Mobile Info Planet

I don't get BlackBerry.
OK, I do.
Well sort of.

The killer feature of BlackBerry is obviously push email. That goes without saying. And as such it is of great utility for professional use (where "professional" = "for use in a work environment"). So for people whose lives revolve around real-time email, BlackBerry is an "option" (as opposed to "solution").

So far so good.

...

However, if you remove that killer feature, or simply do not use push email and just look at the OS itself, is there any reason left to use the platform? In other words, is there any other reason, beyond push email, to buy a BlackBerry and use it simply as a consumer device?
If there is I certainly have not found it.

When the first BlackBerrys came out it seemed as if the OS was an afterthought, secondary to and merely a means for offering what the BlackBerry is really all about: push email. The OS was basic, the UI crude and the PIM functionality was very basic. But more to the point, its origins and the platform's raison d'être still shows through after all these years, no matter how many touch-screen devices RIM come up with or even if they add improved multimedia features. There is nothing in the OS that makes for a compelling enough reason for a regular consumer to chose a BlackBerry over any of the other platforms available currently; would anyone seriously argue that the BlackBerry OS could survive if it did not have push email?

I say this even though the front-facing QWERTY form factor, BlackBerry's specialty, is probably my favorite, and BlackBerry use high-resolution screens for their QWERTY devices. Take the new Bold 9700 for example, which has a really nice form factor, but, again, why you anyone pick it over the new Nokia E72 if you are not interested in real-time email?

At the end of the day BlackBerry is a one trick pony: push email. Everything else is secondary. And that fact alone makes it, in my book, probably the least interesting platform of them all.