RIP BlackBerry: end of an era for the iconic smartphone

The sun has finally and inevitably set on the device dubbed the Crackberry for its addictive nature.

By Bloomberg News, January 5 2022
RIP BlackBerry: end of an era for the iconic smartphone

BlackBerry devices running the original operating system and services will no longer be supported as of this week, marking the end of an era for the storied device that catapulted work into the mobile era.

Ontario-based BlackBerry, the company formerly known as Research In Motion whose signature handset in the 1990s came to embody working on the move, said handsets running its in-house software “will no longer be expected to reliably function” after Tuesday, according to its end-of-life page.

The move, first announced in 2020, effectively kills off a line-up that remains popular to this day in parts of the world for its reliability and security.

BlackBerry devices and their physical keyboards were once the go-to mobile device both for professionals keeping up with email and younger people messaging on its proprietary platform.

The company’s appeal waned as Apple’s iPhone and a slew of Android handsets with larger displays, better graphics and wider app offerings took over the market during the past decade.

The Canadian company stopped making its own smartphones in 2016, shifting to a software-only business and licensing its brand and services to TCL, which continued to release devices until its deal ran out in 2020. The TCL devices were powered by s Android OS and will be supported until August.

Yet nostalgia for the BlackBerry name made it one of the meme stocks of 2021, triggering a massive spike in its share price in January before a similarly steep decline.

“These devices will lack the ability to receive over the air provisioning updates and as such, this functionality will no longer be expected to reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS and 9-1-1 functionality,” the company wrote. “Applications will also have limited functionality.”

This article is published under license from Bloomberg Media: the original article can be viewed here

Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer

14 Jun 2014

Total posts 20

RIP RIM...

Loved my Blackberry devices (have a drawer of them), still long for a physical keyboard occasionally. As we used to discuss at the time, touch screen was fine for reading and writing short messages, but anything over a paragraph, Blackberry was King!! I even had a Playbook, which was great from a company IT point of view, as it was just a big screen for my Blackberry handset, rather than needing to be set up as a second device. Great for reading attachements as well as watching movies..

Virgin Australia - Velocity Rewards

24 Jan 2018

Total posts 768

Vale Blackberry (now an 'antique').  


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