Why? Dumb phones are more or less a commodity - margins are tiny, and volumes are likely small.
If Blackberry lost at the high-end smartphone game, then switching to enterprise security or whatever they're working on makes way more sense than shipping a few hundred thousand units of $100 dumb phones.
Why do I need to buy a flagship smartphone to get the best camera? Why do I need to buy a smartphone to get group messages? Why do I need to buy a smartphone to use my phone as a flashlight or navigate with Google Maps? Why do I need to buy a smartphone to type on an intuitive keyboard?
I'm not a teenager. I want a productivity device, not a gaming system or a miniature television or a twitter feed.
I would pay flagship prices for a hybrid phone that focused on productivity and ignored entertainment.
As much as I'd love to see more handsets with physical keyboard, they never seem to sell well enough for manufacturers to invest in releasing more models. And I really don't know where you would draw the line with which apps to allow and which not to. There'll always be someone with slightly different requirements who would refuse to buy the handset because application x or y wasn't available.
I just can't see how your preferences would equate to a big enough market for Blackberry to make any money.
Because like the Priv, they attach keyboards to massive screens. Those screens aren't necessary in a productivity phone. They make it unwieldy and ridiculous to use. The form factor of a Blackberry Classic is all you need, just integrate with Android.
I think you just inadvertently highlighted why that business model would be so difficult.
I was almost 100% with you in this thread until that point. I too would like to have a modern phone with a good hardware spec that is primarily a communications tool and personal organiser, rather than an entertainment product. I would like good battery life, security, privacy, and a convenient, robust design that fits in my hand and my pocket. I don't see any phone on the market today that is anywhere close to meeting my ideal requirements.
But then you mentioned Android, and for me that would immediately raise security and privacy issues because of all the Google integration.
Even for geeks like the HN crowd it's difficult to determine reliably what is really happening on your device and what you can trust, and the average customer has no chance whatsoever. Thus we see the kind of sentiment that started this discussion, where some people want to get away from the mess and the creepy factor and go back to having a device that just worked.
Personally, I just use a "feature phone" and avoid the smartphone game today. I get to make calls, I pay hundreds of pounds less per year, and I only have to charge the battery every few days.
I was just agreeing with another poster that there is a market out there for something beyond that without going to the full smartphone-and-apps, entertainment-device model. I have enough businesses already without starting another one for this, but if anyone did want to, I'd be an interested potential customer, is all I'm saying.
I'm not the one complaining that there isn't a phone catered to me.
"I was just agreeing with another poster that there is a market out there for something beyond that without going to the full smartphone-and-apps, entertainment-device model. "
There really isn't, though.
Having an integrated camera got me used to taking more pictures, but now I use an actual camera 99% of the time.