Here's a topic idea that just popped into my head.
I was thinking back, thinking about how many BlackBerries (and other handhelds) I've had. And it occurred to me that this is something we don't often talk about here.
How many of us are on our first? Second? Third or fourth?
So, I thought it might be fun to run down our individual device histories, as it were.
My first CrackBerry was one of the most unusual. It was the AOL Mobile Communicator, a first or second generation BlackBerry that was reprogrammed by AOL to let me use my AOL Email and Instant Messenger on the go. Most of the other BlackBerry functions were removed when AOL installed their special OS. The hardware was actually a RIM 950, and it looked about like one of these:
...except the housing was a dark, translucent blue and it had AOL logos on it. I owned it from early 2002, until August of 2003, when AOL decided to discontinue the Mobile Communicator service. But they offered me a special discount on the device that ended up replacing it for me:
A T-Mobile Color Sidekick!
Say what you will about the SK, at the time, it did more things than the BBs did out of the box (remember the days when you had to BUY REQWireless WebViewer to have a BB web browser if you were on the BlackBerry Web Client?), and for a lot less per month. At the time, my cell phone carrier (the old AT&T Wireless) was charging an arm & a leg for BB service! They didn't even have one low price for unlimited usage in those days! You paid however much a month for some low amount of MBs of service, then you paid several cents a KB for anything over that. But the SK as a data only device (which is how I used the AOLMC, since the original BBs weren't phones) was only $30 a month for unlimited usage, with a web browser, so I went with it. And I used it for a year and a half, until...
February of 2005. My CSK was old and worn, and the SKII had been out for a bit. I was very close to upgrading to one, and upgrading my cell phone (by then a Nextel i90c) to an i830. But then I decided I wanted a Bluetooth phone, and Nextel's ONLY BT phone at the time was, you guessed it... the BlackBerry 7520.
Well, I did some homework, found out that I should be able to do everything I did on the SK with the BB 7520, hopefully more reliably. It would give me a Bluetooth phone, and I'd only have to carry one device instead of 2. I made the switch, and never looked back. I had a few significant complaints about the SK, most notably its weak battery life and the lack of reliability from the data servers. No such problems with the 7520. The rock solid reliability of the BB shined through, and showed me that it definitely WAS the superior device for my needs. It served me faithfully for nearly 2 years.
Nextel, on the other hand, didn't. Sprint merged with them, and the rock solid Nextel network went downhill, and Sprint stopped releasing new Nextel BlackBerries.
So, in December '06, I jumped ship for T-Mobile and my 8700g, which is serving me quite well.
Besides using a Sidekick for awhile, I've played with Windows Mobile phones in stores that have live display models. And I've played with a Treo once or twice, as well. Having tried the rest, I'm convinced that the BlackBerry is the best, and keeps getting better all the time, and that shows no sign of changing!
So, I'm on "CrackBerry" # 3, and counting. How about the rest of you?