New York Mag's BlackBerry 10 demo unit dies after only four days - Page 3

I sense frustration.
Apple fans are not your enemy. They never were.
BB users abandoning BB is the problem.

Speaking of unsubstantiated, you're making a significant unsubstantiated accusation there, of deliberately trying to damage the review sample in the guise of playing game.


That tends to happen when a company is years late, with repeated delays, on updated products and is hemorrhaging customers.


But don't question you, someone who, by your own admission, doesn't have either of the new products being discussed.


But you haven't used the new product, despite strenuously defending it.


Android and Apple are the standard to compare against. Comparing BB against market failures helps no one.


Why should anyone trust the user reviews and ratings found on a carrier's web site? I would always suspect them as possibly curated, regardless of carrier.
Edited by JeffDM - 2/10/13 at 12:14am

Texting and driving is trickier if you don't have at least one hand free for steering. There are other, safer, scenarios like walking a dog and texting or dialling. Holding a lover's hand during a romantic stroll in the park but checking out some RSS feeds to avoid the boring chit-chat. Dialling for a cab while carrying shopping. Taking a photo while breast-feeding a baby or hanging from a cliff-face. Browsing the web while vacuuming.

I wouldn't say one-handed use is essential at all times but there are a few times when it would be difficult to have two hands free and a certain size of screen would make those things very difficult. Obviously there are millions of people who manage just fine with larger screens and they are willing to work around any discomfort so it's clearly not a deal-breaker but there's really not a huge difference. In the following video, I don't really see many of the text elements on the S3 being easier to read:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=GEsrXHWqiwM#t=1179s

The text sizes look roughly the same in most things. At the end 45:50 he says he likes the big screen, some of his female friends like the smaller screen and he likes the S3 for watching video while out walking the dog. He'd get a 20% bigger video. The good thing about Apple sticking to the one-handed philosophy is that it's comfortable for everyone and every scenario but it still has a large enough screen that text doesn't look much smaller anyway and with the 16:9 screen, it's not cropping video and you can hold it a little closer to get the same viewing size of bigger phones.

If you hold the S3 20cm away, holding the iPhone 5 at 17cm will give you the same experience.

 

Anyone stupidly texting while driving, should at least be using voice input, to cut down on the amount of time spent not looking at the road.

 

As for the other scenarios, texts, photos, calls, are still possible one-handed even on a big screen, especially if the device has a one-handed mode for the dialer and keyboard like the Galaxy Note 2:

 

A special mode helps but you can still see places like choosing the recipient for the text message would need a second hand or shuffling the phone. There will always be some app where you can't reach a part of it comfortably with one hand. That's obviously why Blackberry chose 4.2" and their demos show one handed operation.

Hey RIM, er, BlackBerry-R-Us.  Good luck finding a buyer.

 

Have you called up HP?  I hear they're suckers for mobile technology has-beens.

 

Good point.  If the intended recipient is at the top of the list, their entry will be impossible to scroll down to where the thumb is.  (Most everyone else can be scrolled to.)

 

OTOH, as we've all had to learn to do with capacitive touchsceens at times, especially in the cold with non-special gloves, this is where our nose comes in handy as an emergency stylus 

 

In any case, people don't buy devices like the Note for one-handed usage.  They buy it for the large screen and/or stylus, knowing those will often require two hands.  I agree that there are far better choices for one-handed lovers.

Just ran across a post where it was pointed out that Jon Ive claimed the iPad mini was designed to be used with one hand.

 

"We felt strongly that 7.9" was exactly the right display size.  But it became clear that we had to reduce the width of the borders so you can still pick it up and use it easily with one hand."

 

If Ive feels that a 7+" tablet screen is still usable one-handed, then perhaps he plans on designing  larger screened iPhones as well.

 

Go to about 2:10 of the Apple intro video:

 

That's stretching what they are saying. You can obviously pick it up and read a book with it using one hand but it's not designed to be used with one hand. You'd barely be able to unlock it with one hand, you certainly can't type efficiently one-handed:



You can use the iPhone one-handed for everything, you can use an iPad Mini one-handed for some things. If they make a bigger phone, it means you can only efficiently use it one-handed for some things and that conflicts with the way they designed the iPhone so far. If they decided to do it, they'd have to market it differently and deal with the resolution change required to make it worthwhile.

Nice find but remember that we're talking about a completely different device category which means a different usage type. Note that at 0m:50s the narrator states that at 7.9" it's small enough to fit in one hand. Not use, fit. The border reduction was so most people can hold it in their palm. Also note what they showed you as an example of one-handed use. Not exactly a solid demo of being able to do anything but tap one side of the screen with your thumb.

Finally, let's be completely honest and acknowledge that 7.85" was used not because Apple felt that was an ideal usage size but because it allowed them to use the exact same PPI displays they mastered and have fully invested in 5 years go which allows them to reduce the cost of the device. Maybe it's coincidentally their exact ideal size but on the odds on that seem slim unless we're talking a size range.