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The Blind Life Podcast
Ep 40. BlindShell Classic 3 – The Best Accessible Phone Just Got Better
00:19:17
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- [00:04]
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Hey guys, it's Sam and Rachel and you're listening to the Blind Life Podcast. This is the companion podcast to the popular YouTube channel the Blind Life. Here I share tips and tricks, how to's, interviews with amazing VIPs in the community, and loads of assistive technology reviews. The goal of the Blind Life is to help you live your best blind life. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Blind Life Podcast. Today I'm featuring the audio from my recent blind Shell Classic 3 review video. The latest version of the very popular Blind Shell accessible cell phone was just released. Version 3 offers some slight hardware improvements, but some pretty beneficial software enhancements. In this video review, I cover all the new features of the blind Shell Classic 3. If you have any questions for me, please reach out through my website, theblindlife.net thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy this episode. Today we are featuring the brand new Blind Shell Classic 3. These are the latest in the very popular family of accessible cell phones. For from Blind Shell, we've got some improved hardware, some improved software, a brand new dedicated Blind Shell app named Tandem, and a new AI assistant. So stick around, we will come right back and we'll talk more about the blind Shell Classic 3. Hey guys, my name is Sam. This is the Blind Life, where I help you learn how to live your best life. So if you're not familiar with what Blind Shell is, it is an accessible cell phone for the blind and visually impaired. Now, the Classic 3 does have some notable upgrades from the Classic 2, and we'll definitely be covering all of those today on this video. But there's a lot about the phone that hasn't changed. So if you haven't already, I recommend checking out my full review of the Blindshell Classic 2. That way you can get up to date with the phone and its features. All right, let's jump into talking about the Classic three. First things first, we have two brand new colors. We have golden sand and ocean blue. If this is your first time checking out a Blind Shell phone, you'll notice right away that they've gone with that early 2000s look for their phone. And this is on purpose. This is to make it more accessible for the blind by bringing back that physical keypad. The other thing to note is that these buttons are very tactile. You have raised tactile indicators for all the important buttons. Visually, we even have color contrast representing important elements. The upper, probably two thirds of the phone is dominated by this large, high contrast screen. And up until now, this has not Been a touch screen. Now that is one of the new features of The Blind Shell Classic 3. And we're going to talk more about that a little bit later. But 99% of the time, this is not a touchscreen. You do not touch this to interact with the phone. All of the interactions are done with the full physical keypad, physical buttons on the left and the right side. On the left side here you have volume up and volume down. On the right side you have a quick launch button here. This button is also how you trigger the new AI assistant. At the top we have a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, always nice to see on phones. And we also have a flashlight on the top as well. Down on the bottom we have the USB type C charging port. Then around the back we have a couple of things to talk about. Of course, we have our camera module on the back. This does both regular pictures as well as video. You have a flash for your camera, which is something interesting about the Blind Shell Classic series of phones. You have a flash on the back for the camera, but you have a dedicated flashlight on the top. Then right below the camera module, just above the Blind Shell icon, you have the SOS button. This is a programmable button. You could program your neighbor's number, your family member's number, or of course, emergency contact as well. Underneath the back cover here, we have our battery. Under the battery is where your SIM card goes. And you actually have two SIM slots on this phone, as well as a place for an expandable storage card. Two more hardware upgrades that we have on the Classic 3. The phone now has 3 gigabytes of RAM, so that's definitely going to improve performance. And the internal storage has been bumped up to 32 GB. Finally, the Blind Shell Classic 3 is made out of this new softer material. So if I grab the blind shell classic 2 here, I can definitely feel a difference in the material. The Classic 3 definitely feels softer and smoother. We turn on the phone here, we're going to notice a much quicker boot up. Thanks to that 3 gigabytes of RAM. We're also going to notice a new startup sound.
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11:42Am and now we get our first.
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Look at the new user Interface on the classic 3. It's very similar to the classic 2. It's just been cleaned up and optimized a little bit. Of course we have the very loud speaker, volume 10. Volume 10 is the maximum 11:43am and it's very loud. It should be loud enough for most situations Here in the US the phone is fully supported on T Mobile and those smaller companies that use the T Mobile network. But I actually have an AT&T card in here because that's the network I use and it's been working great. I haven't had any problems. Now, as I said before, if you're familiar with the Classic two, a lot of the user interface here hasn't changed. It's going to be very familiar.
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Call 1 of 8 Messages 2 Contacts.
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3 of 8 as always, we have a full screen reader. The entire phone is read out loud to you. If you don't need that, maybe you just need the large print high contrast display. Well, you can turn the voice off, but I think for most of us the voice is a very welcome feature. I have it set to one of the male voices, but you do have a variety of female and male voices to choose from. You also have a variety of languages available. Essentially all the languages you can get on regular Android. They're going to be available on the Blind Shell as well. Something else you'll notice if you're familiar with the previous versions is there's a visual indicator for your current menu position on the screen. This little bar down here at the bottom, it just lets you know where you are in the menu visually. You still also get that auditory indication of where you are in the menu.
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Messages 2 of 82 of 8 that.
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Means that Messages is the second item in a list of eight items. Of course, if you don't need that, you can turn that off. That's one great thing about Blind Shell and it's even better with the Classic three is there's a ton of customization options including some new color themes for the display. So previously we had a just a few color schemes available on the phone, but now we have 12 different color schemes available.
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Black on white, not selected. White on blue not selected. Black on yellow not selected. 4 of 12 A lot of these.
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Are the very familiar color schemes that we're probably used to on things like video magnifiers.
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Red on black not so Black on red not selected 10 of 12.
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But we start to get into some of the more unique color schemes like the red on black.
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7 11:49am we have a few new.
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Sound effects like that little chime that plays when you go back to your main screen here. But overall the sound effects and the haptics have been improved and in some cases kind of toned down. This decision was based on some feedback from the community regarding some of the haptics and the sound effects on the Classic two. Apparently some of them were maybe a little much, and based on that feedback, Blind Shell has gone in and toned some of that down. That's one great thing I've always admired about the company is they are constantly trying to improve their product by listening to feedback from the community. Something else I've always loved about the Blind Shell phones is how intuitive the controls are and how the developers have thrown in these little shortcuts to make some commonly used tasks a little bit easier. For example, in your main menu here, if you want to quickly jump to an item in the menu, of course you can scroll all the way through, but I could also push the corresponding number in the number pad for that item in the menu. For example, Contacts is the third item in the menu, so if I hit.
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The number three, Contacts three of eight.
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Jumps me right to that item. Another quick shortcut to get into your status menu is to press the upper left button.
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No notifications Run of six that gets.
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Me into my menu for different status.
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Things like notifications 11:52am Tuesday, February 11, 20205 My time of 6 My time and date WI fi state, WI fi.
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Bluetooth so that's a fast way to get into that information. But we have a new quick menu that we can get into on the Classic three and that's if I press and hold that upper left button.
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Voice output 1 of 2 We get.
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Into the special menu that has quick access into the voice output, brightness setting 2 of 2 and your brightness setting. And since we're talking about quick menus, here's a pro tip. If I press and hold the pound symbol or the hashtag symbol very bottom.
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Right button change a sound profile, ringtone and vibration selected.
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Run of five that quickly jumps me into my sound profiles.
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Vibration only not selected.
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A couple other new features of the Classic 3 include the ability to do conference calling. This was another request from the community and Blind Shell added that into this latest version, which we also have SMS templates or text message templates. And you also have the ability to turn off the display and still use the phone. This is a common accessibility feature of smartphones. While you're using the screen reader on a smartphone you have the ability to turn off the screen and that serves a couple purposes. Number one, for privacy, no one else can see what you're doing on your phone, but it also saves the battery. Another new change for the Classic three is that Blind Shell has separated the Blind Shell supported apps and third party apps. If you remember from the Classic 2, there was an app catalog kind of like an App Store or the Google Play Store where you could go in and you could download extra apps for your phone. Well, all of those apps on there were all carefully curated by the Blind Shell team. They had to go in and make sure that Those apps worked 100% on the phone. Well, based on the high demand by customers and users for third party apps, extra third party apps, Blind Shell decided to separate their carefully curated apps with third party apps that aren't as carefully curated. So we have two section here. This main section is for all of the Blind Shell apps, all of the things that Blind Shell is confident is going to work 100% on the phone.
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And then third party apps.
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Seven of eight, you also have a section for third party apps. Just keep in mind that these are not going to be maintained by Blind Shell. And if you install one of these applications, there's no guarantee that, number one, it's going to work on the phone at all, but number two, that it's going to be accessible. And this brings me to another big new feature of the Blindshell Classic 3, and that is that we now have a touchscreen. But it's important to note that the touchscreen is only going to be used for some of those third party applications. 99.9% of the time when you're using the Blind Shell phone, you're not going to be using a touchscreen. I mean, the touchscreen isn't even activated. You're only going to be controlling it with the physical keypad. And I should also mention that most of the third party applications can still be controlled with the physical buttons. You just might run into a situation where you're going to need a touchscreen. And so Blind Shell has added that in. And for those situations, the touchscreen will support the basic talkback gestures. And the two biggest new features that we're going to talk about are the Tandem app and the new AI assistant named Luna Contacts.
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Tandem 4 of 8 First, we'll jump.
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Into the Tandem app. This is a new Blind Shell exclusive application that gives you another way to communicate with your family and friends. The app is already pre installed on the Blind Shell Classic 3, and there's a smartphone version available for both iOS and Android. So whether everybody's on Blind Shell or somebody has a smartphone, you'll be able to much more easily communicate with your loved ones through through the Tandem app. You can think of it as a similar app to like WhatsApp or Facebook messenger. You'll be able to make WI fi calls, you'll be able to make video calls. You'll be able to chat through a text messaging interface. All of this is done through the Tandem app. It's safe and it's secure and it's encrypted end to end. Hey, how's it going? Question mark.
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1 new notification 1 of 6 chat message from 850 minutes ago 1 of 2 incoming hey, how's it going? 0 minutes ago 1 of 10 tandem incoming video call from 85.
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Hello. Hi. Doing a video call. The other super cool feature of the Tandem app is the ability for someone to remove remotely control your Blind Shell phone. This is going to be great for, well, number one, someone like myself that does training on this phone. I'll be able to remotely control the user's phone to better assist with the training process. But this is also going to be great for family members and loved ones of Blind Shell users. They're going to be able to remotely get into your phone and help you set it up. And the last biggest new feature of The Blind Shell Classic 3 is the new and improved AI assistant named Luna. On the Blind Shell Classic 2, there was a voice assistant, but it was kind of limited. But now we have Luna and Luna is a much more powerful AI based voice assistant. We trigger Luna the same way we triggered the voice assistant in previous models. Long pressing the button on the right. What time is.
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Luna? The current time is 2:33pm in the America New York time zone.
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Do I have WhatsApp installed?
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Luna, WhatsApp is not installed on your device.
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I can ask questions about the status of the phone. Is my phone connected to Bluetooth?
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Luna, your phone's Bluetooth is disabled and not connected to any devices.
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What mobile network am I connected to?
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Luna, you are connected to the AT&T mobile network with 4G technology.
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All right. Of course we can use it to dial phone numbers and call our contacts, but we can also ask information about our contacts. How many contacts do I have saved on the phone?
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Luna, you don't have any contacts saved on your phone?
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Yeah, I don't have any contacts on this phone. And then of course, because it's AI, we can ask those general knowledge questions. How old was Abraham Lincoln when he died?
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Luna, Abraham Lincoln was 56 years old when he died on April 15, 1860. 65.
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Man, he was young. So that is Luna extremely helpful right now. And it's just going to continue to get better the more Blind Shell updates it. All right, so here is a look at the brand new Blind Shell Classic 3. Don't forget that if you want to see everything the blind Shell Classic 3 does other than what I've shown you here today. Check out my Blind Shell Classic two reviews. I will also put contact information for The Blind Shell Classic 3 in the video description down below. If you want to learn more about this device including availability and pricing. A huge thank you to Blind Shell for sending over these units so I can make this video for you. A huge thank you to you guys for watching. If you like this video then help out the channel by clicking the like button. And of course make sure you're subscribed to the Blind Life and turn on the post notifications so you'll be alerted every time I put out new content, which is every single Saturday. Don't forget to check out my website theblindlife.net where you can find links to all my other social media including the Blind Life podcast. But that is it for this one guys. As always, this is Sam with the Blind Life. I will see you next time.