Latest news with #BlackBerrys
The Star
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Who wants a BlackBerry? Apparently, Gen Z
When Victoria Zannino was in middle school, back in 2013, her father gave her a precious hand-me-down in the form of a used BlackBerry. Back then, the device was a marvel. Unlike most phones on the market, it had a physical keyboard, albeit tiny, and a private messaging service called BlackBerry Messenger that she and her friends could use to text. 'I just feel like the time of the BlackBerry phone was very nostalgic,' Zannino, now 25 and working in advertising, said in an interview. 'Growing up watching 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians,' seeing them driving with one hand on the wheel and a BlackBerry in the other hand was just such a slay of a moment.' Zannino's yearning for the piece of older technology led her to post a TikTok calling for its return. 'PLEASE blackberry,' she wrote over a selfie, 'I beg you to make your move and make a come back.' The video has been viewed more than 6 million times and received more than 500,000 likes, backing up the idea that Zannino isn't alone in her nostalgia for older phones. All over TikTok, young people are romanticising the era of the BlackBerry, despite the fact that many of them weren't old enough back then to have a phone. It is part of a larger trend in which people are posting and sharing videos of what they call 'nostalgia tech.' They miss the tactile keyboard, they say, and the smooth feel of the trackball beneath their thumbs. Dig in on the various videos, and what they really seem to miss is a simpler time when their entire lives didn't exist inside their phones, which, at that point, were just gadgets akin to a portable CD player or a Game Boy. Dan Kassim, a 29-year-old writer who describes himself as 'elder Gen Z,' said he didn't get his first BlackBerry until after college, but he still feels a flash of yearning for the older phones of his youth. 'The thing about these phones that we had in the 2000s and 2010s – everyone remembers them really well because they embedded in those memories of our childhood or early adolescence,' he said. 'So there's that real kind of pull on the heartstrings when people bring them up.' Kassim has posted several TikToks about the BlackBerry resurgence, to which many young users have responded with a desire to bring back what they call 'retro' phones. He believes that – much like the embrace of flip phones by so-called Luddite teens – the trend can be chalked up to a rebellion against the hyperconnected world we currently live in. 'I think there's a charm to the BlackBerry and older phones and all that kind of retro tech,' he said. 'It ties into vinyls and Polaroid pictures and all of that. I feel like people are kind of burned out from the notifications and being always on, and BlackBerrys and early smartphones feel like a bit of a throwback to when phones were tools but not, like, the centre of your life.' While some users are purchasing old BlackBerrys to use as their everyday phones – despite the fact that many of the apps no longer work – others are demanding a reimagined version for 2025. But after BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research In Motion) ended its support for the devices in 2022, and an attempt by a company called OnwardMobility to create a 5G version was scuttled shortly after that, there's little hope for a new BlackBerry anytime soon. Still, the nostalgia lives on, at least on TikTok. 'It's interesting that it's happening on TikTok, because I feel like TikTok is the most addictive form of social media,' Kassim noted. 'And you couldn't actually use a BlackBerry to work TikTok.' – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Int'l Business Times
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Int'l Business Times
iPhones Out, BlackBerrys In: Gen-Z Turns to Dumbphones in Bid to Break Free From Tech Addiction
In a surprising shift, a new trend is emerging among Gen Z: ditching their feature-rich smartphones for simpler, less distracting 'dumbphones.' This move isn't about nostalgia; it's a deliberate step by young people to reclaim their focus and break free from the constant pull of digital life. Many young people are trying to reconnect with the world around them. Their chosen method for this shift? 'Dumbphones' are reminiscent of the BlackBerrys that were popular during the millennial era. The Retro Revival It's quite ironic, however, that Gen Z is using social media—a platform that these simpler phones don't even support—to spread awareness of their move. A clear trend has been surfacing for months now: Young individuals, from their late teens to their mid-twenties, are showing a renewed interest in 'retro' technology, including Walkmans, iPods, and digital cameras. Notably, this latest Y2K craze is utterly baffling to older generations. On TikTok, a quick search for 'Blackberry' brings up countless videos of Gen Z users. These clips show them either buying old BlackBerry handsets from sites like eBay or unearthing them from their parents' closets. They then adorn them with rhinestones and keychains, proudly displaying the satisfyingly clicky, ASMR-worthy keyboards. For many, this BlackBerry trend simply extends the core of the ongoing 2000s nostalgia. This era was defined by popular aesthetics such as Britney Spears-inspired McBling, cyberfuturism, and Frutiger Aero. 'We've come full circle,' is a sentiment echoed in dozens of comments found on posts by TikTok content creators, such as @notchonnie, who uses her platform to showcase her extensive retro tech collection. A post shared by instagram 'I'm so sick of Apple, I would give up just about everything for a BlackBerry,' one user declared. Commenters also shared how they'd searched platforms like Facebook Marketplace, eBay, and Back Market, hoping to find BlackBerry phones to replace their current smartphones. Breaking the Digital Chains For just a few hundred pounds, these Gen Z's, tired of constant digital demands, find a sense of calm. This choice, however, often puzzles older generations. They certainly remember the unreliable service, tiny keypads, and complicated ways of using these old devices. Compared to the cost of a new iPhone, which can now easily exceed up to $70 (£51.99) a month, and unlimited data plans that often reach seventy pounds a month, the BlackBerry is seen as an obvious choice for younger generations. This burgeoning anti-smartphone movement also offers many genuine opportunities to reconnect with the offline world and to become more mindful of what they consume digitally. Pascal Forget, a tech columnist in Montreal, conveyed this perspective to CBC News, observing: 'The smartphone is not a source of enjoyment anymore.' 'It used to be fun, but now [people are] addicted to it, so they want to go back to simpler times using a simpler device,' Forget noted. 'These are supposed to be the best moments of our life, but you look around, and people are scrolling,' Sammy Palazzolo, a TikTok content creator who uses a flip phone part-time, told USA Today. Reclaiming Real Life Despite being raised in the digital era, Generation Z and older members of Generation Alpha are starting to notice a pervasive reality: almost everyone, everywhere, seems perpetually engrossed by their phones. A 2024 study from the Pew Research Centre highlights a notable change: almost fifty per cent of teenagers today describe themselves as being online 'almost constantly'. This is a considerable jump from ten years earlier when only twenty-four per cent of adolescents reported the same. Some individuals have even reported experiencing the phantom sensation of a smartphone notification, while others admit that pressing the 'on' button has become nothing short of an automatic reflex. 'It just basically created this pattern where I was anxious, and so I'd open my smartphone, and then I would hate myself for opening my smartphone, which made me more anxious,' Charlie Fisher, a 20-year-old college student, told USA Today. Is Simpler the New Smart? To help with his digital detox, Fisher swapped his iPhone for a flip phone, and he has not regretted the change. 'I've been seeing things more like when I was a kid,' Fisher explained, shedding light on his recently discovered phone-free lifestyle. 'You really see things for how they are in the physical world, and your emotions are really attached to that,' he added. Beyond their lower cost, flip phones and 2000s-era tech, such as the BlackBerry, are believed by Gen Z to encourage more meaningful time with loved ones, foster new hobbies away from endless scrolling and binge-watching, and help achieve a better work-life balance. This naturally leads to a compelling question: could these young people truly be onto something significant? Originally published on IBTimes UK
Associated Press
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Jena Kingsley Releases Latest Book, 'Darcy Dates', a laugh-out-loud and unfiltered dating diary based in New York City
Darcy Dates is the perfect balance of comedic, cringey and touching. You will belly laugh, you may tear up, you may want to look away at times. 'Jena is the rare author who is as good at storytelling as she is at making her readers squirm from TMI and ache from belly laughs.'— Gary Belsky. New York Times bestselling author NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, May 14, 2025 / / -- Critically acclaimed comedian, writer and viral content creator Jena Kingsley will publish her hotly anticipated debut book, 'Darcy Dates', on June 3, 2025. Equal parts diary and modern rom com, " Darcy Dates " expands the cult favorite blog of the same name into a full-length narrative that chronicles Darcy's return to the New York City dating scene as a newly single mom — with all the cringe, comedy and candor her fans have come to adore. The media has called her work 'Genius' and 'Brilliant.' Based on the original posts that first went viral when BlackBerrys ruled the world, 'Darcy Dates' follows protagonist Darcy, a divorced single mother as she navigates the dating world on New York's Upper East Side. Darcy encounters people who carry, 'more baggage than any bellhop at the Pierre Hotel could handle,' said the author. Darcy begins to document her dates in the form of a blog, which becomes her diary. 'Darcy Dates' provides the reader with hilarious comedy, sometimes cringey, and at times emotionally touching. Kingsley shared, 'You will definitely belly laugh, you may tear up, and sometimes you might want to look away. One thing is clear, you will cheer on and support Darcy in her quest for love. As in many cases where a seeker is looking for love, Darcy finds herself in the process.' For more information about Jena Kingsley and 'Darcy Dates,' visit Availability • Publication date: June 3, 2025 · Paperback, hardcover and e-book • Retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and independent bookstores nationwide • Pre-orders: Live now at Amazon and About Jena Jena Kingsley was born and raised in New York City. She attributes everything she knows about comedy to a loving yet dysfunctional family. Jena has made her mark internationally with her hilarious social experiments on unsuspecting New Yorkers. The media has called her work 'Genius' and 'Brilliant.' Perez Hilton called her 'one bold and funny lady.' She released four viral prank videos in a row (Are You On The List, a Starbucks Prank where she posed as a Starbucks Bouncer, No Selfie Zone, where she set up no selfie zones in NYC subject to fine, Social Media in Real Life where she tries out the things we do on social media on unsuspecting New Yorkers, and Terms & Conditions, where she let people know what they have just blindly agreed to) all garnering major international media attention landing her on CNN, TIME, MTV, ABC, The Today Show, USA Today, AdWeek, Perez Hilton, CBS The Doctors and more. Her work continues to be shared as a teaching tool to law students and marketing students in universities all across the world. TruTV ran her 'No Selfie Zone' video on their top funniest videos episode. In sixth grade she won an award for writing excellence, which of course means nothing now. She is the writer/creator of the popular blog Darcy Dates, and hosted the podcast, Social Studies with Jena Kingsley. She made her television debut appearance doing stand-up on 'Live From Gotham' on AXS TV, which landed her as a regular guest on Sirius XM. Her stand-up appearances include The Stand, Gotham Comedy Club, Levity Live, Carolines Comedy Club, Governors, Stand Up New York and others. She also appeared in The New York Comedy Festival. Her comedy is dedicated to her father. One of the funniest men she knew. Who told her she was funny. Really funny. Jena Kingsley [email protected] Visit us on social media: Instagram YouTube Facebook Other LinkedIn Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
Time Magazine
05-05-2025
- General
- Time Magazine
Farewell to Skype, the Technology That Changed My Life
Shortly after my mother's 89th birthday I called her landline via Skype. It was our last such communication ever. Don't worry, mom's fine. Skype, however, is as dead as the dire wolf. Deader, probably, because nobody is trying to figure out how to bring Skype back. My mother was born before humans discovered how to use antibiotics and she's still going. Skype was born in 2003 and only just made it past 20 years. Technological change is inevitable, but given the current manic pace of innovation, we are more accustomed to experiencing this as the arrival of shiny new tools, not the departure of useful (if slightly simplistic) old ones. When my grandmother was born, there were no planes. When my mother was born, there were no transistors. When I was born, there were no mobile phones. Those technologies are still going strong. In 2019 Skype was declared one of the top 10 most downloaded apps of the 2010s, above TikTok and YouTube and Twitter. That's only six years ago. I haven't even been to the gynecologist since then. Is there a word for the sense of loss you experience when you outlive a technology that changed your life? I know some people feel enough nostalgia for BlackBerrys and Sony Walkmans and even horse gas masks that they have become collectible, but when software goes, what remains? How do we memorialize and mourn a series of zeros and ones that opened a whole new world to us? I was just old enough when Skype came on the horizon to really appreciate it. As a traveler and an expatriate, I made a lot of long-distance phone calls. A way of reaching lovers, family, and friends when you needed to, long-distance calls had their own kind of romance, especially if you enjoyed having a conversation where every sentence you uttered cost you—and sometimes the person you were talking to—about two dollars. It made you measure your words. If your father was particularly frugal, as mine was, you'd never even try to sing all of 'Happy Birthday to You,' for example, for fear of ruining his whole year. In fact, what a long-distance call often consisted of was long pauses as people tried to think of things to say that were worth the money. In my family, we couldn't conjure conversation that rich fast enough, so we'd exchange pleasantries, hang up, and then curse ourselves for wasting money on such a nothing call. Friends of mine used to take notes before they called for maximum efficiency. In some countries I visited, you had to pay for a certain number of minutes first, hand over the number you wanted to call, and then go sit in a booth and wait to be connected. The pressure to fill those prepaid minutes with worthwhile content was intense. Skype was not the only solution to this. There were, briefly, specialized international calling companies where you could pick one or two countries and call them for a bargain rate of, say, 20 cents a minute. (Much of my phone conversation with my father during that era was spent marveling with him at how cheap it was.) But Skype was one of the earliest and easiest to use, and it called landlines for a few cents, so if you could not pry your beloved elders' hands away from their handsets, it was a godsend. Small talk was possible! You could digress! You could sing all of 'Happy Birthday to You' and get halfway through 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow' before you realized that you actually didn't miss singing as much as you thought you did. Invented in 2003 by some now-billionaire northern Europeans, Skype, which used the internet rather than phone lines to connect people, was sold off to eBay in 2005, and eventually ended up at Microsoft, which is retiring it in favor of Teams. As technology goes, this is a familiar cycle: innovation, monetization, ruination. Skype is like that alt-rock group whose live concert was the first you ever saw, but who kept switching record labels and eventually disbanded. At least with a concert tour, you get a T-shirt. All we Skypers have is a vestigial blue S bubble on our phones. Perhaps Skype's appeal to the less technologically savvy was what doomed it. I only ever used Skype for one thing: to call my mother's landline. I didn't use it for messaging or video. It offered translation and payments and redesigns, all of which I ignored. I bristled when it briefly started sending me daily news items. I acknowledge my complicity in its demise. For me, Skype was like the BOOST button on my mother's telephone, which turns the volume up; it had a limited but crucial utility. Now Skype is gone. Though each of her descendants has tried to get her to use any of the communication methods invented after 1876, my mother still wants to pick up the receiver of a ringing phone, like she always has. For her, zooming is what cars do and FaceTiming is what folks used to call coming over for a cuppa. I will now call her (for free) through one of the other apps, which is only slightly more complicated and allows her to keep her feet planted in the technological era in which she feels safe. But it feels like the distance is getting wider, that the rubber cord between us is reaching the outer limit of its stretchiness. As digital communication grows more sophisticated, she seems older, farther away, less reachable. I can see and hear everybody else clearly, but mom is just a whisper. And I can't help worrying that it's not just inventions that cannot keep up that get abandoned sooner—it's people. I know Skype was just a stage, and pouting over its demise is like wishing cocoons never became butterflies, but still, I would have liked a T-shirt.
The Guardian
19-03-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
How Covid changed the way Britain works and plays
Jessica (not her real name) is facing up to the reality of juggling work and childcare for the first time. After having a baby during the pandemic, the data analyst from the north of England is now expected to spend 40% of her working week in the office, a rule enforced by her employer since January. 'I'm struggling with the requirements for office time and it's meaning I have much less free time and am feeling constantly stressed,' she said. 'The reality is that I'd need to leave my job if I had to be in the office full-time.' Despite working part-time, combining a long commute with nursery drop-off and pickup is proving tricky, especially as her husband's job is not flexible. Even though her manager is pleased with her performance, he is unable to change what he considers a 'stupid policy', which Jessica views as 'an arbitrary rule imposed by senior leaders who have very different roles'. Over the past few years, Jessica and millions of other office-based workers like her have benefited from the post-pandemic rise in home working, and are now grappling with employers' enforcement of office attendance or fresh return-to-office mandates. When the first lockdown was called in March 2020, millions of office-based workers were hurriedly packed off home with their laptops, from where they would spend much of the next year carrying out their roles from their kitchen tables, spare bedrooms or even garden sheds. This may not have done wonders for workers' backs (ONS data charts a big rise in the number of people found unfit for work because of neck and back injuries), yet for many the temporary measure has proved permanent. Many employers saw the proof that staff could work efficiently from home; productivity remained the same, or even increased at some organisations. Meanwhile, workers got a taste of life without the commute, enjoying more time for family or hobbies and a better work-life balance. While remote working is not possible for all professions – prompting warnings from analysts that Britain is splitting into a two-tier workforce – professionals who are able to carry out their jobs remotely for some of the week have come to regard this as a right rather than a perk. 'Pre-Covid, people were at their wits' end,' said Christine Armstrong, a researcher in the future of work. 'In the last 20 years, office days have expanded, with laptops, BlackBerrys, mobiles, conference calls at 10 o'clock at night with international colleagues.' Enforced home working 'showed people there was an alternative', she said. 'In almost every group of workers if there is the ability to have some flexibility they are keen to have it. Obviously it suits working parents, and particularly working dads.' Once the lockdowns were lifted, the vast majority of organisations settled in to a hybrid model – with the working week split between the office and home, or another location. While the proportion of people working only from home has dropped from its lockdown peak – 37% in February 2021 to a third of that figure in late 2024 – the proportion of people hybrid working has remained relatively stable at 28%. Hybrid working is now more common for certain groups, including people with higher qualifications, those working as managers or professionals, parents, and people aged over 30. Research by the commercial property analytics company CoStar found that in the early months of 2020, offices were as full as they had been in more than a decade, with 4.5% of office space vacant. By winter 2024, this number had nearly doubled to 8.6%. The highest rate of vacancies is in London and Scotland, where 10% of office space is empty, according to the report. The 'working from home debate' seemed settled: the future was hybrid. Then, last summer, came a flurry of return-to-office mandates from a string of large corporates including Asda, BT and KPMG. Amazon went one step further and hauled staff back to their desks five days a week. This sparked enormous tension in the workforce, said Armstrong, as the bosses calling for office attendance stressed how cooperation and collaboration was fostered by bringing teams together under one roof. So far, a refusal to return to the office has not faced many legal tests, and few analysts expect employers to fire reliable workers over the issue. In the race for talent, recruiters report that those employers demanding higher office attendance receive fewer candidates for vacancies, or have to pay a premium. The balance of power between leaders and their staff may, however, shift further under Labour's employment rights bill, which could make flexible working the default option for workers from day one on the job. For many workers, less frequent office working equals less money spent on commuting, which became vital for some during the cost of living crisis that followed the pandemic. However, cheaper fares don't appear to hold the key to enticing more workers back to their desks. Transport for London's 2024 trial of charging off-peak only fares all day on Fridays across London Underground and other rail lines was deemed to have made no noticeable difference. TfL wanted to know if cheaper tickets would boost passenger numbers – and the capital's economy – after the Friday morning rush-hour had remained stubbornly quieter than other weekdays since Covid. Office workers' desire to bookend a 'core' week in the office – Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays – with home working on either side has also had an impact on city centre pubs, bars and restaurants. Walk past many central hospitality venues on a Thursday evening, and it's clear the traditional Friday night drink with colleagues, once the entry to the weekend, has been swapped for a Thursday post-office get-together before the final commute home of the week. 'Something really dramatic happened to change consumer behaviour during Covid in a way that I have never seen in the last 30 years, and a big part of it was the ability to work from home,' said entrepreneur Sarah Willingham, who previously owned the Bombay Bicycle Club chain of Indian restaurants. She launched her latest venture, the Nightcap hospitality group – owner of bar chains including The Cocktail Club and Dirty Martini, as well as Brighton's i360 tower – during the pandemic, and has witnessed the ensuing 'revolution' in how customers socialise. 'We can see it in the bars, Thursday night is much bigger than it used to be, but Friday night is still bigger,' she said, adding this was particularly evident at City of London venues. Another unexpected Covid hangover for hospitality is customers' desire to reserve a table in advance, Willingham said, rather than spontaneously turning up at a venue. While eating and drinking with friends remains as popular as it was before the pandemic, smaller numbers of people are hitting the dancefloor. The final song has been played at hundreds of nightclubs over the past decade, leaving 831 venues across Great Britain in September 2024, almost 1,000 fewer than in 2013. The pandemic sped up their decline, causing more than a third of Britain's clubs to fall silent, the Night Time Industries Association has said – although recent figures suggest the picture could be improving, with 14 cities seeing an increase in numbers between December 2023 and December 2024. More than 17,000 of the UK's licensed venues, including pubs, restaurants and hotels, were unable to survive the months of enforced closure, or the subsequent repayment of Covid-era loans, closing their doors for good during the five years after December 2019, according to analysts CGA via NIQ for their hospitality market monitor. The number of new venues being opened each year has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. The hospitality sector was 'devastated' by Covid, according to Kate Nicholls, chief executive of the trade body UKHospitality, and has fought hard to meet its customers' changing needs. Throughout the tumult of the past few years, consumers' desire to socialise with colleagues or friends has not diminished. 'But hospitality has had to adapt to changing working patterns and consumer behaviour to ensure it is delivering for the public, who still list eating and drinking out as one of their priorities,' she said.
