Remember when the red notification light on your Blackberry blinked, and your heart skipped a beat? Yes, folks, those were the times! But just as all good things come to an end, so did the fad of owning a Blackberry handset. Though the application can be downloaded across all platform on phones now, people have moved on to the more popular Viber, Whatsapp and WeChat . However, once in a while it’s nice to take a walk down the memory lane. Since most of us at one point of time owned a BB, here are a few things only BBM users can relate to!
1. The Khatarnak Red Notification Light
Sure, all our new phones signal out notification lights, but nothing beats the red notification light BB had. It was nerve-wracking and pushed you into alert mode once you saw it. The first thought that popped into your head ranged from: “Could it be my crush?” to “Has someone finally checked out my new DP?” to “Damn it, I’m going to kill someone if it’s one of those random broadcast messages!”
2. The QWERTY Keypad
BB’s keypad not just looked good, it felt good too! The crackling sound of the buttons just made typing such an exciting experience. You could type for hours without getting bored. For some it was addictive. Even though we now use our touch screen phones to type, the experience is not close to what BB’s QWERTY keypad gave us.
3. PING!!!
Getting someone’s attention was never really a problem on BBM. All you had to do was ping them till they read the message. For some people, this was sadistic pleasure at its best!
4. The Famous “R” Symbol (Message Read)
Before WhatsApp had the blue tick, or iPhone users had its own notifiers, BBM had the Message Read notification. With the tiny “R” symbol next to the text, you would know whether the person read your text or not. For years, the sheer agony of “Is he ignoring me?” could only be understood by BBM users – though now we have company in the form of Facebook Messenger and the WhatsApp Blue Tick!
5. Constant Updates
You didn’t need to meet or talk to a person to know what’s been up with their lives, all you had to do was check your BBM update feed. Voila, you got your dose of juicy deets! Through their updates you got to know which songs were they listening to, their new display picture, the current mood that they’re in, random emotional quotes, their relationship problems, corny jokes and of course, the “Boyfriend’s name” with a heart/ring symbol next to it (i.e., hooked, cooked and booked).
6. The GIF DP
Till today, no other chatting app supports making GIFs as your display picture, but BBM did. These were random yet funny and cute at the same time. It was features like these that made BBM worth remembering.
7. Emoticons!
These were fun, super-cool and creative. You saw and used them in all your conversations. Although using too many of these in your sentence can piss you off, it did make you more of an expressive person at the end of the day. Trust us, there’s a perk to every con!
8. Screen Muncher
How on earth were you supposed to take a screenshot of a chat when the feature was not built on your handset? Nowadays, all smart phones come with a screenshot feature. Back in those days, you needed an app to do the needful. You simply downloaded the screenshot app from your BB app store and use the muncher. While taking a screenshot, it did not only make a sound, but vibrated too! (Remember the cute lil pink hippo muncher?)
9. Sending Pictures & Music Files Across
Only if you and your friends owned a BB could you’ll exchange music and pictures with each other. Back in those days, this was an uber cool feature and was not Bluetooth dependent.
10. Customizing Your BBM Name
With tons of cute emoticons at your disposal and many text styles to choose from, you had to make your display name look legendary. It was your trademark and something that defined you!
11. Barcodes Were the Shizz
If you ever wanted to feel like a secret agent, the barcode feature would be the one you’d love the most. All you had to do was scan your barcode against your friend’s phone and, snap, BBM invite sent!
12. BBM Groups
We’re sure everyone was a part of one group or another on BBM. Groups for friends, couples, family, schools, college – yep, we’ve all been part of that!
13. The BBM Pin Show-Off
We’re sure you bragged about your BBM by posting your pin on Facebook. It made you look cool in front of the other kids who didn’t have one. Who can blame them, kids still do the same – but with iPhones!
14. Contacts, Contacts Everywhere!
The more contacts you had on your BBM list, the cooler you were! You took pride in flashing the number of contacts you had on your list. It made you feel like a complete socialite.
GIFs: authorstream.com, dberryuser.wordpress.com, s143.photobucket.com, giphy.com
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