Ode to the Blackberry: Making the case for the most marginalized species of cell phone

Do you have an iPhone? Is it your life? Are you in love with it? Do you take it with you everywhere just in case you want to check Twitter to see what people are doing, or to take pictures for Instagram? Do you ever actually “log out” of Facebook? Do you constantly iMessage or listen to Spotify? Even worse, do you “read books” on your iPhone?
Apple products rule our modern day lives. This much is obvious. We’re addicted to our MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, iMacs, iPads, iPad 2s, iPhones and of course, the eagerly anticipated iPhone 5.
But my question to you is: What ever happened to Blackberry? Remember the good ol’ days when you could BBM someone? Does anyone even know what BBM stands for now? Apple has monopolized the mobile phone market to such an extensive degree that no one wants an Android or a Blackberry anymore because they’re “outdated” and “uncool.” People say that Androids break after you have them for a month, and that Blackberries are useless unless you are a fancy businessman who checks your email every hour.

However, there are a few black sheep in the pen that still hold onto their beloved Blackberrys – I am one of them. Why are we still stuck in the dark ages, you might ask? Maybe it’s that old habits die hard, maybe it’s that we dislike change, maybe it’s that we’re supportive of the underdog, maybe it’s a whole array of strange reasons like that; and maybe that’s okay.
Perhaps the iPhone users are the ones who are really misled.

I once asked someone why they chose to get an iPhone, and their response was simply: “I didn’t know what else to get.” Why bother to do research and search for the best phone for you personally, when you can easily get your hands on what everybody else has? Some of us don’t like to follow the crowd – and we should not be condemned or ridiculed for doing so.
Most people, who hold some form of random hatred towards Blackberry, are simply ignorant. It is silly to say, “Blackberrys suck,” when you’ve only ever known an iPhone, and yet I’ve witnessed this on more occasions than I can account for. One shouldn’t judge that which they do not know or understand – maybe Blackberrys are secretly the best, quickest, most easy-to-use phones the world has ever seen! But because you refuse to admit or see this, you’ll never get a chance to experience their greatness.

Also, don’t you miss typing with REAL keys on an Android or iPhone? Don’t you miss the little clicking sounds? Or never having to fix a typo? Most people’s fingers are wider than 1/16 of an inch – actual keys prevent spelling mistakes which iPhone users constantly have to correct.

On an entirely different note, I wish I could tell all my fellow Blackberry users that Blackberrys are on the rise again, but alas, I don’t suppose this is true. The way of the world is turning white with a half-eaten apple on its front cover; there isn’t much we can do about this. However, the one thing we can do is to not let the iPhone users of this world get us down – we Blackberry users know our worth (and also that we hold the superior phone); we mustn’t succumb to the pressures of society.

Maybe one day in the future, Blackberrys will make a comeback, but until then, it’s okay that there are only a few of us left. Less is more, after all. I doubt you will find someone as passionate about their iPhone as Blackberry users are about their Blackberrys – we are few, but we are strong. •