I had a BlackBerry during this transition period, the storm. It launched with no app store at all, and took nearly a year to get one. When it launched, the apps were so paired down that they were borderline useless.
The SMS system didn't have conversation based chat for 6 months, so it felt like sending and receiving emails. But it did some things very well. The unified inbox was really nice, being able to see all your messages in one place. Google talk and MSN messenger, as well as BBM, were very good, talk being better even than the android version at the time. And it's media management program was extremely fully featured, having filters and search far superior to that of an iPhone or iPod at the time<p>I was excited for the QNX based os they moved to, but it ultimately didn't move the needle