Does Blackberry Still Suck Even With Devices Like The Z10?

About 2 years ago, an article was published on this blog about how badly Blackberry sucked at that time. Seven salient points were raised in the article and a lot of Blackberry users were irked by the blog post. Well, it’s 2014 and to be honest, Blackberry has changed over the past couple of years and some points raised in the article are no longer valid. It’s a fact that Blackberry is still a struggling company but do their latest devices still suck that bad?

According to a report by 24/7 Wall St., Blackberry is listed among the 10 companies that will disappear by 2015. For most Blackberry fans, this is bad news. As the struggling company tries to gain a fair share of the mobile market by pushing forward new devices on the Blackberry 10 platform, more and more of its users are seen dropping their Blackberry devices for Android smartphones and the iPhone.

Putting aside the many woes of the company, an objective look at their latest gadgets like Blackberry Z10 might make one have a rethink about the platform. From the bulky, ugly devices Blackberry was producing a couple of years ago, the latest touchscreen devices do have more to offer.

Well, Blackberry doesn’t seem to suck anymore and that’s a fact.

Blackberry, a secure platform

It may surprise many that after all these years, President Barrack Obama still uses a Blackberry device. For a world leader like Barrack Obama, security isn’t just about having a device locked with a password, it’s more about having a secure device prone to hacking from professional and amateur hackers as well as spy agencies.

Since he became president, Barack Obama kept his BlackBerry device. Photo credit: Charles Ommanney/Getty Images

“I am not allowed, for security reasons, to have an iPhone,” says the US president according to a news article by the Guardian.

One thing that has always made Blackberry stand out is security. It’s probably the most secure smartphone out there but its worth mentioning that Obama uses a modified BlackBerry device with enhanced encryption.
More apps

Blackberry app store has always been known to contain apps of less quality and of course, the number of available apps is much less compared to Android and iOS. For Blackberry 10 uers, this has changed as you can now run Android apps on Blackberry platform.

Just last month, Blackberry was reported to partner with Amazon to offer Blackberry users over 240,000 Android apps. This means more apps for the ecosystem unlike what it was years ago.
Better looking physical design

Gone are the days when you have no choice but to live with a physical Qwerty keypad on your Blackberry device but with the release of Blackberry Z10, that is now an option. Users who still prefer physical Qwerty keyboard may opt for Blackberry Q10.

The user interface has been redesigned. The overhauled looks like Backberry’s attempt to keep old customers and attract new ones already on other platforms.

The question is how long will Blackberry survive?

That remains to be seen but if the financial report mentioned earlier is anything to go by, Blackberry only has a couple of more years to live. Despite the many changes, Blackberry is still losing and the profit made from these latest devices isn’t enough to keep the company going.