BlackBerry
7230

The 7230 was the first BlackBerry device with a colour screen and was a pivotal product in starting to make the company’s products more attractive to consumers. That said, this was first and foremost a product for business users. It had a 2.6-inch, 65,000 colour display that featured an electroluminescent backlight which was dimmer than LED backlights used on rival PDAs and some smartphones. This gave the impression the device had an inferior display. However, this technology was selected to maximise battery life, which was claimed to deliver up to four hours of talk time and ten days of standby time. It also improved the readability of the screen and placed less of a strain on a user’s eyes. Like previous BlackBerry devices, the 7230 was based on Java but supported Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) applications for the first time. This opened the 7230 up to a wider base of developers and allowed BlackBerry to offer a broader range of apps than had been available in the past. It also meant that users could now open documents, PDFs and Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint files. Other capabilities included an integrated microphone and speaker – something which seems obvious today, but given the earlier BlackBerry 5810 had required a headset to make calls it was considered noteworthy that this capability had been integrated into the device. When it was launched, the 7230 was showcased with a blue plastic case in the marketing material, rather than black plastic which had been the default for BlackBerry devices up until that point. As a result, it quickly got the nickname of “BlueBerry” amongst some users.