RIM
Inter@ctive Pager 950

Built around a vision laid out by RIM (BlackBerry) founder, Mike Lazaridis, the RIM Inter@ctive Pager 950 (Interactive 950) was the company’s second product after the Inter@ctive 900 (aka Bullfrog). It was designed to “maximise adoption and minimize complexity”. The Inter@active 950 had a battery life of one month from a single AA battery and provided straightforward access to messaging and email using a trackwheel that allowed users to scroll through messages and access the menu. In addition to sending and receiving e-mail the 950 could be used as a pager, send peer-to-peer messages as well as sending faxes and text-to-voice messages. It worked on the 900MHz Mobitex networks supported by Bell South in the US and Rogers in Canada. A variant of this device, the Inter@ctive Pager 850, worked with the 800MHz DataTAC / ARDIS network offered by American Mobile Satellite – an arch-rival of Bell South. Its keyboard was revolutionary, built around an experience where the user typed with their two thumbs rather than their fingers. It had a cleverly designed curved keyboard with carefully crafted keys that minimised typing errors. It offered a cut-down keyboard which was designed to remove any keys that were not needed. A good example of this was that punctuation keys were printed on certain letter keys and there was only one shift key. The first prototypes were shown to executives at Bell South at their Atlanta HQ in the Spring of 1997, but famously CEO Mike Lazaridis left the foam mock-ups in the back of the taxi when he was heading to the meeting. They only arrived at the very end to much adulation,n once they had been retrieved from the taxi. These prototypes were critical to RIM securing a $50 million order for the product from Bell South. Just before the launch of the device in August 1998, RIM discovered a bug with the software on the Inter@ctive 950 which drained the battery so quickly that it caused it to leak chemicals in some circumstances. A huge logistics operation was undertaken to upgrade the devices that were destined for Bell South customers. The Inter@active Pager eventually went on sale with Bell South priced at the eye-wateringly competitive price of $249 when purchased with airtime. In addition to Inter@ctive Pager 950 in the Mobile Phone Museum collection we also own an IPAQ-branded variant which was offered through a licensing deal RIM agreed with Compaq, model number R900m.