BlackBerry's first Android smartphone, the Priv arrives

Review of reviews

Two years ago, Canadian smartphone maker previously known as Research in Motion (now called BlackBerry) was on the chopping block (alongside Nokia) as the company was on it's last move with the release of Bla ckBerry 10 OS which was a brand new take of the age old BlackBerry OS which was more than a decade old. When former CEO Thorsten Heins took the stage to unveil this brand new touch optimized version of BlackBerry in early 2013, netizens took the time to condemn that BlackBerry will be a forgotten brand within the next year or so.

BlackBerry 10, what does it mean? My thoughts on the new platform — I was also impressed with BBM which can now do video call to other BBM users and also for the first time natively on a mobile device you could share your screen. This feature may not be a big impact for us consumers but for enterprise users it sure will help. Continue reading.

While none of BlackBerry's new line of smartphones running BB10 managed to get any widespread love from critics and users, the company's most recent offering, the Passport managed to gain some traction by being a unique device that actually does what the company is boasting it to do. The response for the device was excellent with many reviewers praising BlackBerry on the form factor which was pretty optimal for doing work related tasks like reading emails and viewing powerpoint slides on the go.

But despite all the praise about the powerful hardware paired with the unique form factor and the excellent keyboard, the device was still held back by BlackBerry 10. I still remember towards the end of 2012, there were lots of rumors flying around that BlackBerry was planning to build an Android phone and there was even reports saying that BlackBerry planned to dive into Windows Phone for the line of smartphones. All of that clearly never happened and both BlackBerry and Nokia (now Microsoft Mobile) are still making smartphones.