock them, you get this clock come up and it automatically goes into a sort of a sleep mode. It knows it’s on your bedside table and therefore, shows the clock. And that’s it.
It’s the same thing with BlackBerry 10. When you run your lock screen, you can slide down from the top and it activates the sleep mode where all of your notifications get switched off and all that’s on the screen is a clock. And what I really like about it is how easy it is to set an alarm for the morning. So you can either go or edit your list of alarms like you can with other operating systems. Or you can drag and drop the little teardrop-shaped thing around the clock and select the time you want. I particularly liked how it’s orange.
As always, you can get me on Twitter. I’m @PhoneDog_Cam and if you have any questions about the Passport challenge or any suggestions or anything like that, you still have five days left to do it.
To catch up on the rest of Cam's 30-day challenge, check out the previous videos below:
Day 1 - Switching from an iPhone: http://youtu.be/gTc_uf-A6rs
Day 5 - It's all about those apps: http://youtu.be/GlQLXLVpmSc
Day 11 - Camera and Story Maker: http://youtu.be/NKXO_-pUMd8
Day 17 - 4 frustrations and a surprise: http://youtu.be/obCiHxcT54k
Day 21 - BlackBerry Assistant: http://youtu.be/-T4_G3efXNg
BlackBerry Blend overview: http://youtu.be/0LRbNqUSjTM
Passport keyboard overview: http://youtu.be/Yn6DRcUFj8Y