Publications
Partners
Time has a funny way of showing us what’s hot and what’s not, especially with digitopia on a rise, and the world moving at paces sometimes harder to keep up with.
A sad day beckons, as the end of an era is upon us.
BlackBerry has announced that it will officially close its doors, and that its devices will no longer be operational as of January 4 2022.
READ: BAKAE: Don't you miss the days of MXit?
Nostalgia flooded my mind, when I thought back to the iconic and profound era of the BlackBerry, and how it was a monumental part of the evolution of smartphones.
The first BlackBerry device, called the 850, was introduced to the market in 1999.
This two-way pager was introduced in Munich, Germany. The name was coined by marketing company, Lexicon Branding, after the device’s stark resemblance to the drupelets of the blackberry fruit.
I recall being a bug-eyed 14-year-old when my mother got me my first Blackberry, after dropping not so small hints that there was a new phone on the market, and all the cool kids had it.
After what felt like forever, she finally caved in, and on a sunny day in December 2010, the BlackBerry 8520 was mine, and what a long affair it was.
READ: Long live the tech evolution
Let’s take a trip down memory lane, with some of BlackBerry’s most iconic moments and features.
1. 60 bucks for unlimited internet connection:
We were definitely abundantly blessed, R60 for unlimited internet access. This BlackBerry feature is definitely what set this cellphone apart from other phones on the market. Without this feature, late night internet roaming, and spending countless hours listening to boy band Mindless Behavior, would not have been possible.
It’s true what they say, you only know what you had when it’s gone. We’ll miss BIS (BlackBerry Internet Services), especially considering the buckets of money it costs for Wi-Fi and fibre connections this year.
2. BBM was definitely a cultural reset:
Also known as BlackBerry Messenger, the instant messenger always kept us connected and just made sense considering how everyone had a model of the BlackBerry at that point. The messenger app even had a song to accompany its true innovation. House duo Liquideep released their smash-hit BBM, after the app allowed peoples statuses to change according to what they were listening to.
3. Screen Muncher for BlackBerry: talk about receipts!
The BlackBerry Screen Muncher app, was definitely the real McCoy. Although not the first of its kind, the screenshot was largely popularised due to the BlackBerry, which made it easy to screenshot songs and post them to your Twitter handle, or simply keep the tea that you would spill at a later stage, not to mention that iconic screen munch sound, followed by the somewhat adorable pink munch monster.
4. BlackBerry Torch:
This awesome edition of the BlackBerry was a mixture of every phone that made up my childhood. The slide-up function that was reminiscent of my first phone, which happened to be the Samsung E250, the touch pad reminiscent of my first BlackBerry, and the Qwerty keyboard, which made the phone larger than life, and was perhaps was one of our most prominent introductions to the trend which seems to be lingering today, of big phones, and big screens. This cellphone was just the dopest on the market at the time, and had functions that were quite advanced such as the touch screen, qwerty keyboard combination, and their universal search function.
5. Attention to detail:
One thing about BlackBerry, it knew how to curate a series of phones. Every phone somehow had a different look from the last, even though some were a part of the same collection. Unlike so many cellphones today, which often don’t differ in the aesthetic, or basic shape, Blackberry always seemed to understand how to push its own boundaries, and give people something fun and new to look forward to, every time it released a new phone.
It’s never the right time to say goodbye, not even to a BlackBerry – a genius phone that was a bridge between the old and the young. For the youngsters, it was a fun and cool way to stay connected to friends, and create their own trends and for the old, it was a way that made their work lives easier.
The era of the BlackBerry might be over, but the cultural importance this small device had, lives on forever.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
