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Ford Abandons Microsoft for BlackBerry's QNX

posted by Dopefish on Sunday February 23 2014, @08:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the color-me-surprised dept.

joekiser writes "In 2010, Ford Motor Company was rated as top-five automotive manufacturer in terms of quality, per J.D. Power and Associates. This was a major turnaround for the automotive giant, which had faced bankruptcy just two years prior. This high reliability rating would be short lived however; Ford began installing touch screen hubs powered by Microsoft SYNC, which were both confusing and buggy.

By 2012, Ford quality rankings had dropped to 23rd, even after numerous software upgrades and a rebranding of SYNC to "MyFordTouch." One customer reported:

"The voice controls typically do not work until the vehicle has been on for five to 10 minutes, meaning short trips require dialing phone calls by hand, only to have the call cut off when the system finally starts up."

This slide continued into 2013, when Ford ranked 27th of 28 brands (as an aside, Ford's premium brand, Lincoln, ranked one slot higher that year at 26th).

Apparently, Ford Motor Company has had enough. On Friday, the Detroit News reported that Ford will make the switch to QNX on future vehicles. This is the same platform currently used by Acura, Audi, BMW, and Land Rover."

[ED Note: "Ford Motor Company's decision to move to QNX aside, I'll be heavily considering a Blackberry for my next phone, especially with rumors of a 64-bit octa-core model for later this year. BB10 also has gotten rave reviews for its design and ease-of-use."]

 
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  • (Score: 1) by electron on Monday February 24 2014, @01:26AM

    by electron (1678) on Monday February 24 2014, @01:26AM (#5427)

    I recently traded in my Galaxy Nexus for a Blackberry Z10 and have to say I'm really happy with it. I live in Canada and people still buy them here, but I know in the US they aren't too popular anymore. I had a lot of issues with my Android, but mostly I didn't like the Nexus style "no SD card"(but I know you can get Androids with SD) and had some email trouble. The new BB10 OS is pretty cool, the email has been very reliable for me, I put a nice big SD card in it, I can transfer files by mounting it as USB storage or via smbclient from my OpenBSD desktop. I encrypt and password my phone, when I get emails, I can glimpse at the sender and subject on the lock screen. It seems really smooth and not underpowered. I also like the time shift in the camera but I take very few pics.
    Mostly I'd say, and I don't want to upset anyone here, but I'm happy to ditch the whole Google thing. But maybe you should take one for a test drive, if you have a friend with one - swap sim cards for a week.