Apps aren't for everyone, but I was fed up with only having a web browser and email services for a "smart phone". The battery life and keyboard itself are highly dependent on what CrapBerry model you have. I myself had a Bold 9900 which was great for the first 2 of the 3 years I had it. Towards the end of life the keyboard began to fail, I would have the space bar stop functioning randomly, or keys would duplicate themselves without my input, the phone itself became horrendously slow even after a factory reset, it was not tied to a storage issue as it had well over 70% of its available storage still open. I would wind up having to forcefully press keys to get the desired effect, and began having to actually pay attention to what was being typed to ensure all characters appeared as I had intended.
The battery life of the original J1 battery that came with the phone went from okay to atrocious. Originally it would last 12-16 hours with moderate use, and toward EoL would be lucky if it went 6. It was due to this I had to buy a third party battery from a company called Mugen batteries, the replacement battery was actually fantastic, I would get 36 hours of moderate use on a single charge. Only other problem I had was that the phone at one point bricked itself after charging slightly too long, it would not wake up from the sleep mode. This was a known issue by RIM (now BlackBerry) and they wound up replacing a ton of phones as a result, and then taking forever to release the intended fix via a firmware update.
The problem BlackBerry had, was that it catered almost exclusively to the business world. There was no place for a casual user, or an enthusiast to get into a BB and use it for more than just web browsing and email services. The app selection was very limited due to their business catering, and like it or not, if someone has to shell out $200-500 for a phone, they want to get more out of it than two flagship features. They attempted to rectify this with the release of the BlackBerry 10 OS, where users could "Side-load" some android apps in an attempt to allow some greater usability of the phones, the browser was improved (OS7 would have funny web displays, or very small text that would not scale up with the web page as it was zoomed, rendering some sites completely unusable unless they were specifically coded for mobile browsing). The problem with "Side-loading" was that the average user was unwilling to perform all the extra steps necessary to do something that the competitor's phones (CrApple and Android) could do with a click of the "install" button in their respective app markets.
Unfortunately I think it was a case of being afraid to break out of their niche market that ultimately caused the implosion of BlackBerry/RIM, or more specifically, a case of "I'm the CEO and I know what my customers want, whether they know it or not, and their opinions don't matter at all."
We'll see if they manage to break out of their impending doom by paying attention to customer's desires or if they continue to operate in a niche that is being filled elsewhere.
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