Do We Still Need BlackBerry in 2020? By TechOdyssey

Hey everybody welcome back to tech Odyssey, so today, I'm here to talk about blackberry. So one of the things that I got to thinking about here recently was: does the world still need blackberry? We've got iPhones now we've got really cool, Android phones, there's so much stuff out there. Most of the world has kind of left them behind I mean of course, they're not making any more devices. But the question that we need to ask ourselves, and then they're probably asking is: do we still need blackberry phones out in the world? Will they still sell? Is there something that people still want and why and that's what I want to tackle in this video, so before we get into that, though I do want to say if this is your first time stopping by the channel. I appreciate you being here. If you enjoy the video, please hit the like and the subscribe button and the little notification bell.

So you get updates when new videos come out now. Let's talk about some blackberry, all right so does the world still need blackberry and to answer that question we have to ask ourselves what is blackberry. So, of course, blackberry was very innovative when it came to smartphones, and they were pretty much kind of the first real smartphone on the market. They had apps at they're, an operating system. There was so much that the world took from them and learned that we got in Android and in iOS, so that kind of leveled the playing field out.

We had blackberry ten, we had Android, and we had iOS all operating at the same time. So where do they go wrong because two of these are still here, and one of them is very quickly going. The way of the dodo and I am as upset about that as most many people who are bike, berry fans because I love the devices. So when we look at blackberry, there are three key things that I think of whenever it comes to blackberry and one is the keyboard, so we've got the BlackBerry passport here you can see this iconic keyboard. I've got the BlackBerry key to here, which is an Android version that also has a keyboard on it, and I've got so many BlackBerry's I've got the key.

One I've got my q10 here. As you can see, they all have one thing in common, and that is a keyboard. So whatever BlackBerry's were in their heyday, there was no real alternative solution that gave you a perfect touch typing experience on the screen. They were terrible, so it made sense that you could type away on this like a dream. Superfast super accurate and also had some smart functionality, or you could try and hand jam on a terrible LCD that just wasn't up to snuff.

So as technology got better and then with the advent of the iPhone, it got really, really easy to type on a touchscreen so much so that people prefer that over having a physical keyboard like this, because as you can see here, it kind of takes up screen real estate. So if you look at a modern phone- and this is relatively modern for these purposes- we've got the iPhone 8 plus versus the BlackBerry key -. You can see there's a significant amount real estate over here on this screen versus this one, quite a bit more. Actually so people kind of linden tend to lean towards having a full-size screen because you have more real estate and one thing that's changed over the last ten years such blackberry was in prominence, was social media and media consumption back then, you might have a one gigabyte data plan. You might have had a two gigabyte data plan, a three gigabyte.

You might not even have a data plan. So looking back like 10 years ago, there wasn't a lot of watching YouTube hanging out on Instagram, Pinterest Facebook, and you know MySpace use very little data. So a lot of the things that were on your phone were really geared towards productivity. They were geared towards communication and a long-lasting battery. So when you had the BlackBerry that would last you all day, you could type like a champ on it.

It had its wonderful blackberry, security, blackberry, messenger, all those things it was a very attractive device. But now, when you look nowadays, all of that stuff is duplicated. There's so many alternatives out there that you can get on Android and that you can get on iPhones, which is kind of why blackberry 10 died out. It just didn't. Have the app support people wanted to be able to use Instagram, they want to be able to use Pinterest.

They wonder you, you name it XYZ. All the different social media services and blackberry.10 wasn't really about that. There were some social media apps on there, but they try to get that stuff spun up too little too late, because blackberry was always really hedged in the government sector and in privacy and security and large-scale enterprise. Not the consumer market and blackberry thought that forever they were going to have their little enterprise security, communications nut and nobody was gonna, be able to take it, and they sat there on it too long, and it got taken. So that's kind of one thing so talking about all that back to the keyboard, it wasn't really something that people wanted any more yeah.

It was one thing for somebody like me who loves typing on a keyboard, but if there are others that give you larger screens with smaller bezels with more power and all the access to media that you want, why would you want this, so I think as far as market appeal, the keyboard just doesn't draw people in like it used to- and this is very obvious I mean I'm, not telling you anything that you don't know here, but is the keyboard still important today and I think very much, so it is because, even though I have the iPhone, you have the Android, you can type on them. So fast you've got swipe typing. There is nothing in my opinion that meets the efficiency and the enjoyment of being able to type on a physical keyboard. Plus you get all the multi layers of hotkeys and all that good stuff that you can do on here for multitasking, especially since it's such sensitive, so I think that's very relevant still for people who care about one typing. I use my phone primarily as a communications tool.

Yes, I also use things like Instagram and Pinterest, and whatnot Pinterest, but I don't use that my wife uses a lot of Pinterest, but I use. Instagram, I use a lot of Twitter and primarily still most of my experience revolves around typing all the time typing, accurately typing efficiently, using proper punctuation and all that good stuff. So this right here still has a lot of allure to me and some other people as well. So, yes, I think that the keyboard is still relevant for a certain amount of people, but not largely in society, which is why you don't have people flocking in droves to get these things, it's people that have had the experience, because if you look at someone now who's not used a keyboard before they just get used to it, they use the screen display that they have. They used the software keyboard, that's on there, or maybe they get a swift key, or maybe they get a G board or whatever, and they just adapt to that.

So they say why don't want to give up my screen real estate, so I can have this keyboard way. I can type just fine. So really, yes, I think there is still a market for this, but it's more of a personal preference kind of thing, because really and truly some people can type really fast, whether it's Android Apple or on here, so I think there's a place for it, but aren't understandably, so it's just not what it used to be. So now that we've talked about the keyboard, let's talk about security, so I think what people misconceive. When you talk about the word security when it comes to phone, they think that oh no, my phone, so curate came so secure.

It can't be hacked really and truly most security on your phone used to deal with privacy, so BlackBerry, 10 and BlackBerry OS were very, very secure because they don't have all these services and functions and background processes and all these different apps that are trying to get permission to your phone and your data, so that right there was secure. Then you had the intent encryption. So if you use BlackBerry Enterprise Service, then our software surface remember right now, BES if you use that your email and your communication was encrypted end-to-end and along with your messages, especially if you use blackberry messenger. So it was really secure and that's something that people didn't realize: the consumer models of BlackBerry's we're not nearly as secure as the ones running on an enterprise server where everything was in a closed loop and secured and protected by blackberry. It was just a normal consumer phone that had less privacy and less app permission concerns because it just didn't have those, and it wasn't built that way so blackberry.

Here is this Android yeah, it's got the D tech software security suite on it, but mostly it's telling you hey. This app is trying to gain access to this or here maybe you should go in and do some of these things or here maybe you shouldn't turn on third-party app support, or maybe you should not enable developer mode. Yeah, there are different things on there that try and help you think about security from a privacy perspective, because security and privacy really are kind of the same thing, and you don't want people who shouldn't be taking advantage of or accessing your information doing. That Apple is very secure when it comes to that, and they also get very, very current software updates and security patches, they're, very, very quick with that stuff when it comes to Android they're, much slower with getting security updates, and that's one of the reasons why BlackBerry always kind of laugh behind in sight. Okay, yeah we're on blackberry, 10 I was sorry Android 10.

This is still stuck on Android 8, but it's still getting the security patch updates, and it got one in March. Some people are saying there was one for May, I'm, not sure about that or June, but the operating system is only as secure as it will continue to get supported. So if we're talking about BlackBerry 10, and we're talking about this phone, it may not be supported with software or security updates in another couple of months or another year. It starts by erosion becoming less and less secure. It gets more holes every time.

There's a new feature or a new exploit that someone comes up with to get access to your data. So yeah you can encrypt the hard drive. You can put a security token all that good stuff, but at the end of the day, if you can't control and secure the information that's going in and out of it, you don't know where it's going, then you're limited on how secure you actually are. Blackberry tended that really well, but Android, not so much that way, especially when Google is basically sitting there with popcorn in the front seat, accessing managing and controlling all of your information, so security, not so much of a relevant concern when it comes to mass-produce, Android devices anymore, blackberry, 10, yes, very, secure I would argue, it's even more secure because there's fewer people using it now so there's fewer people trying to exploit it, but it hasn't really got any relevant updates and a long time. So yeah blackberry used to be really synonymous with security, and this is as secure as you're going to get on an Android device, but at the same time that's only something's going to be around a little longer, and it's not as much of a closed operating system like Apple on iOS, which is pretty secure.

So that's another thing, so blackberry kind, the keyboard kind of on the way out the door for most people unless you're someone like me who just loves the keyboard security kind of lost the competitive edge in that market when they adopted Android and moved over to that platform. So now it's on par with other Androids, so it's not really offering much. That Samsung is not offering with Knox or pixels not offering with their Titan chip. So you see where I'm going with that security is not really something where you can walk in and go oh I'm buying this blackberry because it's more secure. So that's another issue.

The last thing that I really have felt was synonymous with blackberry, and I'm kind of going to combine the two leads together. His productivity and battery life BlackBerry's always had pretty good battery life, but they also had the ability to switch out the batteries for many years. So you could just most people that had blackberries that used them seriously as business devices would carry around an additional battery, so you could pop it in and be it a hundred percent on the go if you're on a plane, if you're on a train, if you're in an automobile see there, you always would have an extra battery with you, so you could make sure that your phone was topped off, and they had very generous batteries for what was offered at the time. So your iPhones, they would die faster. Your Samsung and your Android devices would die pretty quickly and then they kind of went the way.

Apples have never had external batteries. You could, you know, take out and replace, so Blackberry always had an edge there and multitasking you had the hub. You have all the shortcut keys, you have the tool belt. They were built from the ground up to help you do your job better, to be more productive, to be more efficient and to do things quickly. All day long phones have like two or three day batteries.

Now you don't need a removable battery. Blackberry has kind of lost that competitive edge as well, and then, when it comes to productivity, there are a lot of different things that you have like the note with the stylus, or you have iPads that have Apple Pencil support. There are things that have been created now that did not exist back when blackberry was more competitive in this arena. So if you want to be productive, a lot of people don't even use a phone for that anymore. They have a tablet in the iPad and iPad Pro, so many alternatives and then even on your phone, you have a lot of different things.

You have split screen mode. If you get a folding phone like the Samsung Galaxy fold, you can use multiple windows. There are so many things about different types of phones now that make them very, very efficient and competitive when it comes to being productive and lasting all day. So those are kind of the three areas that been big for blackberry for so long and they kind of lost all their competitive edges in their departments. And then, when you look at it from a pure consumer perspective, if you don't have all those benefits, why do you want to lose the screen real estate for a keyboard? So then, basically, the argument just rolls back into I, want a blackberry, because I just want a physical keyboard, which is a very small market.

So, yes, I, think at a grassroots level. If they want to continue to make devices, if they can do it on a smaller scale, or they're, going to have to charge more money to offset the cost of production. Maybe they could make a phone every year or every other year, and we would be able to continue to use that, but I don't see them spooling back their up their own operating system. Enterprise server management is just not what it used to be when it comes to devices. So companies don't really have that control over them anymore.

Outside really controlled environments like the military and government sector, which is where blackberry thrived in the first place, they were never consumer from the get-go. So if they want to have their cake and eat it too, they may still be able to operate in the smartphone arena. But it's not I, don't think going to have the big footprint like it had the past and of course we don't even know if they're going to be around after August, because August 31st the license ends with blackberry mobile under the TCL licensing agreements. So there are a lot of question marks, but I thought now would be a good time to talk about this, because as much as we love the phones, I mean we love them a lot. They're they're, great phones, they last they're built well outside some of the issues we had with the BlackBerry mobile devices, but with the actual BlackBerry hardware.

These things are built like tanks they last, and you can still use this as a Productivity device for emails, Excel, spreadsheets, Word documents, all sorts of things, and it still works pretty darn. Well, so it wouldn't take a lot for blackberry to make something, especially nowadays with like the 6 Series and the 7 Series processors that are so efficient the power efficient, but they have power and I think if they could create something, maybe around the five or six hundred dollar ballpark. That gave us a nice mid-range phone. That's still in Corp, some things like a good camera, a nice screen and their top best in the world-class keyboard they might, could sell enough of them just so they could continue to produce devices. But the problem is moving forward if they ditch the keyboard, then they're just another phone.

So if they wanted to try, and they tried it with the motion- which is legitimately good phone- but if Apple does it better Google, does it better Samsung? Does it better LG? Does it better? Why do you want to go out and buy a blackberry that doesn't have a keyboard because then it's just another slab, so if they're going to continue to operate, if they want to remain relevant and if you want to be able to check the box that says yes, we still need a blackberry in the world, it needs to keep the keyboard, and it needs to do it well and a good price where people are actually going to buy it, the people that want it, because, obviously this is not an Mass appeal device at this point? So, yes, I, think blackberry is still something that we need in the world and I think that they can still succeed. If they do it right and of course, that's always been a question because they never can seem to get it quite right when it comes to phones, so this still has a lot of life left in it solid device, we'll see what happens once the end of August gets here, and we'll see what happens if they decide that they're going to continue to operate in the smartphone space, so that's all I got. Hopefully this has been insightful and helpful and enjoyable. I know it's not a lot of flashy stuff. It's mostly just my perspective on where BlackBerry's at in the world.

Why it's not succeeding, why the ones that are out on the market are not selling, and what would they need to do to be able to remain relevant, at least for people like you and me who still want a keyboard on our smartphone? So that's all I've got if you have any questions. You have any comments. If you want to continue the dialogue or talk about any stuff, please feel free leave them down in the comments. I will get back with you and I will talk to you about it and, like I said in beginning, if you enjoyed the video, please hit the like and the subscribe button and a little notification bell, so you get updates when new videos come out. As always I appreciate you watching, thanks for being here, and I'll, see you guys next time.

Source : TechOdyssey