BlackBerry: The Smartphone We Knew Before the iPhone

[Amir Shoam]

The iPhone brought smartphones into the mainstream, but before there were Samsung Galaxy devices to contend with, a company called RIM made BlackBerry phones that looked more like tiny laptops.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/2640-blackberry/

 

[Avro Arrow]

Here in Canada, where the Blackberry originated, we used to jokingly refer to them as:

"Research-in-Motion Jobs"

Blame Canada!

 

[Uncle Al]

Had one for a short time but returned it, just didn't care for it .....

 

[JordLevy]

Had one for a short time but returned it, just didn't care for it .....

Thanks for sharing

 

[PEnnn]

It's painful to watch those attached Youtube videos by techie trolls comparing the Crackberry to the IPhone, trying to tell the BB is superior..... and failing miserably..

I wish we could force them to re-watch their pitiful videos, say for 100 hours, non-stop.

 

[p51d007]

I think the BB was a "hip" product. Before the iphone was the trendy thing, "everyone" had to have a BB.
I passed big time. The HTC phones with the slide out keyboard I liked MUCH better.

 

[kira setsu]

I sure do miss keyboards on phones, til this day touchscreen typing is a wrong word riddled mess for me.

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

You forgot to mention the MAIN smartphone from pre-iphone era. My Dad even had one.

Qtek 9100. And mobile Windows

 

[nismo91]

I live in indonesia. there was a blackberry boom in 2010 that sort of push a lot of people to get blackberry, because you can use blackberry messenger (BBM) and not have to pay for SMS. if you want to get in touch with some people, you'd have to buy a blackberry because they don't like paying charges replying to your text.

you have to realize that at that time people were still using symbian phones. some people use androids, few uses iphone and very few use windows phone. those majority of people who use symbian, they found that moving to bb os is much easier than to android/ios/wp due to physical keyboards.

so in short I got my first 2G blackberry curve in 2011 to complement my windows phone 7. it's stupidly overpriced when I bought it considering whatsapp was already available (on 1 year trial basis). it doesn't last long because people actually realize how crappy bb hardware is compared to iphone, androids and windows phone. whatsapp starting to gain dominance in the region as it is no longer 1-year-trial basis and at the same time two things happened in late 2013: symbian was discontinued, bbm was also launched in iphone or android.

now there is no sense in getting blackberry phone because what people needs (BBM) is also available in other phones. as whatsapp gain dominance, in introduced voice calls in 2015 which encourages people to ditch BBM in favor of whatsapp. remember what I said about people reluctant to pay for text charges?

blackberry did nothing until 2017 where it launched indonesian only aurora model with subpar performance. it was not surprising because the phone was developed with TCL. it was competing with samsung, sony, lg, htc, asus, xiaomi and so much other phone in 2017 it just couldn't keep up.

both google and apple played a part in killing windows phone, but it did nothing of significance to blackberry. it was whatsapp who killed blackberry.

 

[Lozzy]

I sure do miss keyboards on phones, til this day touchscreen typing is a wrong word riddled mess for me.

I miss a battery that lasted a week

 

[lazer]

My son loved his blackberry; he swore he would never stop using it.\
But he finally got an iPhone.\
gotta keep up with the times.