Blackberry Phones: Creating Black Magic

by Chris Devers

Blackberry Phones: Creating Black Magic

Blackberry, an out an out business phone, is a wireless handheld device that got introduced in the world markets in 1999. It is developed by a Canadian company Research in Motion. The device supports standard features like mobile telephone and short service messaging, as well as exceptional features like web browsing, internet faxing and push e-mail. The company initially focused on e-mails and even today the RIM offers its e-mail services to Palm Treo through the Blackberry Connect software.

The Blackberry phones incorporate all the major PDA features and functions, including address book, calendar, to-do lists et al. sending and receiving e-mails through the Blackberry is made possible through the wireless network of certain carriers. The in-built keyboard is ideal for ‘thumbing’. The trackwheel on the right side of the device is meant for system navigation. However, in the latest Blackberry phone, the trackwheel is replaced by a trackball.

The Intel 80386 processors were used in the earlier Blackberry devices, whereas the new models incorporate an ARM 7 or 9 processor. The latest Blackberry phones, 8100 and 8700 series, have an Intel PXA901 312 MHz processor, 64 MB flash memory and 16 MB SDRAM. In several organizations, the devices are only used to provide e-mail service to the roaming employees, making it a very popular and effective tool.

The Blackberry subscribers reached the magical figure of two million, as announced by RIM in November, 2004. Another one million were added till the time of next announcement in May 2005. By March 2006, the 5 million figures were crossed as well despite slowing rates. As the latest Blackberry phone, 8800 was introduced in April 2007; the sales got the much needed impetus, taking the number of Blackberry subscribers to eight million!

Blackberry phones have has the charm, the aesthetism and the functionality to make it real big. And the black magic it has created was only inevitable.