Smartphones | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Maintaining the BlackBerry ecosystem: A review of the Passport smartphone

The BlackBerry Passport is a good smartphone but may not be enough to lock existing corporate customers into the company’s ecosystem

“Man, it’s a BlackBerry!” Exclaimed the assistant at the T-Mobile store on San Francisco’s Financial District, “I haven’t seen one of those in years.”

Generally that was the reaction in taking a BlackBerry around; a lot of bemused comments along with the the odd wistful reminiscence, usually from a forty something lawyer or banker, about how they used to love their BlackBerry back in the day.

So is the Passport is enough to rekindle Blackberry’s fortunes, or at least keep the company going until CEO John Chen can execute his Internet of Things strategy around QNX?

The BlackBerry Passport is an unusual device; with a square screen it’s a very different mobile phone that takes a little getting used to.

An irony for this reviewer is the tactile keyboard, with soft keyboards now the norm for smartphones, going back to a ‘real’ keyboard takes some getting used to and the Passport suffers from the real estate taken up by the keys.

A return to two thumb typing

The layout of the keyboard also takes some getting used to with the three row tactile QWERTY layout requiring two thumbs to use, compared to the one fingered swipe or typing options available on Android or Apple phones.

Only having three rows also presents a problem for inexperienced users — where are all the punctuation keys? The answer is they appear on the screen above while typing. While a bit clunky, the predictive software which determines which punctuation you’ll need works well.

Adding to the predictive typing features is a suggested word box that appears as you type, as one becomes more experienced in using the device this becomes a very efficient way to get messages out quickly. Overall BlackBerry has done a good job on designing the phone’s typing functions to get the most out of the form factor.

Another learning curve for users are the swipe functions, where an up gesture brings up the home screen and swipes to the the left and right let you navigate between screens and apps.

The main app on the phone is the BlackBerry Hub, a centralised repository for all information. The aim of the hub is bring together email, social media and text messages into one fixed location.

Bringing together information like this is always problematic as many of us are receiving dozens, if not hundreds, of emails, texts and social media messages a day. Overall though the Hub handles them well and integrates nicely with the major social media services including Twtitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

The Appstore weakness

Where the software falls down is when venturing outside the pre-packaged apps — while things are better than they were, BlackBerry’s devices still suffer from a sparse app store.

The lack of a suitable WordPress app prevented this reviewer from testing out the device’s blogging potential which is a shame as the 1:1 aspect screen may well have proved to be better than the Apple and Samsung equivalents.

In the case of social media Instagram is a good example with the only free app, iGram, only offering Facebook and Twitter integration; a limitation that betrays the device’s excellent 13 Megapixel camera.

On the other important hardware matters, the phone’s battery gives well over a days life on heavy use, the company claims 24 hours talk time, and recharges through a standard Micro USB connector.

The decent battery life is reflected in the weight of the device with it tipping the scales at 196g, compared to the Samsung Galaxy 5’s 145g and the Apple iPhone 6 plus’ 172g. It’s not heavy by any means which shows some of the engineering BlackBerry has applied to the phone.

Inside the device is 32Mb of storage with the capacity to add up to 128Mb Micro SD memory, alongside the memory slot is the Nano SIM holder which worked well on both the US T-Mobile and Australian Optus 4G networks.

Maintaining the ecosystem

Unfortunately we were unable to review how well the device and its software integrated with the Black Enterprise Service as this is going to be the main selling point for the Passport.

Overall the BlackBerry Passport is a good corporate phone that’s going to appeal to organisations that wants to give their staff secure communications with smartphone capabilities.

However the handset itself is unlikely to appeal to the broader smartphone market. At best the BlackBerry Passport is an attempt to keep the company’s core market locked into the ecosystem while John Chen executes his pivot into new markets. It may not be enough.

In San Francisco’s Financial District, the guys at the T-Mobile shop are probably not going to see many more BlackBerry phones.

Chinese businesses take on the world

Xiaomi and Lenovo’s appearance in the global smartphone rankings show the increasing confidence of Chinese businesses

We’ve looked previously at how Chinese manufacturers are moving up the value chain, proof of how PRC based companies are beginning to make their mark on markets are the latest smartphone IDC rankings.

Two Chinese companies, Lenovo and Xiaomi, entered the rankings with the latter recording a threefold increase on the previous year’s sales.

Remarkably, Xiaomi only had a few hours as number three in IDC’s global ranking as Lenovo closed its Motorola acquisition shortly after the release which pushed the combined company into third position.

Top Five Smartphone Vendors, Shipments, Market Share and Year-Over-Year Growth, Q3 2014 Preliminary Data (Units in Millions)

Vendor	2014Q3 Shipment Volumes	2014Q3 Market Share	2013Q3 Shipment Volumes	2013Q3 Market Share	3Q14/3Q13 Change
1. Samsung	78.1	23.8%	85.0	32.5%	-8.2%
2. Apple	39.3	12.0%	33.8	12.9%	16.1%
3. Xiaomi	17.3	5.3%	5.6	2.1%	211.3%
4. Lenovo*	16.9	5.2%	12.3	4.7%	38.0%
4. LG*	16.8	5.1%	12.0	4.6%	39.8%
Others	159.2	48.6%	113.0	43.2%	40.8%
Total	327.6	100.0%	261.7	100.0%	25.2%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, October 29, 2014

The two companies illustrate the different strategies Chinese companies are making in taking on the world; while Lenovo is growing through acquiring ‘cast off’ operations like Motorola Mobility from Google and the various hardware arms of IBM, Xiaomi is growing through selling lower budget devices into East Asian markets.

Both approaches have their strengths and benefits and illustrate as much the diversity of the markets the two companies are chasing as much as the differing management philosophies of the business.

The other message from the respective successes of Lenovo and Xiaomi is that Chinese companies, particularly manufacturers, are increasingly confident in competing in the global marketplace.

Just as Japanese manufacturers found their feet in the 1970s with many becoming global brands and market leaders, we are seeing the same thing happening with the Chinese businesses today.

Google moves deeper into the smarthome

Google Nest’s acquisition of Revolv is about further locking in the smarthome market

Since Google bought smart smoke detector company Nest earlier this year it’s become apparent that the search engine giant sees the smarthome as one of its big marketplaces in the near future.

Nest’s acquisition of smarthome automation company Revolv yesterday illustrates this and shows that Nest is Google’s smarthome division.

As the smarthome becomes more common, the value of controlling the systems that run the connected home’s devices becomes greater. So the positions being taken by Apple, Google and Samsung are going to be important as the marketplace develops.

The latter relationship — Google and Samsung — is particularly fascinating as Samsung’s smartphones and tablets are locked into the Google Android system which makes it harder for the Korean industrial giant to strike off in an independent path.

All of this of course is based upon homeowners being happy with having their smarthomes locked into one vendor’s platform. We may yet see the market rebel against the internet giant’s ambitions to carve up the connected world.

Attacking Apple iPhone 6

Attacking Apple is not the way to beat them in the marketplace

One of the saddest things in life is the company that bleats ‘but we thought of it first’ when overtaken by a smarter or more credible competitor.

Since the release of the iPhone 6, the knives are out for Apple with Samsung, HTC and even Sony poking fun at the new product pointing out the features already in their products.

The problem for Apple’s competitors is the market isn’t listening to the attack ads. In China alone a million iPhones were sold in first hour they went on sale.

For companies competing with Apple they have to find a compelling product, not be sniping at the market leader. For Samsung in particular with its falling revenues it needs to be generating some excitement in the market, not depressing its customers.

Here’s the Samsung ad; while it’s pointing in the wrong direction it’s good in that it holds the critics to account but it makes not a spit of different to the marketplace.

Changing technology

The Nightlife technology spot shows how the focus of the computer market has changed.

Last night’s ABC Nightlife program showed how the tech industry has changed in the last five years.

In 2009 the bulk of the conversation would have been about personal computers, laptops and viruses.

Last night, malware is still an important topic but almost all of last night’s listener questions were around smartphones and Tony’s questions were on social media.

That social media and smartphones were the main topics and personal computers — and Windows — were barely mentioned show just how the computer industry has shifted.

Smartphone safety and online trust – ABC Nightlife technology

The July ABC Nightlife radio segment looks at how elusive the truth can be online along with smartphones and sight impaired tech.

Smartphones for the vision impaired, malware on portable devices and online trust were the topics of the July technology spot on Tony Delroy’s Nightlife along with why a restaurant claims Google sent it broke and how we can’t always trust what we hear online.

If you missed the show, you can download the program from the website.

For sight impaired smartphone users both Doug and Nick called in to suggest Vision Australia’s services. The organisation has a page dedicated to smartphone and tablet resources.

Nick and Peter asked about malware protection for Android smartphones. Both Intel’s McAfee Mobile Security and Sophos’ Mobile Security for Android are free for home users.

The next spot is scheduled for 4 September, if you have any topics you’d like to discuss contact me or the Nightlife producers.