Dear fellow supporters, it has been quite a while since i last wrote to you, and i am quite sure that most of you will appreciate this. We all are getting much too many emails per day, so if i decide to send an update to you, i definitely want to make sure first that i do have something to tell you. We are going strong towards more than 1.000 supporters of the petition, please allow me to thank you for this great success, which never would have been possible without your voice ! Recently my daughter came to me with a complaint. One day before she had inherited an Xperia S from her elder brother (he upgraded to a Xperia Z2), mainly because the touchscreen of her Xperia mini Pro was broken, and the very limited RAM of the phone was totally full, because of too many apps installed. But, she was not happy at all : "Dad, i am missing the keyboard of my mini Pro ! Typing Whatsappp messages on the screens just sucks badly, it is taking much too long time and i have to concentrate like hell, it is quite exhausting !!" I couldn't help but smiling, she is only 12 years old and people are continously telling me that the only reason i am so addicted to keyboard is the fact i am too old, and unable to 'learn' typing messages on touchscreen properly. Maybe this is correct, but why should i be forced to learn to do something which i totally dislike ? Keyboards are as old as electronic communication is, and well proven, why should we abandon them at all ? Some guys on a German Android forum reported this week that they are about to leave the community. They found something new and exciting, and are getting totally addicted to it : The BLACKBERRY Passport ! (Link : http://www.engadget.com/products/blackberry/passport/) This new Blackberry device is quite costly (selling for 500 - 600 US$), but it is offering a unique feature that no other BB could offer so far : It will work with most Android apps, unless they are being based on Google Maps (which Google is blocking for the BB devices, of course). According to the reports of many users, the majority of Android apps will work flawlessly, and this well includes even some of the more advanced games running on Android. Blackberry had introduced support for Android apps before with BB OS 10+, but most of their elder devices obviously couldn't handle Android apps very well, most probably as a result of insufficient CPU power and small screen sizes. The passport seems to be up to the task, and of course it will offer all the benefits of most Blackberry devices : - an excellent physical keyboard - the outstanding email and contact integration from the BB hub, even with Gmail accounts - a highly stable and reliable operating system, perfect for daily use - excellent speakers and microphones for good phone communication Being a former Blackberry Bold 9000 enthusiast myself (before i switched to SONY Xperia Pro / Android 2.3.4, and never returned), i hate to admit that i am quite tempted from this device. It is also looking quite cool, and for sure i will use the very next chance when i can get my hands on it to do some serious testing with it. But there is another sign of hope for the ANDROID freaks amongst us to maybe finally have the chance of operating a modern device with the latest version of ANDROID, and offering a physical keyboard : Projekt Ara from Google (Link : http://www.projectara.com/) This new, modular smartphone project from Google will literally allow the users to building the smartphone of their dreams, and for sure there will be a keyboard module made for it (maybe even including an additional battery). There are several discussion about this in the internet already, and i can only encourage you to join these discussion and make our voice heard ! In the meantime, i will still be happy with my SIM modded Motorola Photon Q, which i just recently updated to the latest Cyanogenmod build, CM 11, representing Android 4.4.4 (latest KitKat). Development of the CM 11 ROM for all Motorola phones has now been split, depending on the bootloader which can be used on each of the devices (Photon Q / XT897 is 'jbbl' bootloader). I am still extremely happy with the device, despite only being a dual core with 1,5 GHz, it's SNAPDRAGON S4 processor with 1 GB RAM and 8GB storage is still up to date, comparing well to a SAMSUNG S3, HTC One or similar. To be absolutely sure i will not be forced to switch to any touchscreen device in the near future, i just bought three more phones used in the US, imported them into Germany, and sent them to Tomas Prochazka Prague for his famous SIM modification, which will allow the units to be used with European carriers. Two of the phones were bought for colleagues of mine, but one left the company and the other bought a SONY Xperia in the meantime, so i have them on ebay.de right now. And i am having no doubts at all that they will find some true fans, who will enjoy using a modern ANDROID device with a physical keyboard. Thank you for your continued support !! Christian Wiesner, Buxtehude, Germany