It’s surprising just how little time has passed since the Blackberry was the go-to device for the businessperson who needed to stay connected and communicate on the run, whether it’s sitting in a cab or a waiting room. Intelligent keyboards like the brilliant SwiftKey for Android further bolster the argument that the hardware keyboard is best left to history when it comes to smartphone devices.īut there are plenty of people who don’t agree, and none could be more vocal than the online community of Blackberry faithfuls.

It’s easy to see why, considering the ratio of consumption over creation they are typically used for. Since those days a glass slab has been my device of choice, be it iPhone or more recently Android. It helped that the E71 was super slim, solid and had amazing battery life, but the tactile keyboard held me back from switching for quite some time.

Viber is currently seeing 15,000 activations on BlackBerry per day.The candy bar QWERTY has been one of my favourite form factors since I first laid my hands on the Nokia E71. The company says BlackBerry users make up the third-largest chunk of its user base, after iOS and Android phone owners. Meanwhile, Viber boasts more than 175 million users worldwide. The Israeli startup also just launched a new application for Windows Phone 8 that supports free voice calls. It’s also worth noting that BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) was recently updated for devices running BlackBerry OS5, adding support for free voice calls over a WiFi connection, among other features.īut Viber says it differentiates from BBM because it lets users communicate for free, whether via voice calls or text messages, with users of all other Viber-supported platforms including iOS and Android.

Viber says this is “due to inherent limitations” of the OS, which powers devices like the BlackBerry Bold 9650/9700/9780, BlackBerry Curve 9300/9330, BlackBerry Pearl 9100 and BlackBerry Torch 9800.Īlso not supported: BlackBerry 10, although I hear this may be the case when the final app gets rolled out in the near future.Įither way, Viber has earlier stated that adding support for voice calls to its BlackBerry app “represented a significant technical challenge”.

Viber for blackberry z10 bar