Blackberry: The End

In less than 15 years, the gargantuan Blackberry went from "must-have" to "see ya later". If it wasn't the iPhone who did it, Android certainly would've been the one to hammer the first nail in the coffin. For anyone who truly was hanging onto their "crackberry" devices, January 4th signals the shut down of everything that made Blackberry worthwhile.

On January 4th, Blackberry will be shutting off all the key services — data, SMS, phone calls, and 911 support. In official terms, they are ending network provisioning for these older devices, meaning that they won’t be able to join any cellular or WiFi networks.

Kristina Panos at Hackaday

Before iMessage, Signal, or Telegram, there was BBM: Blackberry Messenger. When armed with the device's awesome keyboard, this proprietary messaging service was lightyears ahead of anything out there. Normal people were still trying to text on keypads, and while T9 was an improvement, it was no match for a keyboard. This is one reason I loved using the T-Mobile Sidekick back in the day. It had a great keyboard, but its main use for it was AIM.

While I can't imagine there are many people still using a Blackberry, it's a notable day. Technology continues to march on.