Blackberry Phones

The Blackberry is a mobile smart phone made by Research In Motion (RIM).  It was introduced to market in 1999 as a two-way pager and not as a phone.  In fact, the currently known smart phone was not introduced to the market until 2002 where it came to the success it enjoys today because of it's integration with organization's mail servers and allowed users to check and send their mail from their phone.

Today's BlackBerry phones can synchronize contacts, addresses, and more between multiple servers using the proprietary .ipd file format); It can send and receive e-mail, text messages, and phone calls; it can browse the web, send faxes, and access most major wireless services such as printing.

While the original BlackBerry had a monochrome screen, which was all that was necessary for a two-way pager, all models of the BlackBerry now include a color screen, the smallest of which is 240x320, or roughly the resolution of a standard definition television. All BlackBerries now support MP3, Polyphonic, and MIDI ringtones and can be used on almost all major networks (CDMA, iDEN, and GSM). A BlackBerry also has several forms of connectivity to networks and other wireless devices including USB, Bluetooth, and Wifi. Though it does have a GPS, the Blackberry uses Trilateration in order to determine its location, which it displays on a map; trilateration is less accurate than GPS.

The standard BlackBerry has between 64Mb and 1Gb of memory, depending on it's model, and the memory can be expanded through the use of MicroSD cards. It contains a proprietary OS which is made necessary by the proprietary input devices. It has a developer's API so that third-party applications can be created on it. The ease of use and the ease of connectivity has caused the device to be termed “Crackberry”.

Features on a BlackBerry currently include: Java; Flash; OpenGL ES; TiVo integration; web-browsing; text messaging; BlackBerry messaging, which is a form of text messaging that allows you to use the phone's PIN to send a message; internet faxing; e-mail; and the ability to make and receive phone calls.