Phil is off this week, after a lengthy trip to Asia to learn cool smartphone stuff (and play in the snow!) he needs a day or two to rest.
This week I’m going to talk about (you guessed it) the Blackberry Priv. But not about what I think of it, or how to do something with it. I want to talk about the controversy around the reviews.
This isn’t really a BlackBerry Priv thing. This is a people thing. As in, all the people writing their own online review of the BlackBerry Priv (or any product) think differently and like different things.
I recently read about how the Gizmodo review (spoiler: they didn’t like it) was likely a paid hit piece, designed to kill off BlackBerry as a brand, and sponsored by some competing company.
Stop.
Not everybody likes the same things. This type of thinking falls in line with ideas like Russell must have been paid-off to say he likes the same phone someone else was paid-off to say they hate. In both cases, they were paid to write what they thought, in a way that’s informative and entertaining. And not by the people making the product they were writing about, or by its competitors. Read how Russell does it here, and read how CrackBerry Chris (that’s your new name now, Bla1ze) does it here. I know they wrote what they thought and how they felt because I had to listen to them think it for a week.
We’re all just different people, who think different things about stuff. And none of us are sleeping on a bed of money from the people who make these phones. Call out things that don’t meet the informative or entertaining requirements, but ease off the conspiracy theories.
Other things happened, too:
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I’m using the LG V10 for a little bit, and I’m still having trouble trying to figure out who thought taking two-thirds of my notification tray over with quick settings was a good idea. Just so I can tell them it’s not.
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The Xperia Z5 and Z5 Compact slipped in under the radar. It’s a shame that Sony doesn’t seem to want to sell these things. An Xperia phone may be one of the nicest things you’ll never try.
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Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot by taking free storage away from OneDrive users. Not because of any number of the legitimate reasons that they needed to kill the program, but because of the bullshit way they handled the announcement. Leaving people feel like they are punished for things they didn’t do is never a good idea.
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Some part of me wants to play with Samsung’s new 18-inch Galaxy View. Most parts of me are exhausted trying to figure out where this thing fits into anyone’s life. I still want to play games on it.
Back to work tomorrow. See y’all then!