Harry 
title
Hi everyone, let's unpack the
brand-new BlackBerry Classic, which is the SQC100-5 model with
no camera modules. I bought this unlocked smartphone in November of 2022
on ebay and its design is still exciting. This particular Verizon model is said to work
with wireless charging, but I haven't checked. The premium look and feel
come from metal edges, the brand style corrugated plastic cover with the chequered pattern and extremely good grip that feels great in hand
with no case. It's beautiful. No headphones in the box for
this SQC100-5 model, but no big deal. This is a device that you’ll have a real pleasure to hold, even if you don't have
fond memories of using this kind of a smartphone. There was a total of five variants for
different carriers and frequencies, but the most interesting thing here is the
colours. There are four of them: black, white, cobalt blue and bronze, but even
finding an image of the last one is hard. Cobalt blue is also very rare. Each colour is
good in its own way and incredibly beautiful. In this video I will try to find an answer to
the question whether the BlackBerry Classic is worth buying as a feature phone or may
be setting it up would be too complicated and there is no point.
In other words, could
it be your second phone in 2023? But first, let's take a look at the original BlackBerry
accessories that were designed for it. Original BlackBerry accessories included the
Classic Soft Shell cover in 'Black Translucent' colour, of course the branded screen protector
and also two cases – the Classic Leather Swivel Holster and Classic Leather Pocket, which were sold in black and
white. The Swivel Holster is more for those who like old-style way to wear
their phone on a belt, while I prefer the regular Leather Pocket and therefore bought it on ebay. You can still find
one (even in white, although it will cost a lot more).
Apart from the fact that
it's VERY tight, made of leather and has, em… classy look, it also has ‘smart’ features. I found
4 in total: it activates screen automatically when you take device out, locks it with password
when you put it back in (similar to how Apple iPad Smart Cover works), plus it can automatically
end and answer calls. That said, the concept of auto-accepting any call doesn't seem to me to be a great idea, but luckily you have
options in the Phone app. Overall, the case works great and can be called
a truly indispensable accessory. So, does a BlackBerry smartphone work at all
now? The short answer is yes. I set up this device as new and it still works (you may
already know this). Please don't believe the journalists who didn't grasp the topic and
claimed last year that calls, SMS, internet, etc will no longer work. These
are fakes and the truth is my device previously wasn’t used at all, coming right from the factory (as the seller
said it had been stored in a company closet for a long time) and it still works for me after
the initial setup.
It's true that it needs to be activated in a special, clunky way and that's
the first downside I'll start my video with. Yes, the activation process can be tricky and
may not work for everyone. BlackBerry OS 10 is for some reason made in a way that it
needs contacting servers for initial setup and first connection to Wi-Fi. Fortunately, some
savvy users have found a way around the standard procedures using the Screen Reader feature for
people with vision problems. There are plenty of youtube videos on the subject and I’ll leave links in the description
to the ones that helped me. The whole procedure took me 10 minutes, or maybe
I was just lucky.
It should be noted that you'd better not insert a SIM card
or try connecting to Wi-Fi during the activation process. Just saying, in some videos they forget to mention this.
Of course, for such an old device you’ll need to replace the battery. This particular Classic
was made in August of 2015, so it’s over 7 years old. Unfortunately, unlike the BlackBerry
Z10, Q10 and especially the BlackBerry Bold 9900 (to which Classic should be compared)
the battery here is non-removable. However, it is quite possible to replace it, which I urge
you to do. With the old battery, my Classic was running down by 50% overnight with cell service turned on (I mean
not ‘data services’, just ‘mobile network’). Fortunately, I found a quality
copy of original battery online and had no trouble finding a workshop that agreed to replace it.
My new battery lasted up
to 7 days in stand-by mode, which is not as good as feature phones, and
not too bad either. But I must add here that unfortunately battery drain on BlackBerry
OS 10 is a common thing, more on this later. The biggest annoyance is this “One or more
applications/services require you to confirm your BlackBerry ID email address” notification. The
funny thing is that a similar notification also bothers those who logged into their BlackBerry ID
before January 4 of 2022 (the day BlackBerry OS 10 servers were shut down). These notifications
come on average 2 times a day but appear less if you don't use internet things. However, even
in stand-by mode notification comes once a day. As a solution, you can set up a separate
notification profile, in it you have to turn off system sounds and customise app notifications
(for example, Phone app for calls).
This profile can be added to Quick Settings and switched when
necessary (for instance, when you want to hear all system sounds). The built-in Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor was
a disappointment even 7 years ago when BlackBerry persistently used an extremely
outdated platform from 2012. This is particularly noticeable when you try playing videos at
a higher resolution or using android apps. Android emulation runs only on a single core
of the dual-core processor inside here, while Android runtime version 4.3 makes it impossible to install most of the modern
apps. However, Telegram X (which was updated recently and essentially is
a light version of Telegram for Android) works fine. No surprise here, of course, as Telegram
works pretty much everywhere (including my iPod touch 4 from 2011). I was, however, surprised
that Facebook Messenger Lite still works. One of the obvious downsides is that BlackBerry
Hub doesn't work to its full potential without social networking, BBM (BlackBerry
Messenger) and BBM Video. However, mail and calendar providers can be added successfully.
The built-in browser is not very usable (due to outdated certificates and also the lack of site
exceptions). Although I don't think you really wanted to use it in the first place.
Only some of VPN services work here. So, OpenVPN
standard is not supported. However, you can still use IKEv2 VPN services such
as hide.me. Here are screenshots of how it must be configured to make the connection work.
Battery drain is a common problem on BlackBerry OS 10. After some investigation and reading
crackberry forums I concluded that the cause might be a deprecated built-in Amazon App Store
that should be like ‘removed’ using Sachesi, then device rebooted, and Amazon not opened. First
real problem for me was the exFAT driver for my MicroSD card, which I installed with Sachesi.
The
thing is, BlackBerry OS doesn't support exFAT out of the box and tries to load it from servers
when installing MicroSD card with this format. Obviously after January 4 of 2022, a device
won't get anything from the servers, however I found this driver on the internet and installed
it manually. Unfortunately, I had to uninstall it, because with it I had almost 50% battery drain
overnight (with my new battery). After removing the driver and 'resetting' Amazon App Store the
battery life returned to what it was when I just replaced the battery. For a little while.
The lesson is: just use FAT32 MicroSD cards. The second my problem was android apps. Basically,
everything may be a culprit that eats battery while device monitor shows that nothing,
but ‘System’ consumes energy, so go figure.
In the end I had to do a clean install with
autoloader and have an empty phone that I’m showing you in this video. Well, now I hesitate
to set anything up and install apps as it will end the same. See, solving any of this is hard,
as factory reset or flashing will have activation thing consequences, so it’s not an easy option.
Just don’t use anything, reinstall everything, maybe you’ll be lucky. And charging with
Micro-USB is slow as hell, of course, so you can’t ignore the battery drain situation.
The fundamental BlackBerry phone weakness is, of course, support of non-English languages.
To start with, your language must have an alphabet.
Ideally the number of letters
should be not much higher than in English, because then the typing speed goes down. In other
words, few languages can fit on this keyboard. I have put an engraving
with the Cyrillic alphabet, however, the tactile sensation changes after the keycaps are engraved and buttons feel, in
the way, “scratched”. Also, the BlackBerry Classic specifics is that it’s difficult to
switch keyboard layout: well, no designated icon appears on the screen and there is only one
keyboard shortcut to switch languages. Although I suppose none of this really matters to you.
The lack of BlackBerry World and Protect is easy to get over – I was lucky enough to briefly
use BlackBerry Z30, Passport and Classic a couple of years ago and I can confidently say that. But
I feel bad for Assistant and dictation feature, which don't work locally.
Fortunately, the main
use case for Assistant is simply typing what you want to do on the mechanical keyboard. And it
works (in the few languages it supports). As for voice input, it's a pity that the key
doesn't work. However, you wanted to enjoy typing with a mechanical keyboard, didn't you?
It's much harder to live without BlackBerry Link, as a device doesn't appear in Windows
File Explorer or Mac Finder and files can't be transferred that easily. File transfer can
be possible via Bluetooth, SD card (but only use FAT32 format, as I said earlier) or via
Windows network file sharing. Keep in mind, network file sharing options are recommended
to be switched off because it may cause battery drain too. At the same time, a MicroSD
card, I believe, doesn't drain the battery.
Another big annoyance is that you
can't turn off the auto brightness and backlighting of the keyboard. Also, you know, LED
notifications are great, but there's one problem: you can't turn off the annoying 'low battery'
notification. Even with the sound off, LED will blinking yellow when battery is
lower than 10%. Right, this can be useful, but I would still like to have more options.
Also let's talk about user interface flaws. Mobile internet (‘data services’) is turned
on separately from mobile network and can't be controlled in Quick Settings. You can only
enable or disable the communication module (‘mobile network’) altogether. Also, opening Quick
Settings in apps with two fingers can be difficult (as well as opening Swipe Down menus with app
settings). Actually, the Swipe Down menu as a UI solution is questionable: you never know really
where this menu is available and where it is not.
In addition, the OS doesn't really take into
account that my device doesn't have a camera (for instance, app permissions for camera are
still here, and while the Camera app shortcut is not there no other app can be added to the
empty space). It's also frustrating that device theme is tied to the device screen type (with
black for OLED and white for IPS screens). You can't choose it on the system level, but
you can set a dark or light theme for some apps. A separate mention should be made of the
controversial UI decision specially in BlackBerry Classic: see, there is always a selection
shown somewhere on the screen. To my mind, selection could be hidden in case trackpad
is not used (just like the cursor is shown in browser only if you tap the trackpad). With
this UI however, you can sometimes confuse user selection and trackpad selection. Looks weird.
You can't revoke some permissions for android apps (like for microphone).
Sad.
And another complaint: the contact group functionality
seems half-baked. You can't set a specific ringtone or LED signal to a
group, only to an individual contact. Some feature phones have this,
so it's strange to see that such a business-oriented OS didn't address that. So, let’s start with top quality sound
during calls. A noise-cancelling system with 3 microphones is what makes this possible. Although
Classic never got the feature from BlackBerry Passport that automatically adjusts speaker volume
based on how close you hold the smartphone to your ear, still the Classic’s sound quality of usual
calls or with speakerphone is pretty decent. If you're going to use third-party apps,
especially out of nostalgia rather than utility, I got good news for you: there are plenty of
old native apps and games. Funny that of all the titles, Angry Birds comes immediately to
mind. You can find a "trove" of extracted .bar files in private collections and a few other
places (links in the description).
Installing them is possible with Sachesi (also here in the
description). You may still use some android messengers and very old android apps as well,
but they will most likely induce battery drain and make a device unusable. You can even play
simple android games, but it's better not to torture your Classic in this way after all.
The organiser functionality still works, you can add Gmail and Google Calendar or iCloud
mail accounts and everything is syncing up seamlessly. You have FM radio, which is useful when there is
no internet or electricity.
FM module is rare in today's smartphones. Classic has a very handy trackpad, which is
helpful for text or multiple items selection. Using it adds in ergonomics as there’s no need
to move phone in your hand. However, most things are in fact quicker to do with touchscreen, so
it's more of an aesthetic and tactile pleasure. There are useful features called Advanced Interaction,
such as “Lift to wake”, “Flip to mute”, “Flip to save power” and “Hold to Stay
Awake”. In iPhones the last one appeared only after iPhone X and it’s called “Attention
Aware Features” in iOS now. That’s convenient. LED notifications and flexible settings
for them is great stuff! In particular, you can select the colour of a notification for an
app or contact. I really miss LED notifications, which became a victim of frameless screens
and only remain in some Sony smartphones. To the positives of UI: in many
apps you can hide useless sections of obsolete services (such as BBM). Last but not least, this is one of the few smartphones in the world that has a non camera option. It’s very difficult to find on the market a modern smartphone without
a camera for little money, and there is a demand for such models among those who work in
some specific organizations and regions.
Still, Blackberry Classic is much more functional than
a feature phone, while smartphones without a camera are extremely rare. Just don’t forget to
carry a power bank with you. Also, if you choose Classic with camera modules, it will certainly
make better shots than a usual feature phone. If for some reason you need a smartphone without
camera modules and a feature phone is too dumb for you, there are almost no alternatives to the
BlackBerry Classic. Otherwise, the legendary Bold 9900 isn't such a bad option for a second phone if
you want specifically a BlackBerry “dialer”. Also keep in mind battery drain problems with Classic.
Perhaps you want the BlackBerry Hub, messengers, or a couple of other android apps? Well,
all of this will not work out as battery drain makes a device unusable for almost all
imaginable scenarios except calls. Therefore, BlackBerry Classic feels just like a a museum
piece which Bold 9900 currently is. But perhaps it's the BlackBerry OS 10 that makes you
nostalgic? Whatever is the reason for you, my opinion is no, it is not worth buying in
2023. Even if you can manage to set it up, something will ruin battery life
anyway.
So no, bad for calls too..
