Hi, my name is Josh and I have a Blackberry addiction. Since 2005, I have had five different blackberries. In fact, during the Summer of 2008 I carried a personal blackberry and a blackberry for the Firm I summered at. They were actually the same model. It got rather confusing, so I kept my personal blackberry in my right pocket, and my work blackberry in my left pocket. Anyway. After 5 years of loyalty, I am finally leaving RIM.

This was not an easy decision to arrive at. I love the keyboard on my blackberry. I have the keyboard memorized, and can type quickly (probably north of 40 WPM) without even looking at the keys. I have the menus memorized, and can navigate seamlessly. Blackberry Messenger is far superior to using SMS or Google Talk for chatting. It’s small, svelte size fits easily into any pocket. It’s lengthy battery life (especially with the extended battery) allows me to go an entire day without charging or swapping batteries (even though I always carry a spare). Perhaps most importantly, retaining a blackberry allows me to ward off iPhone and Droid hipsters everywhere. No longer.

The Blackberry OS is quite outdated. It is so limited in what it can do, it’s quite frustrating. It’s also painfully slow. It takes me so long to pull up directions, or download an app, or even render a complicated web page. It crashes all the time. I can’t tell you how often I have to yank out the battery to reboot. Plus, the future, even with OS6, looks bleak. I can see the writing on the wall. The only thing holding me back was my requirement of a physical keyboard.

The Android gods answered my prayers. There is finally an android phone that will allow me to break free. The Droid Pro. It has a full keyboard that is almost identical to the blackberry keyboard. Plus it runs FroYo.

A moment of silence for Blackberry, or I suppose you could call it a Requiem for RIM.

I’ll let you know how it goes.