Remember being in college and sharing your BB Pin with your friends so you could chat with them on BlackBerry Messenger (BBM)? For the luxury of instant messaging and the clickity-clack QWERTY keypad, the high-end phone – aimed mainly at business executives once – became a rage among teenage users around the world by the late 2000s. Mumbai was no exception.

The BlackBerry phone was launched and released as a business phone for the purpose of sending emails, as well as instant messaging through BBM with the help of the QWERTY keypad. Former US President Barack Obama and Kim Kardashian are known to be some of the biggest loyalists of the device. Earlier this week, Blackberry Ltd., formerly known as Research in Motion, based in Ontario, Canada, said it would stop support for the devices running with its software, from January 4. In a statement, the company said “the devices will no longer reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS and 9-1-1 functionality”.