BlackBerry Will Buy Your iPhone For $550 120
mpicpp points out that BlackBerry is hoping to get iPhone owners to switch to Passport smartphones by promising up to $550 to trade in their phones. "The promotion, which starts Monday, promises as much as $550 to iPhone owners who trade in their handsets in favor of BlackBerry's Passport. The actual trade-in value depends on the iPhone, with the iPhone 4S worth up to $90 and the iPhone 6 worth up to $400. (The iPhone 6 Plus is not eligible.) BlackBerry then sweetens the deal by kicking in an additional $150 as a topper for each iPhone. The deal will run through February 13, but it's good only in North America. Customers must buy the $599 to $699 unlocked Passport phone through either BlackBerry's website or Amazon. The trade-in amount comes in the form of a Visa prepaid card."
Bah hah hah (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bah hah hah (Score:5, Funny)
BlackBerry is the Windows Phone of phones!
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Bah hah hah (Score:5, Insightful)
Please add, older Blackberrys had the best physical, tactile keyboard in the industry, before or since, and experienced users could very nearly touch-thumb-type on them.
I went from a Blackberry Tour to an Android phone years ago when IT was outsourced and we apparently lost the ability to keep BES alive. Several years later, I'm still not as fast on the Android virtual keyboard than I was on the old Blackberry. I really miss that keyboard.
I'd go back to a Blackberry in a second (provided it has a good physical keyboard) if our offshore admins could keep BES operational for more than 18 hours straight. The smaller screen and fewer apps were more than made up, in an Enterprise environment, by the high degree of integration with the company intranet. It was something you couldn't play on as much as other devices, but it was something you could work on.
Re: (Score:2)
???
Our staff's Android and iOS devices all hook into Exchange and can use its address book, all via SSL connections. Maybe BB is a bit more feature rich, but having to run BES as an integrator between BB devices and an Exchange server is a resource-hungry pain in the ass. ActiveSync does the job well enough.
Re: (Score:3)
Active Synch does fine for the things Active Sync does. I liked having transparent access to intranet shares, and that I could easily transition from any environment to any other -- in 2005 -- by rolling over the item and pressing the button. For instance, in a calendar alert, roll to the Organizer, press, send him an email saying I'll be a little late. Some of these features are now available on other platforms, but Blackberry was there first, and they still do it better.
I can't speak for your environme
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe you just have small hands but I found Blackberry phones to be completely useless. I can't type or even dial a phone number on them without a serious case of fat finger syndrome. It takes forever for me to type out the simplest things on a blackberry.
You have to type with the tip of your thumb rather than the pad. It's not that hard.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"...Because of the Passport's unique position in the smartphone market, it’s only fair to review the Passport as a business tool—not in comparison to the latest Lollipop thing or iPhone Whatever+ as a consumer device. So rather than doing the usual feature-by-feature crawl, we put the Passport through the paces of several typical Ars 18-hour workdays to focus on its business acumen. And while we ran some basic benchmarks and explored its features, this focus was mostly on its
Re: (Score:2)
Because iOS and Android have no email and calendaring support whatsoever...
Re: (Score:1)
The only Android phones I have been able to find with a hardware keyboard are cheap gimped models. Virgin Mobile sells one in their lineup for $40. It's a terrible smartphone. Not because of the keyboard.
Re: (Score:2)
That's like saying a telegraph key is just as good as a keyboard. They are worlds apart.
Re: (Score:1)
What's a blackberry?
It's a small fruit, [wikipedia.org] similar to a raspberry, which is not to be confused with a BlackBerry.
even Blackberry can't get enough iPhones! (Score:2)
this is what I call a trend ;) droids are not what we're looking for :-D
Re: (Score:1)
It's the phone that runs Android apps on a Unix based OS, preventing them from leaking/leaching data from other parts of the phone. You know, that one that's more secure than the Android phone that runs apps on an Android based OS.
You seem to have left out a rather critical detail...you know the part where anything that runs Android apps is going to leak/leech data in every other direction that you agreed to when accepting the 87 EULAs...
Re: (Score:3)
that's why I never accept the eulas
Re: (Score:3)
Didn't Blackberry give back door access to their phones to the governments of India, China and pretty much anyone else who asked?
Some simple fact checking would show this is false, yet it continues to persevere through the grossly uninformed.
Actually , it's true. India [thenextweb.com]
The company has provided a solution that allows the government special access to Blackberry’s communication services, including BlackBerry Messenger and BlackBerry Internet Service email. As a result, the Indian government can now monitor the exchange of emails and email attachments on BlackBerry devices, as well as whether messages on Blackberry Messenger have been marked ‘delivered’ or ‘read.’
Saudi Arabia [thestar.com]
Research in Motion has reportedly averted a ban on its BlackBerry communications services in Saudi Arabia in exchange for security concessions to the government.
Waterloo-based RIM has agreed to hand over user codes that would let Saudi authorities monitor its BlackBerry Messenger, a source close to the talks told Reuters News Agency on Tuesday.
The source said RIM would share with Saudi Arabia the unique pin number and code for each BlackBerry registered there. That will allow authorities to read encrypted text sent via Messenger, an instant messaging service that’s distinct from email sent on the BlackBerry that is so popular with its prized corporate and political customers.
Russia, China [forbes.com]
On November, 2007, in order to sell its devices inside Russia, RIM provided its encryption keys to Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) which, in turn, provided access to the Federal Security Service (FSB). The official Russian law which mandates this supervision is Order 6 from 16.01.2008 "About the statement of Requirements for telecommunication networks for operational and search activities."
In January, 2008, RIM China announced that BlackBerry sales through China Mobile were on track although 2007 was the expected start date. The delay was due to the fact that "RIM needed to satisfy Beijing that its handsets posed no security threat to China’s communication networks, according to sector analysts." There’s only one way to satisfy the Chinese government regarding "security threats" and that’s to comply with Chinese law regarding supervision and monitoring.
You can find more if you look.
Re:Bah hah hah (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure not selling phones is a good business plan for a company that was in the process of hemorrhaging market-share. Their drop had nothing to do with this move. If anything the countries in question saw an opportunity to pressure the weakened RIM at that time.
What kind of threat would that be anyway? "Won't sell us phones? Alright, our people will buy iPhones instead which already do what we want".
Re: (Score:2)
They blinked, and went from #1 to ... well, mostly irrelevant.
Put in perspective this comment is irrelevant.
When BB was #1 (~March 2007) Their subscriber base [wikipedia.org] was less than 10 million. In 2012 when their market share percentage (percentage is the keyword here) had "eroded" to nothing their subscriber base was 80 million yet everyone had already written them off. You see the market for smart phones expanded quicker than BlackBerry but they were still growing year over year until 2013. BlackBerry is the BSD of cell phones. Netcraft confirms it! You can be angry at them
Re: (Score:2)
My point was that by foregoing market share in the first country to make such a threat, the other countries would have a choice between giving up their Crackberries or not threatening RIM. Instead, by giving in, they launched a cascade of similar demands. Sure, this only affected customers who valued encrypted email, etc., but that was a key selling point to business and government. "Big Brother doesn't know what you say" became "We gave the keys to all your secrets to Big Brother."
If they had ended u
Re: (Score:2)
Not selling phones in one country (and.. not refusing to sell phones, just not being allowed to) for the reason of protecting your customers' security when every other phone company had already caved?
Yeah, I'm sure that wouldn't have helped their sales anywhere else.
Re: (Score:2)
Being #1 in a rapidly-expanding market is a huge advantage due to the "network effect" - people buy what the people around them buy.
The writing was starkly on the wall last year [gartner.com] when their sales didn't put them in the top 10. Going from #1 to being lumped in with "Other" == "yuck".
And there's a big difference between "subscriber base", which is accumulated over years, and "annual sales."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And it allows the governments to view both encrypted and unencrypted BIS and BBM messages.
Re:Bah hah hah (Score:5, Insightful)
The old Blackberry might have been secure if for no other reason than it was a glorified PDA without the ability to do much of anything dynamic. The new version is based on QNX makes heavy use of message passing APIs (which I personally have evaluated the code for and will agree that part is secure. At least in transit) but will be coded for by developers who will focus on usability and functionality which will require their apps to become subscribers to many message pipes and eventually will become sources for information which they didn't originate and therefore will become backdoors in the phone allowing pretty much any other program to hack the data when the user really only permitted access to that data to the one app.
QNX IS NOT a UNIX, it is mostly POSIX. It is an embedded real-time operating system. It has a pretty interesting scheduler and I'd love to poke around to see how they managed to get a real time OS to pretend to be a suitable end user OS (a hell of a task if it worked).
Please also understand that sand boxing is only interesting so long as we don't want information to cross between apps. In truth we do. And we want apps to communicate. Therefore it doesn't matter if the OS is the most secure OS on the planet, as soon as you add third party apps and users that use them, security is shot to hell.
As for basic security of the OS, like "Can someone hack it from the internet" or "Can someone hack into from physical access?". The answers are simple. Yes and yes. We may not know how, but if anyone gave a shit about Blackberry, it wouldn't be that hard. I would of course just abuse social engineering instead as it's far simpler, but I have actually hacked a Samsung using a black light on the screen just moments after the user hung up a phone call. It left a lovely smudge in the shape of the password from the fingers tracing it.
Quit talking security as if it's even possible. Especially with the "my system is so secure and yours isn't", paranoia is good and believing that your phone can and will be hacked keeps your nudie pictures off the web.
Re:Bah hah hah (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you are missing the point. BlackBerrys are the only smartphones that offer end to end encryption that the users control and noone else. This ofcourse requires you to run your own servers, but being the only option is why it is inherintly more secure than any other phone and is why heads of state and security concious enterprises has stuck with blackberry when everybody else left.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that no systems is perfectly secure but your argument is specious at best.
Re: (Score:1)
I see you've read the marketing pdf for the phone.
Re:Money how? (Score:4, Insightful)
They have virtually no sales, but a huge amount of cash from their halcyon days. Rather than simply hand that money back to investors and close shop, they've decided that a "flush it all down the toilet" strategy is in order.
I get that they're trying to do the loss leader game, but if this is successful, BB will be out of pocket a heap load of cash with little immediate benefit. If it isn't successful, then the stunt demonstrates they're fate is to be a bit player with a niche in keyboard smartphones, and no hopes of ever taking on Android and iOS devices.
Re: (Score:2)
If Microsoft, with orders of a magnitude more cash available to burn is finding it almost impossible to break the Android-iOS duopoly, I'm thinking BB's chances of making a comeback sufficient to create a third player in the market are somewhat on the same order of a extrasolar comet flying into the solar system, slingshoting around Jupiter, hooking off Neptune, doing four orbits of the sun before being captured for three orbits by Saturn, being flung at Earth, breaking up under the Moon's gravitational pul
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with you in general, but feel obligated to point out, the difference (and it is a small one) is, Blackberry had at one time a superior product. Whereas, Microsoft never did.
Re: (Score:1)
Their product was only "better" because their competitors at the time only had crap products. Not to mention that smartphones were a tiny niche product during the heyday of the BlackBerry. The global sales of smartphones during that time was about 1/20th of what they are now. It's easy to be the biggest fish when the pond is small.
Re: (Score:3)
Their product was only "better" because their competitors at the time only had crap products.
That's kind of how it works in general. Some products are superior to other, inferior, products.
Why not just say "they wouldn't have had a product that was 'better' than the competition if the competition had a superior product". So silly...
The global sales of smartphones during that time was about 1/20th of what they are now. It's easy to be the biggest fish when the pond is small.
Good effort. Now, ask yourself: 'why did the market grow?' Because the smartphone market expanded in to the consumer space. Companies started to offer their inferior products (read: ill-suited to the enterprise) with features attractive to consumers. BlackBerry fal
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
MS has lots of marketing ability but shit for phone development. Blackberry's management couldn't sell crack to an addict
Re: (Score:2)
microsoft should buy blackberry. MS has lots of marketing ability
Sure, I mean it worked so well when they bought Danger. [appleinsider.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Money how? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So it's the 'trade in your iPod for a Zune strategy'... got it.
They're NOT buying it (Score:1)
If they were buying it they would give me the money, all they're offering is a trade-in value.
Aw, man! (Score:2)
Re: Aw, man! (Score:5, Funny)
Loose Tips Sink Ships (Score:2)
Unwanted to take advantage of this,
Now *that's* a freudian slip typo if I ever saw one!
Re: Loose Tips Sink Ships (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
If only they paid $600 for OnePlus One.. Invites..
Re: (Score:2)
I feel your pain. My iPhone 4 is worth nothing to BB.
Not enough (Score:2)
They couldn't pay me to use or carry that monstrosity. Makes you wonder just what were they thinking...
Re:Not enough (Score:4, Insightful)
They're thinking "Hmmm, do we hand this mountain of cash we're still sitting on back to the shareholders and close up shop, or do we spend that cash frivolously on doomed loss leaders schemes and executive salaries?"
I think you can probably guess at the answer. But really, anyone still holding BB stock at this point is staking more of a religious position than a business one. Anyone with any interest in meaningfully profitable investment strategies dumped BB a long time ago.
The next stage, I'm presuming, is for BlackBerry to turn into SCO and start trying to extort license fees from Android manufacturers and Apple.
Re: (Score:2)
They couldn't pay me to use or carry that monstrosity. Makes you wonder just what were they thinking...
I'd have to reluctantly agree. It doesn't look ergonomic. It looks like an odd compromise between having a physical keyboard and having a smartphone-sized screen.
I'd be more interested in a Classic.
Re: (Score:2)
They could totally pay me to use or carry that monstrosity. The rest is just negotiations ...
Put legs on it.. (Score:3)
and you would have a fine table.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA! (Score:2)
No...
Blackberry does communication better (Score:1)
As someone who recently switched from a blackberry to an iphone I must say that the blackberry does communication much better.
Contacts, Emails, SMS, phone calls, all are handled much better than the iphone.
Re: (Score:2)
> That's only because it had a better OS and software. It isn't actually better than the iphone.
Right.... because.... got it! Because it's not an iphone. There, I've run circles around you logically. Now it's time for the penguin on your iphone to explode.
Math (Score:5, Funny)
So they give you $400 for an iPhone 6. Then they sweeten the deal by adding another $150. That's $550. I have a better idea. Give iPhone 6 users $350 for their phones. Then sweeten it with a further $100. And then, yes that's right, throw in another $100 just because. Wait. I have an even better idea. Give $200 for the phone, then sweeten it with $100, then another $100, and THEN ANOTHER $150 on top of that!!!!! Wow!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
You forgot to offer 50,000 more, just to sweeten the deal
Re: (Score:1)
But what are you going to offer to sweeten the deal?
Re: (Score:1)
Customers must buy the $599 to $699 unlocked Passport phone through either BlackBerry's website or Amazon.
What if they just sell the unlocked phones for $50 to $150?
Does anyone here on /. plan on taking this offer? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Seriously, anyone?
I would like to officially confirm that I am in no way interested in selling my 6+ for anything less than retail.
To get a Blackbury instead of my 6+, they would have to pay me significantly more than what I paid for my smartphone as its obviously a big downgrade.
Do.
Not.
Want.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Then you don't need to hand people hundreds of dollars to take it off your hands.
-jcr
Yeah, but considering the product has been constantlly sold out and impossible to even get hands on, this really doesn't make any sense. Maybe they have ramped up production and the initial buyers are all done?
Re: (Score:2)
Sunce when did BlackBerry become a carrier?
Re: (Score:2)
Sunce when did BlackBerry become a carrier?
1999 when they launched their first two way pager. Their BIS network is deployed worldwide.
Re: (Score:2)
I Was With Them... (Score:3)
Local prof says "desperate move" (Score:2)
A local business prof says [www.cbc.ca] this is a "desperate" move.
Apple may give you a gift certificate for your BB (Score:2)