The Most Iconic BlackBerry Phones Of All Time

Depending on when exactly you were born, the term "BlackBerry" might conjure up images of pagers, or maybe the classic BlackBerry designed for business professionals, with a screen on the top half and a full QWERTY keyboard on the bottom. For a lucky few, BlackBerry models with a full touchscreen might be the ones you're most familiar with. Regardless of which iconic BlackBerry style defined your generation, BlackBerry phones made an impression on the public that'll last for decades.

The company that developed BlackBerry phones used to be known as Research in Motion, more commonly referred to as RIM, and was founded in 1984. Under the RIM name, it created the BlackBerry brand of pagers, smartphones, and tablets. As the BlackBerry name grew in popularity, the company opted to replace its title in 2013, switching from Research in Motion to BlackBerry.

However, just two years later, the company released its last phone fully developed by BlackBerry Limited — the BlackBerry Priv. TCL, a Chinese company, continued developing and releasing smartphones under the BlackBerry name, but gave up the license in 2020, transferring to OnwardMobility next. Then, BlackBerry Limited announced that all BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS device legacy services would stop operating after January 4, 2022, rendering them pretty useless.

Even though many of these iconic BlackBerry devices can't be used today, it's still pretty awesome to look through the history and evolution of BlackBerry phones, from the Quark 6230 in 2003 to the Priv in 2015.

The BlackBerry 7230 was a great option for anyone who wanted a phone as well as integrated support for SMS text messaging, an HTML web browser, and proprietary organizer applications — but only for T-Mobile customers (via T-Mobile). In 2003, email and instant messaging were incredibly popular ways to communicate with family, friends, and co-workers, and the BlackBerry 7230 was capable of doing it all. Some people jokingly call this phone the BlueBerry because of its blue exterior, a stark contrast to the black exterior seen in most previous BlackBerry phones.

It boasted a 33-key QWERTY keyboard — one less key than on the BlackBerry 6230 — and a 2.6-inch display with a 240x160 resolution. The screen could display 65,000 unique colors and help users stay organized with a full-featured calendar, address book, and memo pad. Although you could easily do everything you needed to from the BlackBerry 7230, you could also sync it with your desktop computer for extra efficiency.

Unfortunately, the BlackBerry 7230 wasn't equipped with Bluetooth technology, a speakerphone, or a camera — all of these features would be seen on the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 three years later in 2006. There were other phones at the time with these features, just not BlackBerry's 7230 model. Instead, there was more emphasis on the always-on, push-based access to email accounts, which drew in a specific customer base.

The most notable feature of the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 is in its title: It's a flip phone. This was BlackBerry's first flip phone model, and because of this feature, it's commonly referred to as the Pearl Flip or BlackBerry Flip.

The Pearl Flip's predecessor — simply titled the BlackBerry Pearl and released two years prior in 2006 — was the first BlackBerry model with a camera and a media player. Both the original Pearl and the Pearl Flip also featured a 2-megapixel camera, video recording capabilities, predictive SureType text, Bluetooth 2.0, HTML web browsing, and support for a 16 GB microSD card. There were some new features that debuted on the Pearl Flip, including Wi-Fi access and mobile calling via unlicensed mobile access (UMA) support.

The phone could send SMS and MMS texts, load up a few mobile games, customize ringtones with any song or voice note, help you navigate with GPS, and give you up to four hours of talk time with its 900mAh battery. While the Pearl Flip's specs aren't anything special nowadays, it was a pretty decent phone when it first came out and received positive reviews.

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 was a significant improvement over the Bold 9000 released a year earlier, in 2008. Its form factor was reduced slightly and the overall design changed to appeal to both men and women. Also, an optical trackpad replaced the trackball, which made searching the web and contacting people a lot easier.

The Bold line of phones is considered to be a high-end alternative to the Curve line, with better specs and more premium hardware materials. BlackBerry's Bold 9700 was equipped with Wi-Fi calling for some carriers, voice dialing, and an updated browser that allowed for HTML browsing, viewing movies or videos from mobile-specific websites, and had RSS feed support.

With a 1500 mAh battery capacity, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 had up to six hours of talk time. It also had a 2.44-inch 480x360 display, a 3.2-megapixel camera, 256 MB of RAM, and internal storage via a microSD slot only, with a 2 GB card included. Then, users could finally rejoice in 3G capabilities! The Bold 9700 supported both 2G GSM and 3G HSPA, which meant faster browsing speeds on the internet and higher download rates.

Thankfully, BlackBerry stepped it up with the Torch 9850 and 9860 models, doing away with the classic QWERTY keyboard and instead debuting a full touchscreen smartphone. This move was more in line with what other brands — like Apple, Google, and Samsung — were offering at the time. The Torch 9850 and 9860 phones had a 3.7-inch TFT LCD display with an 800x480 resolution, and this display was the largest BlackBerry offered until the Z10 was released in 2013.

In addition to the larger display, this Torch smartphone had a multi-touch touchscreen equipped with transmissive TFT LCD technology. Then, the 5-megapixel camera had flash, 4x digital zoom, and allowed for video recording in 720p resolution. Although the battery capacity dropped slightly to 1,230 mAh, the difference was negligible in terms of talk time and overall battery life.

The only difference between the Torch 9850 and the Torch 9860 was the networks each model was compatible with. Both models were compatible with GSM and HSPA networks — although the Torch 9860 had more availability with HSPA network speeds — but only the Torch 9850 was compatible with CDMA networks.

This is another BlackBerry release that had two models with different titles, but the only difference is which networks each model is compatible with. The BlackBerry Bold 9930 operated on both GSM and CDMA networks, but the Bold 9900 was only able to function on the GSM network, though in more GSM bands than the Bold 9930 could. Eventually, a 4G LTE version was available with certain carriers.

The BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 and 9930 were the first two smartphones in the line to have a multi-touch touchscreen display. The 2.8-inch TFT LCD display had a 640x480 resolution. These two Bold Touch models were the thinnest BlackBerry phones to date and equipped with near-field communication (NFC) technology, which allows for communication between two electronic devices from a short distance.

Both the 9900 and 9930 phones had an accelerometer, a digital compass, internal GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, a 1230 mAh battery, a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and an Adreno 205 GPU. Then, the 5-megapixel camera was capable of 2x digital zoom, flash, and filming video in 720p resolution at 30 frames per second.

Although the internal specs of the BlackBerry Classic were modern, the external design was reminiscent of older BlackBerry phones. Instead of a full touchscreen display, BlackBerry's Classic phone was equipped with a physical keyboard, optical trackpad, and a touchscreen display, letting users choose their preferred navigation method. The 3.5-inch display was perfectly square and had a 720x720 resolution.

The Classic's design felt retro — especially if you used to own a phone with a similar design, like the BlackBerry Curve — but the specs and suite of apps inside left almost nothing to be desired for users in 2014. The dual-core Qualcomm 8960 processor clocked speeds at 1.5 GHz, and the larger battery provided a healthy amount of talk time, between 11 and 17 hours depending on whether you used 2G or 3G networks.

There was 16 GB of internal storage that could be expanded up to 128 GB with a microSD card, 2 GB of RAM, and a similar camera setup to the BlackBerry Z10. On the front, there was a 2-megapixel camera with auto-focus capability, and on the back, an 8-megapixel camera with all the same features as the Z10.