As a small business owner, one thing is critical: keeping connected! A large part of my business is communication whether that’s sending emails, speaking with members of the Small Business Community Network (SBCN) or building and maintaining relationships across social media.
You might have heard the expression “The early bird catches the worm”. I think it’s crucial in my business that I can respond quickly to people. In fact, I’ve won business because I was able to respond faster than my competitors!
I recently had the opportunity to take a new BlackBerry Q5 for a spin and see how it would work for my business. Small business owners are all about reacting quickly, so with the promise from BlackBerry that the new Q5 was built to keep me moving, I was intrigued.
I should share that I haven’t traditionally been a BlackBerry user. Although I’m an early adopter of many types of communication, my first smartphone was an iPhone, which I’ve continued to use since. I’m not very technical when it comes to setting things up, so I had my husband Dave take care of configuring the Q5 to connect to my e-mail and social media accounts. It only took him around 5 minutes and everything was up and running, so it’s quite easy I’m sure!
The BlackBerry Q5 features the new BlackBerry 10 system, which is designed (so they say) to bring all my communications together into a single place called the BlackBerry Hub. When you’re like me with messages coming in from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email and elsewhere, it can sometimes be tough to check all these different places. Looking at the BlackBerry Hub I could instantly see all my messages and respond to them in the same manner, no jumping to different applications. This took some getting used to, but certainly is efficient.
Speaking of things I had to get used to… the ‘gesture’ based control was initially very confusing. Without any hints on what to do, I found myself swiping, tapping and getting well and truly lost. Of course, this is to be expected with anything new, and once I’d spent a little time mastering things, it was very quick to get what I wanted.
I found Facebook and Twitter already on the Q5, and these looked and worked very similarly to the apps on my iPhone. If you follow me on Facebook you know I like to post pictures occasionally, so was pleased to see that this was quite straightforward. The photos looked a bit less clear than on my iPhone, but certainly worked well enough, even when I took a few in the fading light at an event.
This is probably a good time to speak about the keyboard. I’ve never had a smartphone with a proper keyboard before—only having used the touchscreen keyboard on my iPhone or the keypads on regular cellphones before that. It took me a while to adjust and I must say my typing wasn’t very accurate in the beginning whilst I worked out where the symbols were that I wanted. For me, I don’t thing the physical keyboard is much of a benefit. For one thing, it does make the screen smaller by taking up space. That said, it was quite easy to type on and I found it to be comfortable to use.
The Q5 itself is smart looking, surprising for what has been billed as a budget-friendly phone. Although built in plastic, it doesn’t feel cheap—in fact it feels very solid like it could take a knock or two and keep on going. Since I have small hands, it felt a bit big compared to my iPhone, especially the width, it’s definitely a two-handed device!
I didn’t really use any apps, as I’m not a big user of them on my iPhone other than to listen to music or check the weather, both things I found I could do quite simply on the Q5.
Getting photos off the Q5, or putting music on was much more complicated than I’m used to with my iPhone. Upon connecting the Q5 to my computer I had to install the BlackBerry Link software to transfer things back and forth. My computer is a little on the older side these days and I found the software made it run slowly, so perhaps it needs a more modern system. I must admit that I needed Dave’s help to transfer photos and find where the were on the computer, but given more time I’m sure I’d get the hang of this, too.
Finally, I love to talk! Making calls with the Q5 was initially difficult because I’m so used to having everyone on speed dial, but worked great. The sound quality was excellent and I had no complaints from people I spoke with about how I sounded to them.
Overall, the Q5 seems an excellent budget-friendly smartphone for those who love to stay connected! I’m not sure I’m ready to give up my iPhone, but if I didn’t have an existing smartphone this would be a serious contender. If you’re considering a BlackBerry for your business, I’d suggest taking advantage of the TELUS Learning Centres—they can help you through all the features of these great devices and figure out how best to use them in your business.
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