By Ruchika Seneviratne
It truly is an end of an era as BlackBerry has announced the end of the production of their mobile phones. A true pioneer of the modern-day smartphones, all the ’80s and ‘90s and even the early 2000’s kids will always remember this brand with the iconic built-in QWRTY Keypad with the mini trackball and also the brief period of time it ruled the mobile phone industry. It brought in a wide variety of new features to existing phones, such as the ability to send and receive emails on the phone and the famous BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, the forerunner of Apple’s iMessage.
In honour of BlackBerry, we will be compiling a list of 5 BlackBerry phones that were on top of the world at one point and ones we will miss.
1. BlackBerry Bold
This was THE BlackBerry phone. The other phones in this list are great, but this was the phone that made everyone want to buy a BlackBerry. To most people, when they imagine a BlackBerry phone, this is what comes to mind. Released in 2011, this shook up the smartphone market completely and helped BlackBerry cement its reign as the top brand.
2. BlackBerry Bold Touch
This was released in 2011 as well and was quite similar to BlackBerry Bold, but it had an optical trackpad as well as a touchscreen interface as well. Another important fact and selling point of this phone were that it was one of the thinnest BlackBerry phones ever produced. With handy features such as a 5MP camera, this also became quite popular.
3. BlackBerry Pearl – 8100
An older version than the BlackBerry Bolds, it featured a mini trackball in the centre of the five-button keyboard and this truly was a game-changer in device navigation and this became a defining feature of BlackBerry phones. It also had a 1.3MP camera, a media player, ringtones and even could SD cards as well.
4. BlackBerry Curve
This arrived in 2007 and offered most of what the BlackBerry Pearl also offers, but with a 2MP Camera and a QWERTY keyboard. This revolutionized the field of mobile phones as it was a unique model with smartphone features and was also much more affordable.
5. BlackBerry 7290
This model came in 2003 and was one of the earliest phones from BlackBerry. They were the first BlackBerry phones to switch to a coloured panel display from the monochrome display. This device also offered Bluetooth and also had a 16MB of storage which, at the time, was huge. It was a true pioneer of the BlackBerry devices to come and in essence, paved the way for it.
For now, we’re left with memories of the classic BlackBerry phones, some excellent, others too strange to succeed.
