Blackburried

On the dismal morning of Monday 11^th October 2011, the modern day apocalypse struck. Millions of devoted and loving Blackberry users were left flabbergasted after realising that their ‘smartphone’ was no more useful than a Nokia 3310 without Snake II. It hit the Blackberry students of Southampton (not Solent) harder than the day the Quadvod was banned from SoBar.

The network outage caused all exciting aspects of a Blackberry such as BBM, Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter and internet use to disappear quicker than a bicycle left on Portswood High Street. And no one was smugger than the Apple iPhone user, who littered Facebook with taunts about the proficiency of their often smashed-up phone.

Users flocked in their droves to the internet to complain at the challenges of texting and the effect on their social standing of being unaware of the awful tagged photos that had sat innocently on their facebooks for the entertainment of all. There is no doubt it was a dark three days for the Blackberry user.  However, the upset developed to anger and then to the gradual realisation of what we had suspected for a while; Blackberry’s are in fact as useful as a 9am lecture after a night at Jesters.

So, has this damaged the reputation of Blackberry for good? Are the days of BBM going to fly out the window quicker than you can say ‘iMessage’? Will they truly be able to silence the critics by handing out free Sims 3 apps to all users? It seems not.  An anonymous Management student noted that RIM’s handling of the incident was contrary to anything they had ever been taught.

However, on a more positive note, the withering of the Blackberry service saw road traffic accidents drop by 40% in Abu Dhabi and 20% in Dubai. Steve Jobs must be smiling in heaven.

It has been announced that Blackberry is to offer £63 worth of free ‘premium’ apps to users in a bid to win back their support; the offer begins today and will supposedly last until the 31st December. Among the available apps will be such beauties as Bejeweled, Sims 3, Texas Hold’em Poker 2 and ironically Drive.Safe.ly Pro. What remains to be seen, however, is how a phone so synonymous with having an abysmal battery will manage to survive this further test. No doubt for those business users who were genuinely affected by the crisis this will further push the Blackberry to the grave. However for us students, it is an excellent tool for procrastination, and will surely be greeted by cheers of relief.