BlackBerry 850

The very first device to carry the BlackBerry name was the BlackBerry 850, an email pager, released January 19, 1999. Although identical in appearance to the RIM 950, the 850 was the first device to integrate email and the name Inter@ctive Pager was no longer used to brand the device. It was introduced in 1999 as a two-way pager in Munich, Germany. The name BlackBerry was coined by the marketing company Lexicon Branding. The name was chosen due to the resemblance of the keyboard's buttons to that of the drupelets that compose the blackberry fruit. This was BlackBerry's first handheld device and it sat within the two-way pager category, along with a few others including the 857, 900, 950, 957 and 962. It has a screen resolution of 132 x 65 pixels, a thumb keyboard and a thumbwheel for scrolling. The device itself (850 or 950, depending on network and locality, a recurrent theme for RIM) had a six- or eight-line display and was capable of sending messages, emails and had calendars, address books, task lists, a calculator and an alarm function. It was one of the first wireless devices capable of connecting people to their corporate email and contacts. It had 4MB of memory, was powered by one AA battery and weighed 133g, which is exactly the same as an iPhone 3G. It also had a QWERTY keyboard, of course.