BlackBerry has been having a rough go as of lately, slowly sliding into irrelevance as Android and iPhone corner the market. Now add one more nail to that coffin: a study says that people are allergic to BlackBerry phones. As in, an actual itch-inducing allergy. As in, to a phone.
The (strange, silly-sounding) study is being presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Researchers looked at phones for two allergens, cobalt and nickel; about a third of BlackBerries had nickel, they found. The flip-phone models were worse: about 91 percent of those had nickel and 52 percent had cobalt. iPhones and Android phones, by comparison, didn't seem to have either allergen.
Researchers point out that this is a common allergy; about 17 percent of women and 3 percent of men get itching and swelling in their jaw line, ears, and cheeks when they come into contact with cobalt and nickel. But, come on, there's a lot of nickel out there, and it's not just in phones. These phones (especially the flip phones) have also been around for a while now without causing a dry skin pandemic. There are so many other good reasons for people to switch to iPhone or Android!
