January 24, 2015
Feedback submitted!Unable to submit feedback! First of all, I have a confession to make...I'm a self admitted blackberry fanboy. I had a 9930 and replaced it with a Galaxy note3 last year. More on that later. First of all, a little about me. I'm a 49 yr. old physician. Our practice communicates primarily via text messaging between the 10 or so sites which we operate out of. I was immediately attracted to the passport because it has a physical keyboard unlike the note3. At first, it took some getting used to, but I have grown to like it better than using swift keys on the note3. It's actually slower than using a touchscreen, but I find it inherently more accurate. The autocorrect feature doesn't seem to generate as much gobbly gook as what my note3 use to produce too. Overall I like the OS 10.3 better than using android OS. It's much more streamlined and businesslike. From the blackberry hub feature it's easy to access all my notifications from my different email accounts, text msgs., and app. messages. For me, the appeal of the blackberry over android OS is it's simplicity of operation. The settings menu is easy to access from a drop down tab and includes a vpn tab under network options. I'm not saying it's difficult to setp up a vpn app on an android, I just like the way blackberry handles it better. The note3 seemed to have a lot of bloatware and I believe that it was gave it a poor battery life. Most of the useless bloatware apps. could not be removed without rooting the phone which I was a little nervous about doing. During typical usage I would need to replace the battery by late afternoon on my note3. With my blackberry, I can do a 24 hour call shift, surf the net, and not have to worry about charging.The main reason I switched from my note3 is the kitkat "upgrade" definitely degraded the signal quality and I had difficulty sending and receiving texts while inside the hospital I work at. I have had no troubles with my passport. Granted, my note3 was on Verizon network and my passport is At&t so it's not apples to apples. But I can tell you that when my note3 was running jellybean, it didn't drop as many texts. I like the form factor of the passport and it's fun having people say "I didn't know they still made blackberries". As far as apps. are concerned, well, I never played a game of candy crush or flappy birds on my phone and probably never will. Whats new in blackberry OS 10.3 is the ability to run android apps without sideloading. The passport comes with the amazon app store and blackberry world for loading apps. While better than in the past, the app store is woefully wanting for apps. One of the apps my practice uses for communication is called "perfect serve". It's not available in the amazon app store nor blackberry world, but a quick google search and I was able to find the .apk file and load it from another site. It works just fine. I also loaded Netflix by searching for it's .apk file and it also works great ! (I watched a film called "last gladiators" about NHL enforcers which was excellent btw :) ) So the take home message is that there are other sites online to download .apk files, you just have to look a little bit and set the permissions to allow downloading from sources other than the blackberry store which is easy to do and similar to how it's done on the Android OS. I have a feeling most members of engadget site would have no problems doing this. Quite frankly, for me it’s part of the fun. Your mileage may vary though.I will say that the square screen does present some challenges for apps to run properly. For instance, VIBER , which is available for blackberry z30, does not run properly on the passport and believe me, I have tried multiple version numbers. The passport does come with What’s app preloaded along with BBM and of course there are many other text/voice over internet options out there to choose from. BBM is now available for IOS and Android but good look convincing your Apple donning friends to load BBM on their iphones. VYPERVPN also does not run properly, presumably secondary to a button placement overlap problem on the screen. I contacted goldenfrog, the purveyors of VYPERVPN and there are no plans for reformatting VYPERVPN for the passport. No problem though, because PUREVPN works just fine, and I have switched to that. Call quality is far superior to the Note3. The passport has 4 microphones im told, and I’m able to hear better. When I would play a youtube video on the Note3, even with the volume all the way up, it was very soft. The Passport borders on being too loud at it’s loudest volume setting !Another thing I like about the passport is that accessories are dirt cheap ! I’ve bought leather cases, screen protectors, all at low prices on various sites. More than likely it’s due to low consumer demand and so there appears to be a “fire sale†going on.So, in a nutshell I would summarize by stating that the passport does email, texting very well. It’s very businesslike and that’s why I like it. My note3 was better for taking videos and photos and possesses a wider selection of working apps and games. But you know, I have a nice laptop, and at home I built a PC for gaming that any teenager would gladly trade his baby sister for. My phone needs to be my communicator, not my entertainment hub.