
In early 2007, I had what felt like the greatest phone of all time. It was an iPod, a mobile phone and an internet communication device. But it wasn't an iPhone, because that hadn't been unveiled yet. It was a BlackBerry Pearl.
Before the iPhone, the BlackBerry was the undisputed king of smartphones. Used by politicians, journalists and anyone else who wanted to be contactable by email at all times, it was as much a status symbol as it was a tool. And then the iPhone came along and pummeled it into dust – partly because the people who made BlackBerrys simply didn't believe that the iPhone was real.