My blackberry passport experience
It’s been almost a week since I have been using the blackberry passport and I gotta say this is probably one of the best smartphones I have used to date. The last time I actually changed phones was back in 2013 when I decided to upgrade my phone from my old faithful iPhone 3Gs to a samsung galaxy s3. What a poor decision that turned out to be as the S3 turned out to be a crappy phone no thanks to the buggy android OS. After selling off the S3 and reverting back to the iPhone 5s I felt at ease again.
While the iPhone 5s was great in its own regard I felt I really couldn’t do much with it. I know many would probably look at me in shock disbelief and say “what kinda work do you want to do with your phone man?” and that’s a fair comment. What do I want in a phone?
And so I set out to think what do I use my phone primarily for? And I realized apart from just communicating I am a heavy user of reading stuff on my phone and while the iPhone did provide that functionality it still wasn’t that great of an experience.
Apart from that I also use my phone for booking things like my airline tickets and movie tickets. It’s so convenient to make bookings via my phone and I found myself regularly doing this when I was away from the laptop or PC.
And so I felt that it was time to explore another day phone. While every smartphone could do all those functionalities I listed above I found that the blackberry passport could do the above functions MUCH better than most phones could. The large screen, the QWERTY keyboard, the hardware specs and the stable OS proved that this phone is meant for serious heavy duty mobile computing device work and not just to play CandyCrush Saga.
And so last Friday I decided to plunge and get the blackberry Passport after searching high and low the last 2 weekends ago. Setting up the phone was Abit of a pain because the default language was in french for some strange reason so I had to struggle a little at the very beginning to change it to English. Not the best way to welcome the Passport into my hands. Apart from that because the BlackBerry Passport is not a popular phone (yet) in this country the customer service officer that was attending to me had a tough time trying to figure how to insert my nano simcard. Yes not the best way to start my BlackBerry experience aright.
In fact after slipping the phone into my pant pocket for a split second I did think whether I made a mistake of getting the phone! That maybe I wouldn’t like the QWERTY keyboard at all! I had used a qwerty keyboard before when I was using my Nokia e61 5 years ago (my first smartphone) and it was a decent experience. Would I be able to adapt again?
Adjusting Myself
Getting adjusted to the passport was slightly discomforting. I found myself missing the home button so commonly found and used in my iPhone. And I had to also redownload my apps again via the BlackBerry world store app which was…well crappy. However I knew that the BlackBerry also supported android and with the help of my friend and some online how to install snap on blackberry guides online I successfully found myself happily downloading the familiar android apps which I used once upon a time when I had S3.
The apps did give me some comfort and within 2 days after my maiden journey with the BlackBerry Passport I was getting the hang of it.
I’m loving it
As I mentioned earlier on I hardly use my phones for games or entertainment purposes. The bulk of my time is spent on communication – texting, Whatsapp, emails etc. I don’t even us it for social media stuff as well because we’ll I am not really into social media. And based on my needs I have to say this phone does a marvelous job. From the large display screen giving you a nice wide screen to the sturdy keyboard finish, you really do feel you are in control. As Ms somewhat would teasingly say – #likeaboss
Yes, no one really uses actual physical keyboards on their phones anymore. That concept seems archaic in a world where everything is touch sensitive. But yet I still find much enjoyment in using the keyboard. It just feels right!
I really do not know whether, just like with everything else I woul get bored with the blackberry passport. After all it is designed rather oddly, runs on BB10 and you need two hands to use it comfortably.
Only time will tell whether this phone will be a good purchase.
