John Legere, the CEO of T-Mobile, received a special birthday present from John Chen, the CEO of BlackBerry, on June 4. Legere is a big fan Batman, which is obvious to anyone following his Twitter account. We can only imagine that he was very excited to unbox his new special-edition BlackBerry Classic — with a magenta Batman logo.
This was a thoughtful gesture from Chen, no doubt cementing the newly discovered friendship between the two executives. The gift is also the first BlackBerry T-Mobile handset after BlackBerry terminated its affiliation with the carrier last April 25th, 2014.
The bad blood between the two Johns began from a T-Mobile sales promotion that made a suggestion to existing T-Mobile subscribers that they could exchange their BlackBerry phone for a brand new Apple iPhone 5s. During the campaign, T-Mobile was no longer selling BlackBerry phones in its physical stores.
The outspoken T-Mobile CEO and the BlackBerry CEO got involved in a serious exchange of words, with Legere suggesting that Chen might have been a MySpace user, which was quite a blow. Calling someone a member of a social ghost town could be an insult of the worst order for a tech executive! Still, they found a mature way to revive a partnership beneficial to both companies. The BlackBerry Classic went on sale online at T-Mobile.com and participating stores in May.
The BlackBerry Classic's appeal lies in its executive keyboard and its target audience are hardcore fans of the BlackBerry network, such as the government and business base of users. For those who are keen on having a more elegant smartphone – with less of a focus on games and apps, and more emphasis on calls and emails – the BlackBerry Classic is a recommended handset. It is powered by a Qualcomm MSM 8960 clocked at 1.5 GHz, 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB Flash memory, which is expandable of up to 128 GB with a 2515 mAh battery that can last more than a day.
Indeed, the Blackberry Classic is a great gift to build on the T-Mobile and BlackBerry relationship, cheers to Chen. Happy Birthday, John Legere — enjoy the cake and the phone.
