It is sad to hear that my favourite smartphone makers are slowly folding up even though my phone gave me mini heart attacks over the years.
The first time I saw a Blackberry was when a passenger on the next seat started fiddling with it on a bus heading to Islington metro station in Toronto.
Not many people carried smartphones around with them at that time and I had come into the country from a place where instant communication was well, not that fast, or not that necessary. The woman in the next seat was typing on a tiny keyboard on the phone with her thumbs that I found very funny.
I finally got to see Blackberry’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, and I wondered whether, as a former journalist, I should visit the place and speak with someone, but I never got to do that.
I was already feeling proud that Canada was the country that produced many useful things over the years, like pant zippers and Poutine, which is basically French fries slathered in gravy and cheese curds. (Seriously, check out the host of Canadian inventions such as insulin, radio, pacemaker and chocolate nut bar).
When I first arrived in Dubai, I did not buy a Blackberry but a Nokia, which was a rage at that time. It was a nice, hefty phone and I could use it to tap someone on the head if they got too obnoxious.
Blackberry was for the busy business type, wearing a snazzy suit and sitting at the next table at the mall food court and who had his eyes glued to the sleek, black phone with its push email, the mail that was available on the phone as soon as it arrived on the server.
I think I still have that Nokia in a drawer somewhere at home, because you just couldn’t destroy that phone despite dropping it all over the place. I remember walking into a meeting just as it was about to start and dropping the phone, and even on the soft carpet it made a loud thud, making all the heads turn. Blackberry soon became the new evil. The phone was apparently causing the huge number of traffic accidents on the roads as people became addicted to texting and just could not stop sending messages even when speeding on the highway.
Once when there was a service outage, a tech magazine reported about a police officer sighing with relief and saying: “The roads became safer when Blackberry stopped working.”
The phone was also blamed for all the rumours that floated around from time to time. One of the rumours that was apparently started by a rival business, was that of a salon that had a hairdresser suffering from TB and spreading the disease as she cut and blow-dried her customers’ hair.
I finally bought a Blackberry and I remember the time my heart nearly stopped beating because I had promptly lost it. That stupid phone was not a phone anymore, but had become a hard drive with everything important in my life embedded in it.
“Call the phone,” said my wife and I dialed with my heart thumping, and we went from room to room (two rooms actually) hoping to hear its ringtone.
“I think I can hear it in the car,” said my wife and we all popped our heads out of the window to hear and since we live on the ground floor, we startled our neighbour who wondered why everyone was staring at him as he was going for his nightly walk.
I am happy to say that I still have that phone, but the letter R on the keyboard does not work anymore and I keep sending strange messages to my friends and contacts and apologising.
