The end of BBM and some general thoughts.
It's over!
After the customer shut down of BBM in May 2019 it more than ever feels like BlackBerry has reached it's definite end.
Sure there were countless setbacks from the times of the company's golden age until now but for me nothing ever felt as definitely as the shut down of BlackBerry Messenger last year.
As this might come as a surprise to some let me explain to you why I feel like that.
A little more than a decade ago a BlackBerry was by far the coolest Mobile device on the market and owning one was simply special.
Having one enabled you to do things with your phone that no other phone was capable of.
The BlackBerry had features other phones simply didn't have back than.
Features like an email client, a highly functional web browser and of course the infamous BlackBerry Messenger.
There was no WhatsApp, LINE, Viber, WeChat or any other messenger for a mobile device at this time.
There was MSN and ICQ for the usage on a desktop computer or notebook but for your phone there was nothing else but SMS.
If you had friends or family outside your residence country and you didn't want to spend a load of money anytime you were sending them a short message from a mobile device, owning a BlackBerry and using BBM was inevitable.
This made BlackBerry unbelievable popular with expats and international business people.
When my international friends convinced me to get my first device and I started using BBM it made me feel like becoming part of a technical advanced international community of people ahead of their time.
Nowadays the Sony-Ericssons and other feature phones that people outside the "BlackBerry world" used back than are gone.
Owning a smartphone is nothing special anymore at all.
A browser, email client and free messenger services are absolutely standard.
BlackBerry is not on top of the smartphone market anymore and doesn't even have an own operating system.
BlackBerry is nothing more than one out of many brands on the market of Android bases smartphones.
Sure they still have features like the physical keyboard other brands don't have (and I wouldn't want to miss) but there is definitely no feeling of exclusiveness and standing out of the crowd by using a BlackBerry phone like there was before at all.
There was one absolutely final last thing though that reminded me of the good old days and made BlackBerry feel like BlackBerry - it was using the BlackBerry Messenger.
Even though you were using it on an Android device. Even though was not exclusive for BlackBerry anymore but available for any smartphone on the market and even though numberless other messenger services exist.
BMM was BBM.
It was that very same messenger service that you used to talk to you friends and partners in UAE, Singapore and anywhere else in the world at the time when BlackBerry was the coolest thing in the world.
Also, the fact it still existed enabled you to communicate with any old Curve, Bold, Torch, any other device that didn't support WhatsApp anymore.
If I felt like using my old Bold for a couple of days I was able to do so because I was able to chat with anyone I convinced to download BBM (since it became available for Android and even IOS).
The Internet functions were outdated but if you didn´t need much it did it`s job as a daily driver.
As BBM shut down support, these old devices suddenly turned into dumbphones that are left with not much more than basic phone functions.
Even the BBOS10 devices became unsuitable as daily drivers as they leak a functional messaging service. (I know about what's fixer on BBOS10 but I'm simply not 100% satisfied enough with how it works so that I would use it on a daily basis).
I loved the Q10 and Passport but I can´t use a phone without messaging service.
So looking back in History now, I feel that moment apple released the IPhone and other smartphone was a setback.
When companies like Samsung slowly became capable of doing the same things a BlackBerry could do, it was a setback.
When BlackBerry started making horrible touch screen devices like the Storm, it was a setback.
When almost every former BlackBerry user switched to another brand and you became basically the last one using one (except Mr. Obama), it was a setback.
When BlackBerry OS was replaced by android it was a setback (but also had it's benefits).
But the end of BBM is a catastrophe!
In my eyes and feels much more like the actually end of BlackBerry than any bad thing that happened in the past.
It suddenly made any pre-android BlackBerry device almost worthless and it took the last thing away that made BlackBerry feel like BlackBerry.
For me there is nothing now that gives me back that feeling of owning a BlackBerry in the zeros. Owning the KEY2 now just feels (and looks) like owning any other Android phone.
The fact there is no BBOS anymore, the fact there is no Device in a classical BlackBerry design that is suitable to be used as a daily driver and the fact that now BBM doesn`t even exist anymore makes me even feel like BlackBerry doesn´t exist anymore.
Does anyone here agree with me or do you think it was already over long before the end of BBM? Or do you even think it´s still not over?
Does BlackBerry still feel anything like BlackBerry in the zeros to you by now? And what messengers are you guys using now?
Thanks for your answers.
With best regards.
R1R
The end of BBM and some general thoughts.
I understand all the frustration about BBM not being done in house like the old days, but I am still active in 5 BBMe groups and use it on a daily basis and as long as there are folks like myself out there still willing to keep it alive, it will still exist.