About a decade ago, in the quest for a convergence device that could do email, browse the internet, manage task lists, etc., I decided to check out the smartphone offerings from Verizon in Oregon. Besides the fact that most phones offered by Verizon back then were unappealing in general, the only device I could find was a Kyocera smartphone that felt like a brick, cost more than $500 and was as attractive as a pack mule (no disrespect intended towards pack mule lovers).
Research In Motion (RIMM) took the lions share of the smartphone market with its Blackberry line of smartphones by getting email right and building durable phones that did not crash. However even though I was a power Blackberry user, as soon as the iPhone released, I knew this was the convergence device I had been waiting for. While the Blackberries models circa 2007 like the 8700 and the Curve could do email well, the selection of apps was limited, the process of getting an external app cumbersome and the Blackberry browser felt like something from the stone age after trying out Safari on the iPhone. Research In Motion has been playing catch up since the release of the iPhone.