Before Apple dominated the mobile phone market, there was another fruit-named company that ruled the industry: Blackberry. Everyone wanted one, and many would agree it laid the foundation for what smartphones would eventually become.

You see, a Blackberry offered users the ultimate freedom: They could access their email on the go. But, a decade later, the company’s stock was plummeting, and Apple and Android were taking over the market.

Today the Blackberry is a relic of the past. But, many users still have happy memories of their devices. After quite a bit of use, here are seven things only BlackBerry users will remember.

1. That Sublime Keyboard

In a world full of touch-screen devices, many still miss the tactile feedback from physical keys when typing. I, for one, definitely do. Blackberry has completely nailed the physical QWERTY keyboard on mobile devices.

Sure, at the time, Nokia and most other companies were using the standard T9 keyboard layout on their devices, but the BlackBerry really changed the game. From writing long emails to writing virtually entire articles, BlackBerry’s physical keyboard was truly ahead of its time.

There were a few phones that were released with physical keyboards, but none that could match the excellence of BlackBerry’s QWERTY keyboard. That’s the iconic keyboard that allows people to reply to emails as if they were replying to text messages.

2. Undisputed superiority of BBM

Before there was iMessage or Facebook Messenger, or even WhatsApp, there was BBM, or BlackBerry Messenger. All the cool kids in school used BBM, eschewing text messaging in favor of a more powerful, more interactive alternative.

At the time, we didn’t know much about encryption, although it made it a popular choice for the business market. All you needed was your BBM PIN, an eight-digit number that allowed you to easily chat with others.

BBM ended consumer support in 2019, but it’s hard not to recall fond memories of chatting with friends for hours using the service.

3. Unique Security

Blackberries were some of the most secure devices on the market. In fact, US presidents would continue to use BlackBerrys until 2015, when the brand faltered.

And no, it’s not because once upon a time non-Blackberry users didn’t know how to unlock Blackberry devices. This was a time when the cyber security industry was taking root, and BlackBerry was well ahead of its peers.

All email sent to and from the BlackBerry was routed through the BlackBerry Enterprise Service, which offered end-to-end encryption. He is not everything. RIM, the company behind the Blackberry, used tight integration between hardware and software encryption mechanisms, providing top-notch data security.

4. Sending and Responding to Emails Like a Pro

The Blackberry phone played an important role in fueling the rise of email after the turn of the millennium. Unified Inbox brings all your communications in one place, so you can reply to email, text messages or BBM messages from one centralized hub.

The physical keyboard made typing email fun on the Blackberry. And, with the BlackBerry’s great infrastructure, sending and receiving email was incredibly easy. A case is made here that BlackBerry allowed employers to send email to employees even after work, something that eventually became an issue.

It is easy to say that Blackberry changed the perception of most people about mobile phones. These were no longer devices that only offered calling or messaging services, but one that you could use to compose detailed emails.

5. Annoying Ping

If you owned a BlackBerry during its heyday, you know what I’m talking about. The predecessor to things like Facebook’s “Poke” was Blackberry’s Ping. As soon as you send a message, it starts buzzing on the recipient’s phone.

The concept was simple: If your friend wasn’t replying to you, just send them a ping. This will get their phone buzzing, get their attention, and hopefully prompt a response. However, most of us haven’t actually used it the way it was intended. Instead of sending one and waiting for a response, we would spam and send several at once, often receiving angry responses.

While I definitely miss Ping, I’m also glad to see the back of it. While it was fun to spam others, it got pretty annoying when your phone started ringing incessantly.