For any med students who coveted the original BlackBerry pager back in ’98 almost as much as they can’t wait for the Bold to drop on AT&T, CRN’s evolution of the BlackBerry will bring joy to your heart. Within which we realize that RIM actually hasn’t evolved their drug-metaphor-laden email device all that much. See, there’s the legendary scroll wheel right there on the side of the Inter@ctive Pager 950, for instance, which is basically a shrunken version of the same piece we’ve been seeing for the last 10 years. This could be a sign of getting things right the first time, or perhaps the Pearl trackball vs. clickable scroll wheel debate may still be raging harder than anyone realizes, somewhere in the bowels of BBerry fandom. With the release of the Bold imminent, it’s a good time to remember the old days for a minute. Anybody here from the monochrome display, “two-way pager” days? [CRN via CrackBerry]
