Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9983 review: Hands-on

It’s very rare that we find ourselves summoned down to Harrods in Knightsbridge for a phone release. But such was the case with the Porsche Design BlackBerry P’9983. The environment is well suited; this is a premium BlackBerry model, aimed at those for which a mere iPhone 6 or LG G3 alone won’t fit the bill. And yet, compared to the likes of the handmade £6,750 Vertu Signature Touch, the £1,400 asking price doesn't seem so steep.

This is Porsche Design's third BlackBerry handset, following last year's BlackBerry P'9982 - essentially a pimped BlackBerry Z10. This time around, its theBlackBerry Q10 that's been given the luxury treatment and with it, comes the return of the keyboard - BlackBerry's perennial calling card.

But if you're hoping for substantial new features, well, there aren't any. Internally, the phone remains exactly the same. It benefits from the latest version of the Blackberry 10 OS but then again, there's the forthcoming BlackBerry Passport to blow that particular tumpet. What we've got here then, is just a nicer-looking BlackBerry Q10 with premium branding and a massive price bump.  

Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9983: Design and build

There’s no mistaking that the design and build is where the £1,400 price tag comes into play. Porsche Design has, to all intents and purposes, taken the BlackBerry Q10 and given the chassis a serious overhaul. The familair stainless steel machined Porsche Design logo is stamped above the 3.1-inch screen.

The same stainless steel edging is in effect around the handset, transforming the curved appearance of the BlackBerry Q10 into something much more angular. The design company pulled a similar trick with last year's P'9882. The weight of the handset remains pretty much the same, increasing slightly to 140g from the Q10's 139g.

BlackBerry devices were always noted for the keyboard and it's here that Porsche Design has shown some love. The P'9883 features glass-like PMMA plastic for increased durability and the design company has shaped the keys to create a pseudo 3D-like effect. And there's a nice new silver font too.

The raised buttons are comfortable to type on, but some quick test emails revealed that we've become too used to wide touchscreens - the cramped 'board takes some getting used to but there's a decent amount of travel on the keys.

Round the back, Porsche Design has coated the device with a "special glass-weave technology" that looks nice enough, but is immediately covered with smears and fingerprint marks. Which is a shame given how much you're asked to part with for it.

And yet, it's a sturdy, well-built phone. The silver and black blend obviously looks the business, and will find a nice home in the breast pocket of your Savile Row suit. This is the reason the phone is what it is - if you're of a particular income bracket and partial to an association with German automotive design, then you're going to like this device.

Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9983: Features

New features were awarded barely a mention during the reveal at Harrods, and chiefly rely on the updates to BlackBerry's operating system. Unfortunately, all you're going to get with this phone is a different font and the silver, executive-style Porsche Design clock. There's also a particular PIN ID designation with BlackBerry Messenger that identifies you as a Porsche Design user.

Around back is the 8MP camera that Porsche Design has equipped with a sapphire crystal coated lens. A small array of features, included burst mode, panorama and time shift are there to play with, but really it's not up to the likes of the HTC One M8 in the photography department.

The square 3.1-inch display boasts a 720 x 720 resolution that is clearly designed for the email and spreadsheet mentality than taking in a TV series on the commute home.

If the black and silver look is a little too boardroom for you, you can add one of Porsche Design's handcrafted leather cases to the P'8893. They come in a range of colours, including yellow, orange, salsa blue, pomegranate, dark brown paloma grey and blue green.

Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9983: Performance

Performance is handled by the same dual core 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor found in the original Q10, although, like the P'9982, Porsche Design has given the internal storage a boost. The original 16GB has been upgraded to 64GB and you can still use a microSD card to add even more.

There's 2GB of RAM, keeping things moving quickly, and a 2,100 mAh battery that, BlackBerry says, will afford you 14 hours of talk time. Part of the work that the company has done on the operating system is to make it more power efficient and the representatives we spoke to at the launch were pretty confident you could get a day and a half's use out of the device between charges.

Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9983: Verdict

This is a phone being sold on its brand image alone, and to a very specific type of customer. BlackBerry, by its own admission, says this isn't going to be a mass-market phone. It's aiming to bring back the business love by way of a decent keyboard and supurb build quality. In the hand, it feels suitably premium - but then, so does the HTC One M8.

The inclusion of the Amazon App Store goes some way to remedying the worrying lack of apps that has always plagued BlackBerry and the edgy design is more mature and appealing than the curvyness of the original BlackBerry Q10. It would have been nice if Porsche Design had something in the way of third-party apps or services that could set this phone aside in a software sense as well as a hardware sense.

Ultimately though, you're going to want this phone in order to make a particular statement. It's a designer phone in the same way as there are designer sunglasses, watches and jackets. It's branding has little to no impact on the actual performance or usability of the phone - which still falls some way behind Apple's iPhone 6 or the top Android handsets.

This isn't going to be the phone that reinvents BlackBerry, but it does stand as a testament to the fact there are still customers out there that value exclusivity above all else. And to them, we say happy shopping.

Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9983 release date: Out now

Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9983 price: £1,400 inc. VAT

How to color code calendars on OS 10.2.1

One of the features I take advantage of most on my BlackBerry is the ability to color code my calendar. As someone with multiple accounts and appointments that populate more than one calendar, this presents an easy way to distinguish between them. 

Whether it be managing a calendar for work, personal, or for your BBM group, all you need to do is complete these steps to set the colors for each of them.  

• From the home screen launch the Calendarapplication
• Tap Settings > Calendar Colors
• Tap on the specific calendar you wish to change
• From the popup, choose from the 15 predefined colors and tap on a color
• Repeat the above steps for each calendar you wish to set a color for
• Press the back button twice to return to the main calendar screen

Once this is complete, every calendar appointment will show in separate color so that you can differentiate between events and which ones are associated with a certain account.

For more tips and tricks, be sure to check out all of our BlackBerry 10 help guides.

Blackphone: ‘Our smartphone won’t make you NSA-proof, but it’s a good start’

We have a bit of a problem with the press saying that the Blackphone will make you NSA-proof,” Phil Zimmerman, one of the Blackphone’s creators, tells me at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “If someone [at the Blackphone booth] tells you that it’ll protect you from the NSA, I’ll fire them.”

As we covered earlier on ExtremeTech, the Blackphone is essentially a mid-to-high-end Android smartphone (a customized build called PrivatOS) that comes with a bunch of privacy- and security-oriented apps. As far as cryptography goes, the Blackphone’s implementation of Silent Circle’s secure communication apps is pretty darn good. The Blackphone also offers an encrypted filesystem. The per-app granular permissions system is neat (but buggy in its current implementation, as many apps revolt when they find out that they’ve had their permissions revoked without being informed of the fact). There’s no Google Play store pre-installed, but a guy at the booth told me you could install it (though I don’t know how Google would feel about that). Priced at $630, it’s a pretty good deal, if you want a readymade device that is more secure out of the box than the latest iPhone orGalaxy S5.

Blackphone’s granular permissions system. We weren’t allowed to touch the prototype devices.

What the Blackphone isn’t, however, is a completely secure communications device. Phil Zimmerman, creator of PGP, co-founder of Silent Circle, and one of the Blackphone’s creators, knows this. The guys at Geeksphone (the hardware makers of the Blackphone) know this. I know this. You know this. Most of the press and the majority of the general public, however, appear to think otherwise. Now, to be fair,Blackphone’s creepy, scare-mongering websitewas partially to blame for this (the site has now been significantly updated) — but it’s also down to the fact that most people just don’t understand how cryptography and mobile telephony works. We have been conditioned to think that good cryptography is some kind of universal security panacea — but the complete story is much more complex than that.

Basically, the Blackphone provides a good level of encryption between you and the target of your communication (VoIP). It does not provide any protection over the standard GSM/WCDMA radio. It also doesn’t provide any hardware-level security, except for the encrypted filesystem. Assuming the encryption doesn’t have some kind of backdoor, and that Zimmerman’s clever crypto scheme isn’t flawed, the Blackphone probably stops the NSA (and other intelligence agencies) from scanning the contents of your data packets. If you really believe that the NSA is interested in the minutiae of your everyday life, then by all means use the Blackphone.

The problem is, the Blackphone only protects your communications at the highest level — in software, running at a very high level on your Android-based smartphone. The Blackphone does not protect you against vulnerabilities in the Android subsystem, in the application processor (SoC), or in the baseband itself. As we’ve covered before, your phone’s baseband — the device that handles negotiation with cell towers and other messy stuff — is essentially a black box, with its own CPU and operating system. The baseband has complete, low-level access to your microphone — access that the Blackphone cannot mitigate against. If the NSA really wants to tap your phone, that is probably the attack vector that it would use.

“If Barack Obama decides that” — Zimmerman reaches out for my press pass and takes a long look at it — “Sebastian Anthony is a threat, the Blackphone won’t help you.” I stop for a moment and seriously consider whether that unpaid North Carolina parking ticket constitutes an act of terrorism. Probably not. “If the NSA wants to hack you, they’ll use a zero-day vulnerability,” which, as he points out, by definition, is basically impossible for the Blackphone (or indeed any device) to protect you from. Zimmerman says that the first question he asked, during the development process, was whether the baseband could be secured. The answer is not yet — but if the Blackphone is a commercial success, it gets us one step closer. ”The Blackphone is just the beginning of the conversation.”

To make a truly secure phone, we’d need to build a device that is completely open from the ground up. There are some ongoing efforts in open-source basebands, and the emergence of software defined networking could help as well. This ignores the question of whether carriers would even let such a device onto their networks, though. The concept of a truly secure mobile communications device is certainly something we should continue to discuss, but we should be under no illusions that such a device will ever come to market.