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Comment by afandian | Hacker News Reader

You missed out! The Passport was an excellent phone. Great hardware and the OS was nice. And the KeyOne (android) was probably my favourite phone ever.

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Had you used any BlackBerry phones before it? In my opinion the Passport was considerably better than other BlackBerry phones from the couple of years before it, but it was so much worse than the older BlackBerries were (at least in the context of what was available at the time) so much better that people who had used BBs for years found the Passport frustratingly bad in comparison.

Not seriously no. I had an HTC Desire Z before that (exceptional hardware design with a snap open landscape keyboard).

The Passport keyboard had an ortholinear shape. Together with the overall form factor, I can see how people may have found it a bit form over function. But I loved it.

Hmm I had the HTC Touch Pro 2 and it was the worst phone I ever had in my life. It was given me by work, I didn't pick it. It ran a customised version of Windows CE with a lot of super fake glossy overlays that slowed it down to an absolute crawl, and the keyboard was so tough and heavy that it was a nightmare to use. It was really a piece of shit. It also had a really horrible resistive touch screen (one of those with a plastic layer over it)

Maybe they made good stuff too but that put me off HTC forever.

Yep, I had several Blackberrys and hated the Passport's weird, ramrod-straight 3 rows of keys. Much less ergonomic to type on than the slightly curved 4-row setup on the Bold 9000 (2008), which they never reproduced on future models.

Many people swear by the Passport, but the BB Classic in easily topped it my opinion. The best phone keyboard ever made and the phone itself could serve as a blunt weapon if it came to it.

You can argue many of these points either way. But, objectively, the Passport had a robust stainless steel frame, which was exposed at the edges.

Hi there, I had several BlackBerry phones, including a Passport SE.

For productivity apps, nothing compared with the Bold 9900. So snappy and minimalistic. The memos, calendar, messaging and the like were great.

As far as BB10 devices go, the Passport had the screen real estate, but the Q10 was way more pocketable. So I found the Passport awkward to deal with when on the move. I still have all of them. Who knows what to do with functional old tech?

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