from Hacker News

The Rise and Fall of the BlackBerry

by tjwds on 10/15/23, 6:58 PM with 11 comments

  • by Baguette5242 on 10/15/23, 7:58 PM

    What killed the blackberry it’s the lack of apps, picture quality and everything that made the iPhone a easy casual phone for everyone. Not only a phone for executives in their 40’s

    For emails, connectivity and messaging, BlackBerrys were insanely good. As soon as you stepped out of these fields, it sucked.

    I still believe there’s a (niche) room for a keyboard smartphone.

  • by paradox460 on 10/15/23, 11:25 PM

    I had a BlackBerry during this transition period, the storm. It launched with no app store at all, and took nearly a year to get one. When it launched, the apps were so paired down that they were borderline useless. The SMS system didn't have conversation based chat for 6 months, so it felt like sending and receiving emails. But it did some things very well. The unified inbox was really nice, being able to see all your messages in one place. Google talk and MSN messenger, as well as BBM, were very good, talk being better even than the android version at the time. And it's media management program was extremely fully featured, having filters and search far superior to that of an iPhone or iPod at the time

    I was excited for the QNX based os they moved to, but it ultimately didn't move the needle

  • by walterbell on 10/15/23, 9:36 PM