My Blackberry Curve 9360 3G full-keyboard phone still functions in this year of 2021, insofar that the functions that still function, function sensationally well. The remainder don’t function at all. That is to say, it makes calls and transmits SMSs in the choice of Latin and the Cyrillic keyboards.
The phone sports a convenient MP3 player with the micro-SD card attached. It houses some built-in apps such as the memo-pad, calculator, calendar, etc. Besides capturing sporadic notes, I don’t care for most. The camera, likewise, I don’t care for.
The keyboard is still the best mobile keyboard I’ve ever interfaced. The interactions occur blazingly fast.
There is no functioning internet service, as BB requires the proprietary BIS. As far as I know, most phone companies haven’t provided it in years.
The device doesn’t even receive MMS’s. That requires specific BB ‘service books’, normally enabled along with the BB Internet Service. With the WiFi enabled, I can access some HTTP sites with the built-in web browser. Most HTTPS (SSL) traffic fails per the long expired certificates which I can’t find the means to update, nor care to.
The phone data doesn’t sync with any service, all requiring the proprietary BIS. And the only offline BB software is designed for the Windows OS. Scratch that.
But I don’t care for the Internet or most of these non-working features. Receiving MMS messages would be convenient though. Otherwise, I must continue to advise everyone not to send me pictures or media. All these disappear into the void, without so much as a notice to the sender or the recipient.
I’ve considered ‘downgrading’ even further and acquiring some 12-button, compact-keyboard phone. That sort of compels you to be terse and avoid lengthy prose over SMS.
Plenty of such simple phones exist on the market and the aftermarket. Though there’s usually one problem. They don’t come with the Russian/Cyrillic keyboard, which I’m quiet adamant to abandon, and not about to Latinize my Russian correspondences.
Without acquiring one of these phones in Europe, or ordered from China where they exercise such customizations, I’d have to forsake the keyboard. Regretfully, most such customizable models I find in the Chinese aftermarket on Ebay, face the 2G-network limitation - problematic these days, subject to your provider and whereabouts.
On the other hand, I’ve considered abandoning the Russian keyboard, were the device to receive MMS’s and function over 3G. Most models of the last ten years should fit the profile.
I recently played with a couple of these old button phones discovered in the ‘family vaults’. One 3G model received MMSs, though slightly bulky (with the additional slide-out full keyboard) and half the primary-keyboard keys defunct for some reason. Another compacter model, aesthetically ideal, only functioned over 2G and failed to download MMS’s, though always cognisant of incoming reception.
Thus I still sport the Blackberry Curve, disinclined to purchase anything new merely to remedy the MMS issue, yet most certainly sacrifice the Cyrillic keyboard. If ever or whenever it becomes defunct, then I’ll find some other operational old button phone. They’ll be available for many, many years still, not only still actively manufactured, but with a gigantic after-market (some network limitations notwithstanding).
It entertains me how some family and friends attempt to ‘help me out’ by ‘kindly’ offering some older touchscreen (Android) phone, as if I myself didn’t have one of these toxic contraptions vacantly lying around. Yeah … entertaining indeed.
Questions, comments? Connect.