Other platforms — BlackBerry 10

Two years ago, a renewed curiosity to explore other operating systems and their user interfaces led me to acquire a Nokia Lumia 925 running Windows Phone 8.1 and take a belated closer look at this OS. The plan was to carry the Lumia with me as a second phone, spend a couple of weeks with it, and report my observations. You know, the same process you go through when reviewing any product. What happened next surprised me. When the test period was over, I couldn’t let go of the Lumia and the Windows Phone 8.1 experience. I knew the platform was essentially dead, but I was able to set up the phone with all the apps providing essential services and functionalities to me, and using WP8.1 was surprisingly refreshing, so I kept it as my secondary phone, carrying it around alongside my iPhone 8.

Something had just clicked. Realising how wrong and prejudiced I had been towards Windows Phone, I began to wonder: maybe all these years as a loyal Apple user have been making me feel so cosy in my comfort zone, so certain I was using the superior platform, that I was completely blind to the designing and engineering work of other competitors.

And so I started exploring more. I started to do what any intellectually honest individual should do: taking a deeper look firsthand before criticising anything. While trying to impact my limited budget as little as possible, and with the help of kind people who donated their old device, in the following months I was able to acquire:

a Nokia Lumia 830 to try Windows 10 Mobile on it;

a ThinkPad T61, and then a T400, to try the Windows 8.1 experience on a traditional computer; once I received the T400, I installed and tried Ubuntu Linux on the T61;

a ThinkPad X240 to try Windows 10;

an HP TouchPad, to finally experience webOS on a tablet-sized device (I love my Palm Prē 2, but I think webOS shouldn’t be experienced solely on a device with such a small display);

a BlackBerry Passport, to have a look at BlackBerry OS (something I was so not interested in, I didn’t even know how the OS looked);

a Nokia N9 smartphone, to see what was that made this device and its OS — MeeGo — so intriguing as to elevate the N9 to cult status.

So, after these past few months I’d say that — while I still have plenty left to explore and write about the UIs of other mobile platforms that didn’t manage to stay relevant like iOS or Android — one thing is clear by now: the two ‘winning’ platforms are ultimately the least interesting. And in a few aspects, they’re even worse than the ‘losers’. This is what you get, I presume, when you become mainstream.

The BlackBerry platform

The BlackBerry platform is perhaps the one I have ignored the most over the years. During the pre-iPhone smartphone years, when friends and acquaintances sported their Nokia E‑something or N‑something, their Palm Treos, their SonyEricsson P800 and P900, their BlackBerrys, etc., I still had simple feature phones… and my Newton PDAs. Cramming full QWERTY keyboards in phones of a relatively small size looked very impractical to me. All those tiny keys, how could you be fast and efficient at typing? Interfaces looked awkward, crowded. My interest in owning a smartphone was piqued only when rumours of Apple entering the picture started circulating. At that point, I just waited until that rumoured ‘iPhone’ became a real thing.

I hope BlackBerry fans won’t be offended, but I never found anything interesting in that platform. The fact that a lot of BlackBerry handsets have always been targeted at a business/enterprise audience was another factor that kept me at a distance. It’s a bit like scientific or accounting calculators… if you don’t have to do scientific or accounting calculations, it’s unlikely you’ll want to buy one.

There was even a time, the final years of the co-CEOs Lazaridis and Balsillie era, where I, by then a loyal iPhone user, watched with amused snobbery as RIM repeatedly tried to stay relevant in the smartphone arena with devices that didn’t seem very forward-thinking.

BlackBerry reappeared on my radar around 2013, when BlackBerry 10 OS was showcased along with the Z10 smartphone. While still being very satisfied with iOS, I’ve always thought that healthy competition is essential in tech, so that all parties have the incentive to improve constantly.

The BlackBerry Passport

But it was when BlackBerry introduced the Passport in late 2014 that I turned my head and exclaimed, Okay, that is a cool phone. The Passport was clearly designed to elicit that kind of response, but still, I liked the fact that the company was trying something different. Having my usual tight budget, however, meant that I couldn’t get one to play with and maybe keep as a secondary phone, so I just thought, One day, one day…

When an acquaintance contacted me via Twitter and told me something along the lines of “I’ve noticed your interest in other platforms. I have a BlackBerry Passport I was about to sell. I took it out of the drawer after more than a year and the thing won’t even boot. Probably I’ve bricked it when I tried to revive it, so… it’s yours for £25 if you want to try your hand at reviving it. Otherwise I guess I’ll recycle it or something…”

Challenge accepted. And achievement unlocked, after some patience and perseverance.

I took this photo ten minutes after the phone came to life. While waiting for its battery to charge (it was totally drained), I went through the setup process. The first thing that gave me a positive impression were the tutorials helping you familiarise with BlackBerry 10 paradigms and gestures, and actually correcting you if you don’t execute a gesture properly. (For brevity, I’ll refer to the BlackBerry 10 OS as ‘BB10’ from now on.)

The hardware

The Passport is well-built. When you handle it, it has a premium-feeling heft. I like the grippy material of its back cover. Hardware buttons are clicky enough, but I wish the power button were clickier. It has a short travel. It feels a bit mushy. The Passport is not really a one-hand device. While I certainly can use it one-handed, due to its width and angular edges it doesn’t get super comfortable in the long run (it is however much more practical to handle than the Xiaomi Mi A2). But once you cradle it in your hands and use it with both, the overall experience improves dramatically:

The square, 4.5‑inch, 1440×1440 IPS LCD display is bright and very nice. At 453 PPI, text is incredibly crisp and so very readable even at font sizes my eyes would find rather hard to tolerate elsewhere.

If I’m not mistaken, spec-wise the Passport is the most powerful BB10 device. It features a 2.26 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 CPU, 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of internal storage which can be expanded — the Passport has a microSD slot, too.

The rear camera, as stated by Wikipedia, is 13 megapixel, with ƒ/2.0 aperture, 1080p video recording at 60fps, autofocus, and optical image stabilisation. In practice, it takes decent photos and does its job properly. Nothing bad, nothing exceptional.

The stereo speakers are another thing that surprised me very positively, together with the audio quality in general. The speakers deliver a loud, full, yet balanced sound. Music played through the headphones sounds crisp, with no noise or distortion I can perceive.

There isn’t a tray to insert the SIM and the optional microSD card. Instead, you remove the upper part of the back cover to access these slots. This is the only user-accessible part of the chassis, and it doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap. By looking at the back of the phone, you wouldn’t even guess this part is removable:

But let’s talk about that keyboard.

Here’s the thing with the BlackBerry Passport’s keyboard: I honestly thought it would be awkward. Firstly because apart from the Palm Prē 2, I’ve never used phones with physical QWERTY keyboards. I went from keypads and T9 text entry to an iPhone. Secondly because the Passport’s keyboard is a hybrid of physical and virtual keys, as you can see in the picture:

Yet, to my surprise, this layout works. It’s an entirely different experience from an iPhone or Android phone, but I’m getting accustomed to it quickly.

It’s all about how you hold the phone. This phone’s form factor in particular invites you to cradle it between your hands and thumb-type, as we’ve seen above. And the [Shift] key, and the [123] key are positioned in such a way that you reach them easily with your thumbs.

When you tap the [123] key, you get the extended symbols/numbers keys, and if you just look at them, you may think it’s a confused mess. Look at where they put the zero. Instead you just reach over there, and it’s unexpectedly comfortable and makes sense, believe it or not.

Note that, ever since I started using smartphones with virtual keyboards, I’ve never been able to type quickly with just my thumbs. I’ve always typed by holding the phone with my left hand, and using my right index and middle fingers. Despite having small fingertips, the lack of physical feedback in the keys and their tight spacing thwarted my attempts at a precise thumb-typing. The Passport is the first smartphone I can thumb-type on, and at a respectable speed.

I’m still learning the various keyboard tricks and shortcuts, but what I’m seeing so far is much more thoughtful than I expected. You can type an uppercase letter by long-pressing its key. One way to select text is to tap Shift and swipe your finger over the keyboard. When you’re writing and you need to move the cursor, e.g. to make corrections or insert a word, you double-tap on the keyboard and the magnifying lens pops up:

Then you just move it by scrolling & swiping your finger on the keys — the keyboard acts like a trackpad. It’s a detail that looks counter-intuitive and gimmicky on paper, but in actual use I’d say it’s fairly brilliant, because the textured surface of the keyboard as a whole makes you swipe and scroll more purposefully and precisely.

When you’re typing, predictive text makes suggestions like on iOS, Android, etc. To speed things up, if you see that the suggested word in the middle is the one you want, you just swipe up on the keyboard. Once you learn the gesture, it’s pretty handy.

I’m also finding the predictive engine and autocorrect rather smart when handling multiple language keyboards.

The software

The default installation of BB10 comes with all the expected essentials. There are Box and Dropbox clients, and the usual suspects like Twitter and Facebook. There are also LinkedIn and Evernote apps. The first obstacle you hit when attempting to use them is that they don’t have access to the latest APIs of these services, so in late 2019 none of them will work, except Evernote.

The most effective workaround is to use Android apps, since BB10 features an Android runtime that lets you run Android apps (not the latest and greatest, though, unless they can run under Android 4.3). In theory, you can install them directly using the built-in Amazon Appstore app, but sadly this is another client that has stopped working. By perusing the CrackBerry forums, I was able to find a workaround and install Google’s own Play Store to manage Android apps. Then I was able to download Firefox, Android’s Box client, a good Twitter client called Twidere, the official Spotify client, among other apps. Though the default BB10 Weather app works well and has a nice, austere look, currently I’m also enjoying an Android app called Today Weather, whose UI both reminds me of Yahoo! Weather and is elegant enough to be mistaken for a native BlackBerry app:

My Passport is currently running the latest BB10 version, 10.3.3.2137 (at least, the system tells me that the OS is up to date), and despite what you may have read in earlier BB10 reviews, Android apps appear to run quite smoothly and I’m not noticing any significant difference in performance compared to native BlackBerry apps.

Also, during normal use, the OS doesn’t feel particularly fragmented. BlackBerry apps and Android apps happily coexist and the OS does a good job at maintaining cohesion. The only moment where the illusion is briefly broken is when you install or update an app from the Play Store. The app will begin to download from within the Play Store, but the final steps of the installation are handled by BlackBerry World, BlackBerry’s native app store client.

The user interface

After being positively impressed by the BlackBerry Passport’s hardware, the biggest surprise for me (long-time iOS user, never touched a BlackBerry handset before) was BB10’s UI. Visually, it perfectly epitomises the business æsthetic: a minimal, mostly black-and-white colour palette with tasteful accents — usually blue — which thoughtfully and consistently direct the user’s look towards what’s relevant or important on the screen (a setting, a button, a change of state, etc.). The system font is nice and readable even at very small sizes.

Here are a few more examples and comments:

This is the first app screen on the BlackBerry Passport. Like on iOS, you have dots representing the various app screens. Unlike iOS, dots aren’t generic — each app screen is clearly numbered; the Home screen is indicated by a Home icon, and the BlackBerry Hub has an envelope/email icon. Both the Home screen and the BlackBerry Hub can be accessed by swiping from the left. Phone and Camera are persistent icons for quick access to these frequently-used apps.

Interestingly, BB10 considers the Home Screen what in other platforms would be considered the Multitasking interface. Here you can see miniatures of all active apps, and from here you can quickly switch from one app to another, or close their processes. Apps with changes or unread notifications are indicated by a red badge with an asterisk.

BB10 has an array of Quick Settings that are accessible by swiping down from the status bar. What appears here — and in what order — is customisable by going into Settings > Quick Settings. The interface may seem verbose and take up a lot of space, but I actually like that BlackBerry wanted to prioritise clarity above all else.

BB10 clock, world clock, stopwatch, and timer. I think they’re better designed than their counterparts on iOS and Android.

This is the File Manager (grid view) in BB10. The design reminds me of Windows 10 Mobile a bit, but icons are less stylised and more elegant.

I like that on BB10 you can set a custom message to appear on the lock screen.

App Manager > Device Monitor looks a bit like Activity Monitor on the Mac. It’s nice that I can see all this information at a glance.

I also like that there is a modicum of customisation in what gets disabled when in Battery Saving Mode.

I like that there are clear explanations for certain system features, so that the user knows exactly what they do and what is going on — in this case, when Battery Saving Mode is enabled.

When you enter Settings > Security and Privacy > Application Permissions, you’ll see a list of all the installed apps. When selecting one (Maps in this example), you can examine its permission settings and change them as needed. Though you can do the same on iOS and Android, I really like BB10’s clean approach and presentation.

Overall, BB10 has a sober, elegant interface, and features consistent interactions and gestures. It’s logical and you familiarise with it rather quickly. Discoverability is generally good, and what you can’t discover on your own, you can find in the built-in tutorials. These are very good and really train you, so that you can use the system in the most effective way possible.

Apps are designed in a way that, in my opinion, maximises reachability, especially on this particular smartphone. The most important controls in the interface are located on the bottom bar, which places them right above the physical keyboard. And that is where your thumb or thumbs are gravitating most of the time. So it’s rare that you’ll have to adjust your grip in an attempt to reach some far-off key UI element. A lot of the apps I’ve tried out so far — the better-designed at least — tend to follow this logic.

BlackBerry Hub

Speaking of well-designed aspects of the BB10 OS, a special mention must be reserved to Notifications and the BlackBerry Hub. Coming from a mainstream mobile OS, it may seem weird to have a single place like the BlackBerry Hub collating email messages, SMS/MMS, calls and notifications. But after a little while you realise that this concept makes a lot of sense. Of course, this works well largely because the BlackBerry Hub is very well-designed.

Visually, it’s essentially an email client displaying messages in chronological order. Logically, it’s like looking at a page from an organiser showing what’s happening during the day. It’s like a big messaging system, where every item is treated like a message or event. Icons differentiate between emails, notifications, text messages, so that it’s instantly clear which is which; but looking at them separately is just as easy — a quick tap on the Hamburger menu will open a sidebar and you’ll be able to move between categories. I was especially surprised by how I liked this kind of implementation because I usually prefer to keep things separate, email messages in particular. But on the Passport, I found out I actually don’t mind looking at a unified Inbox and I happily added my five main email accounts.

BlackBerry Hub’s main interface.

Tap the Hamburger menu and you can check messages/notifications by category.

Tap the three-dot button on the right and you have access to different options and commands.

Add to this the well-known hardware blinking red LED that alerts the user to the presence of a new notification (see picture above), and in my opinion you have the best notification system ever. It’s not intrusive, but it’s effectual, and you hardly miss anything. If you don’t check the Hub right away when you have notifications, you’ll see which apps have new notifications because a red badge will appear on their icon. Here the approach is similar to Android’s blue dot, in that there isn’t an ‘unread items’ counter on the badge like on iOS, just an asterisk. As I said in my last piece on Android, I much prefer this approach — it’s less stressful.

Advanced Interaction

Those last two features are quite handy, especially the last one. But on the whole, all these are thoughtful and useful additions. If I researched this info correctly, ‘Lift to wake’ should predate the similar ‘Raise to wake’ on iOS by more or less two years.

‘Flip to save power’ was implemented earlier than on iOS. On iOS it appeared in 2015 in iOS 9, and it wasn’t as straightforward as it is here. The feature was called Facedown detection and what it did was to keep the iPhone’s screen turned off when you received notifications while your iPhone was placed face-down. This saved a bit of battery power, but that was it. It also worked only on iPhones equipped with motion coprocessors (iPhone 5s and up), and if fitness tracking was turned on. On BB10, it’s just a matter of flipping this switch, and the battery saving is more similar to iOS’s Low Power Mode.

Image taken from BlackBerry’s website in 2014. Having a wider screen was marketed as a productivity bonus, and — at least in some cases — I’m inclined to agree.

Final thoughts

Obviously this piece doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive look at BB10’s user interface, but I hope the selected examples provided are enough to illustrate how tasteful and thoughtful its design is on the whole. When I was tweeting my very first impressions immediately after reviving the Passport, I received some funny feedback from people who basically were asking me what the hell I was doing. In case it still isn’t clear, it’s my love for user interfaces that drives me to explore other platforms, whether dead or alive or on life support. I still remain an iPhone/iOS user first.

However, the more I explore other platforms, the more I appreciate what they tried to do UI-wise. And yes, I used to be one of those Apple users who sincerely believed Apple was always the best at creating user interfaces. But the truth is that, in some cases, other platforms implemented a feature in a more consistent/intelligent/innovative way than Apple. The fact that a platform was left behind or failed doesn’t mean that everything about it was a failure.

I understand why BlackBerry decided to switch completely to Android as opposed to carrying on with a native OS solution for their smartphones, but from what I’ve been able to observe in the two months I’ve used this BlackBerry Passport, it is indeed a pity that BB10 has been left behind. Its design, while some consider it ‘boring’, is a perfect fit — visually and functionally — for business users; but it is also clean and easy to grasp for regular people or users (like me) who had never touched a BlackBerry smartphone before. It might be less distinctive or visually striking as Windows Phone 7 and 8 have been with their Metro UI, but it is very much in line with BlackBerry’s identity. And just like I was genuinely shocked by how much I have been enjoying the user experience and interface design in Windows Phone 8.1, my experience with BB10 on this particular handset has been surprisingly positive and enjoyable.