Blackberry's view on smartphones
The Blackberry was one of the first smart phones to appear on the market; in fact they were really the ones who brought them into widespread use. Over the years they faced a great deal of competition from other makers but they have managed to carve out a place in the industry, largely because they focus on a different market than most of their competitors.
The view that Blackberry takes of smart phones is that they are a communication device and that this should be the main focus of them. This differs from the products of some of their competitors which are clearly designed more to be a portable computer than they are to be used for communication. The Blackberry is first and foremost a phone with email capability. While it certainly has all of the other features that you would expect to find on a smart phone these tend to take a back seat to the communications part.
The other thing that is common on all Blackberry smart phones is that they are designed primarily for business people rather than a more mass market. This is largely due the fact that they were originally developed as PDA's, the main market for which was of course business people. The Blackberry continues in this mould with phones that are more suited for use at work than they are for things like watching videos hanging out on Facebook. You can of course do all of those things with a Blackberry but if that is your primary reason for having one there are probably better options.
One feature that you are going to find on all Blackberry smart phones is a full QWERTY keyboard. This is because one of the company's beliefs is that it should be easy to enter data into the phone. Most other smart phone makers only include the QWERTY keyboard as part of the touch screen. They do this in large part because it allows them to reduce the size of the phone and still have a large screen. The downside is that it does make the phone more difficult to use. Blackberry have made the decision that it is important to maintain the full keyboard even though it does make the phone a little more bulky than some of its competitors.
One of the other things that Blackberry considers to be important is security. The Blackberry is considered to be much more secure than its competitors. It is in fact considered to be so secure that it is almost always the option that is used by police forces and other similar agencies. Even president Obama has a Blackberry which he has been able to continue to use because of the strong security that they offer. This is a major selling point for a lot of people particularly those that use it for business purposes.