 How much would you pay for a hit of nostalgia? Would you pay $449 for a real keyboard on your phone? BlackBerry says that this is primarily a business phone, and maybe that's true. But more than that, this is phone as fan service. This is the BlackBerry Classic. The idea behind the Classic is simple, and it's actually kind of respectable. Create a phone that's designed to appeal to hardcore original Crackberry fans in every way possible. If there's something you loved about the 2011 BlackBerry Bold, you will almost surely find it here. This phone is designed to make die-hard users feel at home. It starts with the hardware, which is characterized by the return of all the buttons. BlackBerry lovers call it the tool belt, and it includes dedicated send and end buttons, a back button, a menu key, and an optical trackpad. None of them are actually necessary. They're all functions that have been replaced by touchscreen gestures and by touchscreen buttons. And on BlackBerry 10, a lot of those gestures are actually kind of finicky, so having these buttons does speed things up a bit. And then there's that optical trackpad, which is a hilarious mouse-like throwback that feels completely vestigial, until you figure out you can use it to do some really neat multi-select tricks in your inbox. Then you find it's useful, but it's still funny and kind of weird. But the most important buttons are on the keyboard. The keyboard is just great. It's fast and clicky and responsive, and just plain satisfying in a way that glass never is. You could get into the minutia of whether this variant of the Bold or the Curve is a better one, but whatever. There's nobody else even bothering to make keyboards right now, so this is as good as it gets. This thing is BlackBerry through and through. It's easy to hold in one hand. It has a textured back so you don't drop it. And it has a pretty good, but not great, 720 by 720 square touchscreen, which works fine for email, but it feels weird for basically anything else. It's also pretty heavy, thanks to a pretty big battery. You can't replace that battery, but it lasts just a little bit longer than your average midsize smartphone, so that's kind of like your favorite BlackBerries too. There's one more thing from yesteryear that you'll find on the BlackBerry Classic. The processor. It's dated. And combined with some software issues, it makes the Classic feel a little bit like it's a weird mix of fast when you're doing email and slow everywhere else. That's a legacy of the old BlackBerries that I wish they'd left behind. And one more terrible legacy. Really bad cameras. The 8 megapixel shooter is so slow that I missed more shots than I could make. The software on the BlackBerry Classic is kind of all over the place. It's at version 10.3.1, and that means that BlackBerry has spent the past couple of years layering on every possible feature request from its hardcore keyboard shortcut customers. They're everywhere. And though you don't absolutely need to know all those shortcuts, if you take the time to learn them, you can do all sorts of neat tricks. But even if you don't, having a keyboard around just speeds up other things. From the home screen, you can type to bring up the BlackBerry Assistant, which is sort of like Siri, but a little bit better in some ways. And you can type at it instead of talking at it. Actually you can do either, because who talks anymore? Actually I guess some people do, and luckily for them, call quality in the Classic is pretty great. But back to the software, because at the end of the day, it's just not good enough for anybody but the hardest of hardcore BlackBerry fans. There are a few good ideas here, but there are also just too many compromises. There's still two different app stores, one for BlackBerry software, and Amazon for Android software. But that means you won't get the apps you want, and even when you do, they're either out of date or they're just painfully slow and buggy on the BlackBerry Classic. BlackBerry says that this is primarily a business phone, and maybe that's true. But more than that, this is phone as fan service. It's by BlackBerry people, for BlackBerry people. The people who are still clinging for dear life to their aging bold. The Classic will let you keep that CrackBerry death grip going, but honestly, it's probably time to let go.