RIM
Inter@ctive Pager 850

Built around a vision laid out by RIM (BlackBerry) founder, Mike Lazaridis, the RIM Inter@ctive Pager 850 was the company’s second product design after the Inter@ctive 900 (aka Bullfrog). It was designed to “maximise adoption and minimize complexity”. The RIM Inter@ctive Pager 850 was released after the RIM Inter@ctive Pager 950 and had an 800MHz modem rather than a 900MHz modem. This allowed it to connect to American Mobile's ARDIS network / DataTAC network in the US and use the eLink wireless email service. The Inter@active Pager 850 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 850 could be used as a pager, send peer-to-peer messages as well as sending faxes and text-to-voice messages.  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 of the device design 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, 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. In addition to Inter@ctive Pager 850 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.