Passport：“走形”的黑莓手机

    像大多数人一样，我在我自己的手机上用的也是虚拟键盘，我发现要重新适应实体键盘还有点麻烦。尤其是评测的第一天，我差不多是盲目地按着那些按键，试图拼出连贯的句子。（幸运的是，尽管使用了实体键盘，但黑莓10依然有拼写纠错功能。）随着时间的推移，这种痛苦感慢慢变淡了。不过我仍然不确定用惯了经典黑莓键盘的人是否会为Passport的键盘唱赞歌。

    PassPort的键盘还有另一层功能——它还是一个隐蔽的触控板。如果你用手指扫过键盘，它就能实现翻页、邮件和删除文字功能。双击还可以激活文本选择工具来精确地编辑一个文档。

    在你发现这项功能的一刹那，感觉还是挺新奇的——但这种新奇感很快就消退了。那么大一块触屏不去使用，反而把键盘当触控板，这种感觉还挺尴尬的。另外在我打字的时候，文本选择工具经常被激活，导致光标的位置都变了，因此我输入的文字错了位，让人很沮丧。

    我也希望爱上Passport触控式实体键盘的卓而不群，但最终却并没有找到我苦苦寻找的惊喜。

    在测试结束时，我放下了Passport，但我却并不觉得悲伤。这款设备大胆地独辟蹊径，让我很难不对它表示尊敬，另外这款手机显然还是有属于它的小众市场。不过对于那些仍然抱着老款设备的黑莓用户来说，Passport或许不是你心目中的那台黑莓。对于已经投奔其它平台的用户来说，恐怕他们也很难转投回来。

    那么我们为什么要在乎Passport呢？在花了不少时间评测这台设备后，我对这个问题仍然没有很好的答案。我知道现在有很多人谈论这款设备，顺便也谈到它的制造商黑莓。现在想来，或许这正是原因所在。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    Like most people, I use a virtual keyboard on my personal phone. I found it a struggle to readjust to a physical keyboard. The first day I felt like I was blindly mashing the keys in an effort to elicit coherent words from it. (Luckily, BlackBerry 10 includes a mechanism to correct misspelled words, even when a physical keyboard is used.) The pain eased over time. Still, I’m not sure that traditional BlackBerry users who are quick to profess admiration for the classic BlackBerry keyboard would be singing praises of the Passport’s version.

    Moreover, the Passport’s keyboard has a secondary function: it’s a covert trackpad. You can swipe your finger over it to scroll through spreadsheets, navigate emails, and delete words. With a double tap, activate the text selection tool to precisely edit a document.

    Once you find the functionality, it’s a novelty—then it wears off. I found it awkward to ignore a fully capable touchscreen to use the keyboard as a trackpad. What’s more, I repeatedly activated the text selection tool as I deliberately typed, which changed the focus of the cursor and thus the destination of my entered text. Frustrating.

    I wanted to love the ingenuity of the Passport’s combination trackpad-keyboard, but I failed to have the “Aha!” moment I was so desperately looking for.

    By the end of my testing, I wasn’t sad to put the Passport down. It’s hard not to respect the device’s bold departure from norms in the category, and there’s clearly a niche market for a device like this. But for the vast majority of BlackBerry users still clutching legacy devices, the Passport is not the BlackBerry you’re looking for. And for those who have moved on to other platforms? It’s difficult to go back.

    Why should we care about the Passport? After spending quality time with it, I still don’t have a solid answer to that question. I do know people are talking about it, and by extension, its maker. Now that I think about it, perhaps that was the point.