BlackBerry PRIV Experiences

I thought I had owned my last BlackBerry. But the $300 price of the PRIV was too good to pass up. And the big battery suggested long usage. The display is wonderful and the phone is fast. It updated Over The Air (OTA) to Marshmallow after a week or so with no problems. While it came with a SIM unlock code (that worked fine the first time) it does have a locked bootloader and is running an AT&T ROM. It'd been a while since I've used a carrier ROM and it came with its share of bloatware. I just disabled all of the AT&T software and that hasn't been a problem other than Carrier IQ I mentioned earlier.

The big screen is hard on the battery and while I can go all day on the battery I haven't observed the expected looooong battery life. The Marshmallow update did seem to improve it.

Before the Marshmallow update the battery ran down at 4.52% per hour. After the Marshmallow update it ran down at 3.29% per hour.

I haven't used the physical keyboard as I love the Google Keyboard. The keyboard makes it heavier than I expected.

A double tap on the screen wakes it up just like the OnePlus One.

Another carryover feature from legacy BlackBerrys is the holster magnet waking the PRIV when the phone is unholstered. Similarly the PRIV is put into sleep mode when you put it in the holster.

My previous phones have taken a couple of minutes for the Bluetooth to connect to my car. The PRIV connects before I get out of the driveway. I can't explain this. Other than slow connecting to the car I haven't had any Bluetooth problems with previous phones.

The PRIV has been getting Android security updates about a month later than my Nexus 5 does.

I like it.