Darren Kao has two apps on his Sony Xperia Android phone WeChat to stay
in touch with his Chinese clients, and the Starbucks wallet, for his
morning caffeine fix. For everything else, he's got his trusty
BlackBerry.
Kao is one of a shrinking tribe of diehard BlackBerry fans
dedicated to navigating modern life with what most people consider an
obsolete appliance. Echoing many BlackBerry devotees, he says iPhones
and Androids just can't match BlackBerry's voice sound quality,
centralized notification hub and physical keyboard. "I'd rather use my
old BlackBerry than a brand new phone," he said.
To outsiders,
it's an increasingly perverse lifestyle choice. After all, BlackBerry
Ltd. has committed to updating the BB10 operating system only through
the end of the year. It has no stated plans for another BB10 phone and
is accelerating a pivot to handsets running Google's Android. Even
President Barack Obama, who famously fought to keep his BlackBerry
despite security objections from the Secret Service, told Jimmy Fallon
last week he finally ditched his Berry earlier this year (reportedly for
a Samsung).
Some voices on Wall Street would like BlackBerry to
move on, as well. Macquarie analyst Gus Papageorgiou, who's covered the
Canadian company on and off since 2002, said in May that ditching
hardware altogether would actually help the bottom line and cheer the
market. Chief Executive Officer John Chen has said he'll do that if he
can't make the handset unit profitable by September.
He can
probably expect renewed pressure when BlackBerry reports earnings on
Thursday. On average, 21 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect the
company to post a loss of 7 cents and pull in $471 million in revenue.
BlackBerry reported just $2.2 billion in revenue last fiscal year, its
lowest showing since 2006. The shares have fallen about 20 percent in
the last 12 months.
At the end of March, about 23 million people
around the world were using BlackBerrys, including the Priv Android
phone, according to a company filing. Three times as many people were
using the handsets two years earlier, but the continued loyalty is
striking all the same. Getting non-BlackBerry applications onto a BB10
phone requires patience and some technical skill. Friends and family
often find themselves adding BlackBerry Messenger to their roster of
messaging apps to keep in touch with the few remaining BlackBerry users
in their life.
Kao, an IT consultant who runs a mobile software
startup in Ottawa, keeps the Wi-Fi hotspot of his BlackBerry on at all
times to allow WeChat to function on his Android. He refuses to message
with his wife and friends through anything other than BlackBerry
Messenger. He's currently using a Classic, an updated version of the
legendary BlackBerry Bold. It was released more than two years ago.
"Even my girls were brought up playing with BlackBerrys as toys," he
said.
Kim Kardashian has said she buys old BlackBerrys on eBay to
ensure a steady supply. Other members of the tribe painstakingly follow
online tutorials on work-arounds that will make popular apps like
Snapchat and Instagram work on BB10. The results are often glitchy, says
Howard Mesharer, a 23-year-old BlackBerry fan from Columbus, Ohio.
When
Chen chose to make phones running Android instead of BB10 last year, it
opened a rift in the BlackBerry community, according to Chris Parsons,
editor in chief of CrackBerry.com, BlackBerry fandom's central gathering
place. "It caused a little bit of chaos because they essentially made
people make a choice at that point, are you a BlackBerry user or are you
essentially an Android user," said Parsons, who's known as Bla1ze
online.
One CrackBerry user, known only as Cobalt232, found a way
to re-work Android's source code, stripping out certain elements that
stop Android apps from working on BB10. He's allowed the diehards to
download apps from Google's store that don't otherwise work on BB10,
Parsons said.
Mesharer, who works as a server at a restaurant,
used Cobalt's hack so he could Snapchat with his friends, up until about
a month ago, when he finally caved and bought an LG phone running
Android.
"Why do you need to do so much just to get an app that
anybody can get in five seconds? You have to work for 45 minutes to keep
Snapchat," he said. "No developer wants to develop for BlackBerry. It's
over."
Mesharer, who used the square-screened BlackBerry Passport
before he made the switch, said people sometimes mistook the phone for a
Nintendo Gameboy. Ask him which BlackBerrys he's used over the years
and he launches into a litany of names and numbers: "Curve 8520, Curve
8900, Bold 9900, Bold 9700, Curve 8320, Z10, Classic, Q10, Passport."
Kao
does the same. He got his first one in 2003, when he landed his first
job out of university at IBM. He recalls being the envy of all his
friends. "It used to be a badge of honor to be able to carry BlackBerrys
and now it's almost a shame," he said. "People look at it like it's a
dinosaur, a museum piece."
© 2016 Bloomberg L.P.
Android 16 Developer Preview 3 Reportedly Enables Screen-Off Fingerprint Unlock on All Pixel Phones24 March 2025
Search
![Gadgets 360 With Technical Guruji: Ask TG [ March 22, 2025]](https://c.ndtvimg.com/2024-12/5s52e4k_-ask-tg_640x480_14_December_24.jpg?downsize=180:*)
