The Death Of An Icon & My Memories Of Life With It

It was a news out of the blue that sadden me on seeing it and reminded me of the years gone by. What news? The announcement that the smartphone company BlackBerry, had announced that it would be ending support for major BlackBerry OS from January 4, 2022. With this, the company will discontinue offering significant services for its existing devices. Blackberry, one of the most popular smartphone brands of the time before the high-end phone segment became a rage, will be ending support for BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier, BlackBerry 10 software, BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 along with previous versions.

The smartphone, which ruled the tech industry years ago, offered a smooth keyboard-centric designs and was a major hit among business executives and working professionals who relied on BlackBerry services that provide a high degree of confidentiality and anonymity. However as high end full touch screen devices became the rage, BlackBerry fell behind and concentrated on their top class QWERTY keyboard. At one point in time I was a BlackBerry fanboy. I was so much in awe of the devices when I first saw/heard of them on an Oprah Winfrey show where, on the launch of a new device, 7105t, she gave everyone in her audience a brand new one of the same model as part of her pre-Christmas giveaway show. Since then I have checked out news of the BlackBerry models and tried to get one for myself.

I got my first BlackBerry back in 2010, a grey BlackBerry Curve 8320 and then in 2012 I got a BlackBerry 9780 which I loved a lot and in March of 2015 I switched to a white Q10. But by 2016 I was feeling the lack of a full touch screen and felt that it was time to make the switch to Android. So in February of that year I switched to a Samsung and then I have bought a few Android devices (currently I have an Oppo and a RealMe) and have never gone back. But it fills me with sadness as I had brand loyalty for a while and it just died out as they weren’t the in thing anymore and also were left far behind the race.

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