The BlackBerry smartphone has its roots in a two-way messaging device called the "Interactive Pager" released in 1995 by Research In Motion, a small hardware designer based in Waterloo, Ontario. Unlike today's BlackBerry devices, the Interactive Pager did not work on normal cellular data networks, instead using a special-purpose wireless data network known as Mobitex. The device even looked like a pager, except that it included a small keyboard for user input.
The trademark "BlackBerry" first appeared in 1999 as the name for RIM's end-to-end wireless email solution for corporate customers. The term "Interactive Pager" was dropped and the pager was rebranded the "RIM 950". The form factor remained the same, though, about 3.5 inches wide by 2.5 inches tall, and it still worked only on the Mobitex network.
The first handheld device that looked somewhat like today's BlackBerry smartphones was known as the RIM 957, introduced in 2000. RIM moved away from Mobitex to using conventional GPRS networks for wireless data access in 2001. Voice service -- so you could use a BlackBerry wireless handheld for phone calls as well as email -- was introduced a year later.
The BlackBerry smartphones available today are a far more sophisticated than the earlier models from a hardware viewpoint. The trackwheel on the first devices was eventually replaced with a trackball, which is now being replaced with a trackpad or a touch-sensitive screen, depending on the model. Cameras are now included with every device, and many models offer consumer-friendly features like WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth.
The underlying software platform hasn't actually changed all that much. The earliest devices ran a custom operating system written in C++, but RIM moved to the Java programming language in 2000 when it released the 957. From that point on, applications could be written by third parties using RIM's version of the Java Micro Edition (Java ME) platform instead of a custom C++ software development kit.
The move to Java solved two problems for RIM: it let them make changes to the base hardware (such as switching from an Intel 386 architecture to an ARM-based CPU) without disrupting software development, and it also allowed them to easily certify and sandbox third-party applications to keep them from disrupting other parts of the platform. Moving away from C++ also made BlackBerry software development more approachable. RIM uses Java internally for most of its on-device software development: all the standard BlackBerry applications are themselves written in Java.
Through all of these changes, however, the BlackBerry handheld has always kept its focus on being the best wireless email device on the market, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon. The fact that you can run great software applications on a BlackBerry is just icing on the cake!
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