The Last Keystroke: An Ode to BlackBerry

Photo Credit: mnm_all via Unsplash

I can still hear the chime. The white star inside of a red circle in an image that is engraved in the tech portion of my memory. The memories of one of my favorite phones that I have ever held: The BlackBerry Bold 9000. For full disclosure, I have issues and have owned over 100 phones in my life. Phones from all manufacturers over the years spanning 6 different operating systems. But the Bold 9000 is one of the ones that really sticks out to me. The keyboard was amazing, felt great in the hand, and you just got things done with this device. I’m reminded of this amazing phone now that BlackBerry phone hardware has most likely gone the way of the Dodo bird.

For anyone that is not aware of the situation of BlackBerry Mobile, they had a hardware licensing agreement with TCL to produce their smartphones. What this meant was that BlackBerry would work on the software and create revenue through their software productivity suite while TCL handled all the nuances of creating the hardware that said software would run on. This agreement made sense back in 2016 since BlackBerry was struggling to compete with Samsung and Apple in the hardware race after the flop that was BlackBerry 10. By taking the hardware element out of the picture and letting TCL handle that, they could focus on the software and build reliable and secure Android phones.