Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/26/punkts-mp02-upgrades-the-bes.html
…
2 Likes
To each their own, but seems a little steep given that an unlocked BlackBerry KEYone sells for the same price…
Given the likely sales volume it wouldn’t much surprise me if the price is a reasonable reflection of the cost; but the genre of non-distraction-mandatory widgets seems to be one where you pay a solid premium.
Aside from the case design, which definitely deviates from the usual 2001: The Attention Economy touchscreen monilith; I suspect it comes down to how easy you consider the task of defanging a standard cellphone to be(and whether you trust yourself to do it and not undo it).
2 Likes
Maybe people hope the Punkt MP02 doesn’t fall apart in your hands like the KEYone?
1 Like
That’s part of it. Another is people probably just deciding they don’t want to bother removing features they don’t want anyway. I guess you could consider this a partially pre-defanged phone.
The last and only BlackBerry I had was well over a decade ago when they were among the more feature-rich mobile devices. I liked having the physical keys given that on-screen keyboards were smaller and less accurate back then. But today I prefer a large water-resistant touchscreen.
1 Like
2 Likes
My experience with a modern Android based Blackberry is that they are real dogs. Soooooo slow to do anything. I was shocked when I retired my PRIV and immediately felt a sense of relief starting to use my S7 I replaced it with.
Sometimes after an update, it would take 90 minutes to “optimize apps”. What? Budgeting 2 hours to update your phone?? Surprised it isn’t made by Sony.
1 Like
BlackBerry certainly made many quality phones. The KEYone is not one of those. They have a notorious reputation of falling apart.
1 Like
Holy expletive, a basic phone with hotspot? That’s been my dream device for years now. It’s even got sunlight-readability, and fully physical buttons.
I don’t entirely get how blackberry figures into it - sounds like there aren’t apps to worry about compromising. So what security is being provided?
Here’s hoping I get this plus a mini tablet and cut my final cable soon. (comcast internet can kiss my posterior)
edit: sounds like the blackberry features are for corporate IT, such that someone like a president could use this device “safely”.
edit2: Ok, I’ve noticed it has gps with no obvious application, (so user tracking?) and they sell an $80 leather case. It’s sounding worse and worse.
I’m just not too keen on spending $350 on a phone from a company named “Punkt,” cause that’s how I’d feel. Punked.
My guess is that it will in fact have some apps, since it is hardware-wise a touchscreen-less android smartphone. The danger of them opening it up to development is, of course, that the first thing someone makes will be a fucking Facebook/Twitter client and it’ll be toxic to the phone’s marketing.
Check out the Cat B100. Ugly ol brick but it has 3G and GPS and turns up on eBay for less than $100.
German for “dot”, and presumably a nod to the defunct gadget company Blaupunkt–which as I recall went out of business not long before this company was born.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
