The Rise and Fall of BlackBerry | TDNC Podcast #95

HEY Colin, it's going alright thanks.

I do miss the golden age of BB, I still use BB Passport today as my second phone. Love it!

Part of the story is that BlackBerry/Palm only was leading in some countries, while Nokia owned the business smartphone segment in others. Of course, Nokia was spewing the same kind of hubris as BlackBerry, and while both actually were growing a couple of years after the launch of iPhone and Android devices, I'd say that easy to use Google software (especially Maps, Gmail and YouTube) was the killer feature for both iPhone and Android.

I got a Blackberry Tour while I was still on Sprint before AT&T lost iPhone exclusivity. It was light years easier to use than the HTC Touch Diamond (Windows Mobile) I had used previously, but I really wanted the iPhone. When iPhone 4 came out, I finally dropped Sprint and went to AT&T for it. I still remember my wife and I both going to the store and getting our matching iPhones. I’ve been an iPhone user ever since.

The "BlackBerry Style 9670" (flip model) was my first smart phone ever. Before that I was using something like a "Nokia​ 3310" candy bar phone. I liked the Blackberry Style a whole bunch in 2010! When Blackberry Announced their new QNX based phones in 2013 running Blackberry 10 OS I jumped right on board. I purchased the Z10 for my wife and the Q10 for myself. I thought these were wonderful phones. I truly believe that had Blackberry released Blackberry 10 OS a few years earlier it would have dominated. Unfortunately Blackberry was WAY to late to the game. I switched to Android in 2016 with the Galaxy S7 and am currently using the S9. Blackberry 10 OS was an elegant OS and had a great work flow. To this day I still miss features from Blackberry 10. BTW I still hate typing on glass. Keyboard master race!

I'm an Android user since 2010 and never looked much into BlackBerry. Until they announced an Android device with a physical keyboard. (While there were Androids with keyboards, they mostly had other drawbacks like weak CPUs, no software updates or they just weren't sold in my country.) I got the PRIV first but wasn't really satisfied with the pull-out keyboard. So I got the KEYone. And man, this is THE Android phone to me. Battery lasts 2 days where I had to charge every other Android phone daily or even twice a day. And the keyboard is awesome, especially when typing on the go. But while their plans for monthly updates were very ambitious and they managed to release security updates a few days before Google for a few times … they now started to fall behind again by leaving out updates. And the promised Oreo update is still nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, Google published the Android P Beta already. Sad. Very sad.

The consumer market expanded with smartphones and the slept on that. Still my favorite "smartphone" was a blackberry

This is a well done commentary. Enjoyed it. BlackBerry, with J Chen as CEO, over the past few years, have transformed their business and established themselves in 2018 as one of the most profitable tech companies focused on privacy and security in addition to driver-less vehicles. I'm in my 50s. I started using cell and smartphones at the genesis and evolution of this technology. Personally I will always be more comfortable on a physical keyboard. Glad they are still available. I have owned any iPhone you can think of, in addition to many flagship Androids from Samsung, Huawei, HTC, LG, and Motorola. I keep coming back to BB. Call it nostalgia or an 'old school' need, I've had the many of the original iterations like the 7230, 7100, 8700, Curve, Bold (a few including my fav or all time 9900), Storm, Tour, Torch, Q10, PassPort, Classic, KeyOne, and now the Key2. I'm not fond of TCL now making the devices rather than BB themselves, but I'll take it as long as they are still available. Glad to see the Key2 use quality material design reminiscent of devices like the 9900, Classic, or PassPort. Cheers.

I had a BlackBerry Tour for YEARS. It was the greatest thing ever...great camera easy to type on, and emails and texts were QUICK, they would show up quicker on BB than any other phones!!

BlackBerry Os 10 is still wonderful operating system. I finally ditched it due to lack of app support. When you're sideloading android apks that don't work well or not at all, you finally realise you may as well just get a phone that does work. I still keep BlackBerry devices (os10) around as secondary handsets as I still love the keyboards for productivity. Not tried newer android based BlackBerry devices but like the look of the keyone. Another lost os along with Windows phone and Web Os that died before their time. Hopefully a new Os will come along to challenge Android but I can't see it. Maybe a revived Windows mobile os?

A video about Palm would be great.

I was always a big fan of Nokia, i worked for them for a while, so i knew their quality was superb, but I was amazed at the lead they had over both Blackberry & Apple with their S60 o/s & apps was totally given away, mostly, to my group of friends, due to nokia's increasingly restrictive app DRM, so we switched to Blackberry & stayed with them for a while, before ditching them too, for all the reasons you mentioned, but mainly they became stale. I moved to Apple briefly but really couldn't justify their prices for what you actually got for the money. Now Android, & lately cheap Chinese Androids that you don't cry over if you break or lose, maybe not disposable at $200 to $300, but more bearable than $1,000+ products..often with superb performance too.

Great episode. Really enjoyed this one.

The managing of RIM was so rigid compare to other similar companies in U.S. They are not flexible although they had a knowledge on security and enterprises email that no other companies had it back then. They just do not know how to make it more valuable . It was just typical " Canadian own company"

I loved my Blackberry at the beginning of the smartphone revolution. It was the only one who had real all-day battery life. And then eventually Apple and Android got good battery life, and the one feature I loved was no longer relevant.

Great explanation video. I always liked Blackberry, but mainly used Nokias because they were smaller, and they made many of the same mistakes as RIM. I remember using a friends Iphone the first year out, and it was a pretty bad phone, but Apple really improved it over time. I think also the consolidation of carriers in the US made a huge difference as I remember there was a lot more choice of phones when there were more carriers. We only have Verizon and Tmobile where I live, and while Verizon displays a Blackberry, they don't actually carry them. They only push Apple and Samsung and that's where the market has gone. You're point about their OS is spot on. I know many people would have stuck with them if they would have updated the Browser and OS to modernize and make it faster. Also I can still text faster on old nokia than my Iphone.

I think one of the breakthroughs that the iPhone brought to the game was the solid glass screen that you just touched instead of jabbed or pressed on order to get a reaction. I also think the overlooked breakthrough feature of the original Mac was the fact that you were working with black text on a white page instead of glowing text on a black screen. Both subtle aids to reducing the friction associated with adapting non-nerds to a new tool.

I remember getting my Blackberry Tour in 2010. It was a great phone and did everything I needed, but the scroll ball died in 2014 so I got a new phone. I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy S4 that I still use, and while I thought Andriod was better at the time, thinking back I feel like I could get more work done consistently was the physical keyboard on my Blackberry.

I had a blackberry bold 9000 (the one that had that little mouse ball thing) and even having a "normal" smartphone, I really liked using the thing to listen to music and etc... If I remember correctly, I found it on a trash bin on an airport or a bus station... I dont remember correctly. Also, fun fact: If you put a medium sized magnet behing a blackberry bold 9000, it will turn its screen off instantly.

I love the shade at the holsters ‘when that was a thing, I guess’.