IIRC the secret sauce of BlackBerry, before Android / iOS, was they used the mobile carriers to push notifications to the phone. You had to usually pay for a e

IIRC the secret sauce of BlackBerry, before Android / iOS, was they used the mobile carriers to push notifications to the phone. You had to usually pay for a expensive BlackBerry plan, but you got notifications immediately. It used the mobile carrier rather than keep a push notification data channel open. Kind of wouldn't work these days what with so many notifications and background tasks, but you can definitely see why people loved them.