How not to market a smartphone (or: How to not market a smartphone)

Recently I’ve been hearing a lot about the newly revamped BlackBerry 10, which has been appearing in various phone shops (shops like Carphone Warehouse as well as the carrier franchises). It’s also appeared on the homepage for Qt, because you can develop applications for the new BlackBerry using Qt, which I use myself (it’s the basis for KDE on Linux, but you can run Qt apps on Windows and the Mac, and there have been numerous attempts at getting mobile Qt going but none of them have come to much). There is one thing missing, however: any means of testing them out using what most people will be using them for — networking.

The modern smartphone really dates back to Apple’s first-generation iPhone, and it has always been possible to try those out in the Apple Store. Although you can’t download apps (well, you can if you’re willing to supply your Apple ID), you can try out a lot of the apps and the web browser and so on. Much the same is true, to a lesser extent, for Android phones — there are lots of places you can go to try out Android phones and tablets, including apps that use the internet, so you know what you’ll be using if you pay the three-figure price or commit yourself to the two-year £35-a-month contract with your mobile network.

A year or so ago, when they were still selling the old keyboard and touch-screen BB units, it was possible to go into a lot of phone shops and try them out. That’s not the case with BB10. A lot of mobile phone shops in the UK have the Z10 unit (the new touch-screen BlackBerry). Some even have whole “BB10 zones”, like the Carphone Warehouse at the bottom of Tottenham Court Road in London — but the staircase leading up to it is blocked. There are some working demo units, but none of them are connected to the Internet, so you can’t try out the apps that use it. I have also seen it in the O2 shops, but when I tried to use the Facebook app, it asked me for a “demo unlock password”. I wasn’t going to go and ask the staff for one, because I had no intention of buying a unit because I have a perfectly good phone already and do not have the money for another just for the sake of using another OS, even one that uses Qt (an Android version of which is in development anyway). But you can find plenty of Nexus and Galaxy units on which you can demo the social networking apps as well as everything else. I know, you can try other apps, like the Contacts and Calendar apps, but social networking apps give you the opportunity to type something like a comment or tweet, and get a good feel for the phone and, especially, the keyboard.

All that may seem petty, but Twitter, Facebook and web browsing are the things I use my phone for most, and I use the Internet on it more than I use it as a phone. It’s vital that I can test the keyboard, to see if it has decent word prediction or some other means of cutting down the number of presses I need to make with just two fingers (Android’s keyboards, like SwiftKey, are the best in the business, far quicker and more efficient than the IPhone keypad, for example, and I found the Swype method that was available on Samsung’s phones a couple of years ago very effective also). Just being able to expore the screens on a device won’t show me that, and certainly a demo that does not have an obvious means of quitting. I have to say, the way of navigating the Z10, which is all swipe and touch (except for the power and volume buttons) is nowhere near as intuitive as Android with its home and back buttons, and it would be quite offputting to anyone who is used to having a phone with buttons. It is plain that the new BlackBerry is being under-marketed; the phone is often tucked away at the back of shops and even then you cannot try them properly. However technically brilliant it is, a phone you cannot try before you buy has a distinct disadvantage in today’s marketplace.

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