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 KZfaq) was the killer feature for both iPhone and Android.

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!!

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!

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.

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

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.

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 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.

When I was in secondary school, people weren't using iPhones and androids, and they weren't chatting with Whatsapp and imessage, they were all using Blackberries and chatted on BBM. Everyone had one, they used to be what iPhones are now. Can't belive how quickly things changed.

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'm using what you described as a "mid-2000s" cell phone plan today; I have to pay 45cents/minute, 35cents/text, and 10cents/MB. It's not that I'm old, it's just that I do not like being absolutely shafted for cell phone plans where I live (Canada), where even a basic voice and data plan (around 2GB) with a phone costs like $85/month. And I'm not using a flip phone with this archaic plan, I have an iPhone, but I can only fully utilize it on WiFi.

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?

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.

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

A video about Palm would be great.

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 had a blackberry in 2006. It was that brief period where it looked like a smart phone in its infancy but the iPhone had yet to come out. It had a few cool apps before they were called apps. It had the browser, but it had a news app and an espn app.

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 knew a lot of people with Blackberrys but I never jumped on that bandwagon because by the time I was able to get my first smartphone, I could see the promise in iOS and especially Android. I have used Android exclusively since 2011 with no regrets personally, but I once thought Blackberry could co-exist with the big two. I just always thought they were rather boring next to the new crop of smartphones coming in the scene in the late 2000s/early 2010s. But as you said their lack of apps is what did them in at the end of the day. My first Android phone had a physical querty keyboard that I really did use all the time when it was new, but by the time I gave it up nearly two years later, I hadn't used it in a long time.

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.

Nice history lesson as I've owned many phones going back to 1999, but never a BB. I have more nostalgia for the Nextel phones with work, then personal as well, some Nokia phones as well. I still miss unlimited push to talk. I did find this interesting and equally informative! Thanks Colin!

I really appreciated this video. Thanks! To answer your question I got into smartphones very late... Around 2010 I had my first touch screen Nokia, which was basically as bad as the fullscreen Blackberry devices mainly because of the OS, but it did have one of the better GPS navigations out there. When it died I moved to Android with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. However, I remember at the time Blackberry came out with the 9900 and I loved the design so much, but decided against it because it was sooooo expensive at the time. Basically similar price to the iPhone or the Nexus. Years later I saw the 9900 at a random used mobiles store and bought it for around 50 bucks. I now use it as a backup dumb phone or when I want to disconnect from social media etc. Basically use it for smartphone detox. I do admire the blackberry a bit because for what it is, it actually is a very smart dumb phone. I see a lot of features from my Android in the 9900 and I still love the keyboard. I wish they would remake the 9900 as an Android version with a bigger screen haha. Anyway... Great video!

I absolutely loved my black berry curve, but as phones began to progress, I noticed more and more how integral good applications were. This was made apparent once the iPhone, and androids began to take off. The one aspect of the device I missed, was the keyboard. Maybe it's just the romantic idea of how quick I was back then, compared to touch screens today. :)

Tactile and tactility has never been the same with all of the features that it offers, it does not slip nor slide as it is as firm as every button. Featured packed for the daily rush. The Blackberry should be "The Rising Evidence of the Blackberry 2022..". SMEs.......respectively.

I'll never forget the headlines about RIM Jobs.

i had a flip phone until 2013... then an iphone 4s then 5s then I moved over to android. currently have the pixel 2

That was really interesting, always wondered what happened to BlackBerry. The program manager at work used to send e-mails with a BlackBerry signature, I’d say this was around 2013-2014

Blackberry passport is the best phone yet IMHO.

Colin, the browser on blackberry 10 was shockingly good and stable, way more compatible than any iOS, android and other mobile browsers at the time. I just used it the other day and it's still great to use. For example it had out of the box KZfaq background play, you could just throw it to another tab, keep browsing and switch apps or switch off the screen and just listen. Much like the KZfaq premium I currently pay monthly for. And while it's fair to disagree with his statement of the browser being all you need, that is still a valid direction to go in for some who like chrome OS and things of that nature. But I do agree the browser in Blackberry 7 was pretty bad

Blackberry, Palm, and Nokia had serious trouble scaling up their OSs. While incredibly usable, they increasingly proved unmaintainable, and so quickly fell behind their accelerating competition.

The Blackberry KEYone was fairly successful and the KEY2 is off to a very good start. The stock has gone from $9.99 per share as of June 2017 to the current price of $12.54 as of 6/6/2018. Mabye this could be called the rise, fall and rise of Blackberry.Also the new phones they're making (Priv, KEYone, KEY2, Motion (to some extent)) are some of the best I've seen.

I'm from Waterloo and have known many RIM employees over the years - used to work right beside their main campus. What happened? Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis were out of touch with the consumer market and continued to run the company very top-down. They literally couldn't fathom Apple taking over the marketplace and it cost them dearly (Jim and Mike still made their billions though)

There was something calming about using email, replying to and composing new messages, on a Palm device. You knew you wouldn't be interrupted with a new email till you synced. It almost felt like dropping off snail mail at a post office mail box. Now... its all hectic and tense and stressful, bleh

Currently using a Blackberry Curve 8520 as my main contact device. It's quite a robust and well built phone for texting and calls, but even I knew it was lacking software for literally *any* of it's devices. Even BlackberryOS was very lacking, in comparison to Google's Android features or Apple's IOS app store.

Great episode. Really enjoyed this one.

As a Blackberry user in my teens 2009-2011 having a few different models. After watching this episode I might have to go out and buy a Blackberry Classic so I can replace the iPhone 5 that keeps breaking that I use as my second device, because you just reminded me how great Blackberry was!

regarding the camera thing I think the CEO from Blackberry has point, too many companies at the time in that era didn't allow people to get inside their building with camera or mobile phone with camera. the business people when they were going to meeting they let their phone in a plastic boxes at the receptions, and most of phone manufacturer made version of there flagship phone oriented for business people without camera, from Sony to Siemens and Nokia...

I'm still using a Passport by BB...great phone. Oh and the reason they're still around isn't related to mobile phones at all, their QNX OS as an embedded product is very good...plus they have (had?) enormous cash reserves. (edit: oops, he got to the embedded aspect eventually...however, third world regions still like BB :)

Company was run into the ground by two cokehead CEOs, but my Blackberry Priv is a fantastic piece of tech.

This video took me down memory lane! Nostigolia...thanks!

17:50 It is now Apple that you need to buy it's own headset

My first "smartphone" was technically the Verizon variant of the HTC Touch, running Windows Mobile 6.0, though I didn't have it attached to a data plan, so its use as a smartphone was considerably limited. After that, it was the Droid Incredible, which was a surprisingly competent little phone. Then I got a Droid DNA, which was a very nice phone for what it was. I got a Palm Pre+ as a backup phone once my DNA started to have battery troubles and proved unreliable. Palm, at that time, was one of the most forward-thinking companies with regard to their UI design and integration. Truly, you can look at even the early implementations of WebOS and it looks clean. The skeuomorphic aesthetic does place it in time, but it doesn't really look dated in the same way that iOS or Android of the time does. The last few iterations of WebOS, particularly the unreleased versions, look like the UI designs that Apple designers have wet dreams about. Unfortunately, Palm's fate just makes them a massive "what if" of hypothetical solutions that would have allowed them to retain relevance. But mark my words, Apple and Google will still be picking over the corpse of Palm and their WebOS remnants for UI elements to blatantly rip of for several more years to come. As for Blackberry? Too many typical change-averse boomers in their hierarchy, so the outcome really was obvious. In the early 2000's, if you were a tech company that was averse to change, then your company died. Everything changed when mobile data became the norm and capacitive touch-screens became the default means of interacting with your handheld. HTC experienced a boom in business at this time because they were some of the first to move to full touch-screen interfaces. Apple normalized the capacitive ones and Samsung made them cheaper and more attainable than ever. Then you had Blackberry, who just said "nope, not doing that" for way, way too long. So by the time they tried to make that transition, it was already too late for them. Their customers had already left them behind and they lost all of their cultural cache.

I'm watching this on my blackberry classic :-).

At one point I was hoping to work at the company, but then I found out they weren't giving out any more RIM jobs

I was considering getting a BB keyone as my first smart phone just for the keyboard and keybind customization. I hear rumors of the keyone 2 being announced this year so figured I would hope out to see what else pops up. I just moved between basic cell phones from LG for past decade relying on pc or a tablet for everything that wasn't calling or texting. Any way the little history lesson was neat for giving perspective so thank you.

I owned Blackberry's between the years 2016 to 2013 and I definitely remember during that period being able to download apps on the phone from a Blackberry Store.

My first ‘smart’ phone was a Palm Tréo, followed by a second PalmOS Treo that never worked before buying my first of about a dozen Blackberrys. I knew things were going downhill for RIM when they launched the PlayBook. I bought one, never worked properly, and made no sense. About as much sense as why I ‘needed’ one so badly.

I miss my old BB Bold. Honestly, I don’t really miss the keyboard or crappy os but that the battery on that thing never seemed to die!

Nice video. The BlackBerry KEY2 was announced today and the KEYone is currently the best smartphone on the market. Been using a BlackBerry consistently since the 950 in 2000.

Comment to old video: as a hard BB user from 2004 (BB7290) until 2013 (BB9000) I can attest, that what killed the RIM was that: corporate users did not want to have two devices - BB for work and iPhone/Android for leisure. They started to push their companies' purchasing and technology departments to give them one solution. At this point, Apple (which initiated as pure personal device experience with iPhone and having lackluster integration tools in 2007-2010), decided to start supporting corporate users. This was the end for RIM as "secure, business device your company can rely on".

This was a great review and case study. I totally agree, their reluctance to adopt the touch screen, terrible browser experience, lack of applications was ultimately their downfall. Even just comparing the iphone to the blackberry back in 2011 in terms of the graphical experience showed how legging RIM was behind the iphone.

In the mid 2000's I preferred Nokia phones with Symbian 60 OS.

Great video, thank you - I was never drawn to Blackberry, but I was an early touchscreen adopter. I had one of the PRADA touchscreen phones just prior to Apple releasing the first iPhone. I really liked it, but the moment we all saw that kinetic scrolling demo Steve Jobs did on the Keynote, I knew the PRADA was yesterday's news - lol

Thank you sir, you are such a great communicator of technology. Breaking it down is a skill, thank you thank you.

Awesomae video Colin. that was a real treat It's crazy how innovative they were in 2006, yet 4 years later their interface was clunky and not versatile enough(aka outdated) As for your question at 25:48, the answer I guess is : because Apple and Android adopted the much more versatile big screen/touchscreen approach before they did. And the apps makers jumped on the Apple & Android bandwagon as a result. which is why BB got left in the dust. EDIT : Apple/Android innovated while BB iterated, you've said it very well

Amazing video. Thank you for sharing!

BlackBerry has made some amazing looking phones, with equally amazing OS's. It's a shame they're no longer a big player in the market. While I disliked Windows OS as a mobile operating system, I'd gladly welcome them back in the market just so there's an alternative to Android and iOS devices. Hopefully Microsoft can start getting their new Andromeda OS out to the market soon.

I used to sell these in Australia for 3 mobile, and some what before that for Vodafone. It took me a long time to get on board with the iPhone. I used a Nokia N95 back then. I miss the days of LESS connectivity.

Another outstanding podcast!!

I remember having the BBM app on my (non-Blackberry) Android phone. It was a great app and I was sad when they discontinued it a couple of years ago. Then I went to WhatsApp and convinced all my friends to do the same. I was glad to still be avoiding Facebook so they (hopefully) couldn't get their hands on my data. Then Facebook bought WhatsApp. Sigh. For a while I was a bit hesitant about using a touchscreen keyboard, preferring a separate bluetooth one for my first smartphone. However I soon realised that I much preferred the ease and versatility of touchscreen keyboards when switching between different languages and keyboard layouts.

I moved to Indonesia in 2010 and I was surprised how popular blackberry was. Blackberry stretched their demise a few more years by focusing on upcoming markets.

i was a late adopter of BB. i had android for a couple years first. I LOVED my blackberry bold. and i absolutely hate the onscreen keyboards. ive been looking at the keytwo but they moved away from the amazing keyboard of the bolds and i just cant get used to the new keyboards ont he keytwo :( . idk where im going with this comment.

My cellphone crapped out on me when I was doing contract work out in Kansas City, MO so I went on CraigsList and found a Windows Palm (I believe it was unlocked for any carrier as well) and I have to say it wasn't half bad.

Even Samxun created a cheap copy of the curve called the ch@t. I had that and it was pretty good. Not great but usable.

Apple are becoming the new BlackBerry.

Funniest thing is that blackberry before going stick android it was possible to turn them into android and the play store was installable. It was more Android than people originally thought. I almost bought one because of that compatibility

but don't you think that all the companies who were successful at the beginning of the decade failed at the end of it. like Siemens, Benq, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, i-mate, Palm

Really I think that the new phones they're making (Priv, KEYone, KEYtwo, Motion (to some extent)) are some of the best I've seen, and actually I'm considering getting a KEYtwo cus honestly they look so good, just gotta wait for the price to drop

New BlackBerry phones run Android, so the BlackBerry market share is highly skewed. Sales outperformed expectations with the KEYone, and the KEY2 was just announced today. The new KEY phones are really nice, and the reviews were overwhelmingly positive. While they are a niche product, they are starting to rise again.

I really enjoyed my Blackberry Z10 & Z30... but it was difficult to get good apps on there and I had to eventually go back to Android. I was going to get one of the hybrids... but they were too expensive.

I was a Nokia fan boy back in the day and owned most models. But when I got my Blackberry Curve it was perfect. Kinda miss it now.

My first real smartphone was a Curve 8300 and I hated it with a passion! Yet still I was given a 8520 to recycle it and I couldn't bring myself to do it so I made it my dummy phone. The curiosity was way too strong and it still works nice for calls and texts

Nice video, but you somehow completely missed the major point in Blackberry from a corporate perspective: Their proprietary network. By channeling communication from the company's BES server over BB's own network nodes through encrypted tunnels it allowed for secure corporate messaging. Plus, a web proxy did serve mobile-friendly web pages, and companies could centrally manage devices. Major outages of their network in 2009 and 2011 (if I remember the years correctly) severely damaged their reputation.

Great video!!

I missed the BB boat back in the day but I'd absolutely love to have a brand new physical qwerty as long as it was done right (like the Bold 9000).. good small size, easy one hand navigation, and no bloatware (ie Android). Give it a decent camera and screen (4:3) and make it waterproof. The Q10 was my first BB, and I purchased every QWERTY they made since (except the priv). To me it seems as though their ship suddenly started sinking, they panicked, and they've just been throwing everything that they could get their hands on overboard in an attempts to lighten the load... as opposed to plugging the holes. BB OS was on a good track.. it was light, efficient and solid. Couldn't install apps? Not everyone cared.

Compare the os side by side dude...i want to see passport vs android in terms of os..

The only blackberry product I ever owned was a playbook tablet. Still one of my favorite devices.

Microsoft’s CEO at the time felt the same way luckily Microsoft got smart and pushed him out and got back innovating I prefer Apple tho

The difference with blackberries vs smartphones, in terms of addiction, is that people for whatever reason were more readily acceptable of someone at the table just pulling out a crackberry and start tapping away on it with their thumbs... it felt it was even encouraged, as those who weren't using a crackberry in that moment, were not as good at their job or not as good of a worker as those using a crackberry. I dont know exactly how to describe it. But i have a feeling anyone who felt similarly, when reading my above comment, will understand instantly what i am trying to describe!

Also, taking care of your email on a Palm device had the added effect of helping you feel "all professional and a bag of chips!" Hehe :)

Still using a Blackberry and so is the entirity of my company. They are still, without a doubt, the best.

My Blackberry Curve 9310 still works, the scroll pad is pretty worn out so trying to scroll through anything is pretty near impossible on it, but it still works, battery still holds a good charge usually about a week or more between charges with it...today's bloated phones don't even last a day between charges. Unfortunately I don't think any cell providers offer Blackberry support anymore so none of the phones will work on any of the current networks :(.

Here is my view on the blackberry platform, very long comment: First of all and unfortunately I was not an early adopter and was usually attracted to microsoft and palm devices at that early time. Later (2008 or age of windows vista) I used to see blackberry phones being sold in dubai at prices reaching $800. Then we bought from that dubai exhibition a samsung windows phone 6 (vista edition) mobile phone that had a keyboard, that trackpad that was used on blackberry phones, but also has a touchscreen and a pen. I enjoyed having that phone, but it had its shortcomings and its microphone was weak so no one can hear me. Before that phone I had a basic nokia 1110 and maybe a second device like a black and white palm organizer that had black and white touchscreen with pen. Then of course I got the above mentioned devices in 2008. Then after that I got a sony experia as my first android phone and eventually it stopped accessing google play but generally during its lifetime I was unhappy with it as it had no pen support, no microsoft things like office that I was using and it just sucked and was a waste of $300 for me and its lifetime was very short. That just begins to describe my view on how I began to hate android. I thought back then that maybe a new device later would be good. But I went back to microsoft and my dad always buys a lot of phones and so I got my htc windows phone 7 from my dad. That htc was also a good phone but still no pen and I didn't like the way that even microsoft had to discontinue the pen and even something important like the clipboard cut copy paste was missing. That phone was good until again its audio was very weak and hard to talk on it and the lack of other input like keyboard or a pen had me get a replacement soon. Also from my dad, the samsung note 2 was my next phone that I continue to hold onto even after moving to another platform. This other platform is blackberry. I gave that other platform a thought after seeing the mobile phones start to use the planned obsolescence business model when ios and android operating system software is evolving rapidly compared to the hardware of the phones. That was exactly was was happening with the pc industry before especially with the switch from 32 bit to 64 bit to go beyond 4gb ram. Android and to some extent ios have built this "prefetch" feature that uses ram to preload apps. As my samsunt note 2 was at the end of its life with every tap taking a long time to respond and the google play store freezing the whole phone upon installing an update, it was time for a new phone, however, I noticed that the 2gb ram on that phone was nowhere near 10% enough to support android excessive ram requirements. I see a lot of cpu and gpu changes over the years for android and ios phones, but I said that is enough and was on the hunt for other operating system. I was considering going back to microsoft, but I saw a video that bill gates decided to say nah microsoft will discontinue mobile for a while until a better solution can be made and bill gates himself started using an android phone instead. This removed another os from my mind leaving behind blackberry and symbian and palm operating systems were what is remaining from the older age. I google a lot and looked up devices from those and was like like screw the smartphone, why not a have a phone and of course I have my laptop that I am writing this comment on and I am still holding on to my slow ipad 2 and dad gave us the ipad 3 as he needed more memory and got a new ipad so why not rely on a tablet for all the modern app needs. Then I thought about what is a good talk and text phone out there that is not any of microsoft, google, and apple operating systems? Then in the number 4 spot is where we got the blackberry. I was going to also look at nokia, but ever since microsoft put their os on nokia phones, they still remain in that #3 spot while apple and google hold the top 2 spots when it comes to mobile market share. The symbian and palm os are very outdated but still useful retro devices when in need of something in a pinch, but I needed a reasonable phone to carry that was good in talk and text, but has some features such as the gps, the talk assistant to use when driving, and still act as a simple organizer that also does email and it still has some messaging application to have the family use. The best phone that fit the description is this blackberry passport, I am using it such a great phone to have today. It does not have to worry about its hardware getting outdated since the os no longer gets any updates and is not a major hacking target, but I see blackberry really care about security. So it is still a good phone, but does not have the hardware demanding app stores from google and apple that always require the latest devices to run. A tablet has more space inside to get better battery life and more specs, yet companies are putting less specs in a tablet, but the latest ipad is still a great tablet and there is the apple pencil and bluetooth keyboard support to make it a great device. Back to my blackberry passport, I recently checked the ram usage and was still surprised, half of the ram in use before I run any of the basic apps that I use and the ram is 3gb. I will not own an android device with less than 8gb ram minimum and prefer 12-16gb ram in my next android device if I ever get one. Again back to the blackberry passport phone, it still has a physical keyboard and that is one good thing since I would prefer an input method beyond the touchscreen. Touchscreen keyboards are usually very small that I hit the wrong key all the time but with a physical keyboard, some of that pain is less to worry about that allows me to survive without the stylus. My primary use of the stylus on touchscreens is to click small things such as on the internet and the on screen keyboard of other phones. This blackberry has the physical keyboard that helps, and I got a battery powered usb chargeable pen to use on any touchscreen. The blackberry phone has both the blackberry world apps store that was not mentioned in this video, also the blackberry playbook tablet was not mentioned in the video. Then my phone also has that amazon app store the offers a selection of android apps that might exist on amazon fire tablets. Overall I really like that phone as an intermediate and as a primary too. Good that blackberry made that phone. As I use the phone, I see that the OS has good potential but the lack of support both by app developers and by blackberry and research in motion really put down their OS that really has that potential, it has a good way of managing open applications, support for email and communications in one area called the blackberry hub. Also keeping low system requirements makes a phone remain responsive to any tap or button push until it ends up with an eventual electronic failure, but not before getting years out of it. I really wish those low market share OS rise up again but the corporate owners need to think outside of the box. Other operating systems such as amiga are in that situation, amiga runs on powerpc and I thought why we don't see them competing with apple when they had powerpc? Then it is the same for blackberry they need to be revived and this will give even microsoft a run for their money as they try to remake the windows os to run on any hardware and I hope microsoft invents the ability to run win32 applications on arm.

I had a blackberry pearl and I loved that phone, smartest phone pre smartphones.

Great podcast. Maybe in the future you could talk about Windows Phone.

I too, owned the pearl followed by the curve. Keeping up with email and text in a centralized hub is still appealing and number one priority. Over time I've come to realize I don't need a full experience with every desire. I can settle on using a web browser to check a sports score, jump on a news site for the headlines and the premise of the story. They lost me with APPS. And I'm talking about APPS that make my day-to-day easier...not games, Netflix, KZfaq, etc. I'm talking about basic lifestyle stuff -- checking a banking account, airlines/hotels, map integration, etc.. I can forgive the camera...that's easily fixed. But for BB not to give more thought to making my life easier is inexcusable.

I still use a BlackBerry pin:2BC01B30. My 1st BlackBerry was a Nextel BlackBerry. IM Planning to get a BlackBerry Motion Soon

My first smart phone was actually a blackberry. I was the cool guy on the block at the time lol

Poor little blackberry. Thanks for a great vid.

You're just very good and I totally agree...

Its still one of my favorite smartphone brand. Until this day.

You forget to talk about the Blackberry "STORM" which was a touch screen Blackberry model.

Huh, u bring me so much memories.... The most fucked up thing is that many of us, bb users will really buy now bb, but not for the same price as flagship if they don't have their performance.. They are stupid.

The Software for Blackberry should have been published as OpenSource ! BTW: A physical keyboard (no Touchscreen keyboard) is the Best you can add to a Smartphone !

I used the Blackberry q5 and Passport. The Passport was a very good phone. But I had to change to android cause of apps. After that i used the priv and dont liked it. Wanted to buybthe Keyone but I didnt find it in shops for a good price. Now im using a Huawei. With more apps on BB10 i would still use my Passport. Die OS is awesome, the battery is good and the keyboard is still the best.

So if you worked for them, you had a Rim Job O.o

By the time I made the switch from standard phone to smart phone it was 2010 and I was 28 years old. I got an iPhone 4, and it literally changed my world. Apple literally vaporized everything else instantaneously.