End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I honestly don't get this. How can calls via the regular cellular network stop working reliably? I'm using a dumbphone that hasn't seen any updates in its entire lifetime and it still works reliably for making calls.
Similarly, the core functionality of the original BB - email - is no longer supported (though you can probably run it still) because the special server software (BB didn't run normal email originally) was withdrawn. This special server communicated with your phone provider IIRC to handle BB-only special features like email (back when GPRS was barely starting)
The Z10 and Q10 were the first BB10 phones in 2013, and I believe BlackBerry only produced one more BBOS phone after that. After the Classic and Passport in late 2014, BlackBerry switched to Android with the Priv, KeyOne, and Key2 and essentially abandoned the BB10 OS and phones.
A terrible shame. I used a BB10 and built a couple toy apps for it, but it was difficult to publish them from Brazil (and the market was, sadly, tiny). It was easier if you developed for Android, but still you’d need older APIs.
QNX is an amazing OS, a work of art. I learned C (and vi!) on it in the late 80s and it’s up there with zOS, and Solaris as my favourite proprietary OSs.
It does not impact any of the BB branded Android phones though.
In case of BB, it was literally a special protocol running on the telco network, combined with the special rates, to enable live email access when GPRS was, well, new and mostly unavailable.
Yes, service books they were called.
I know someone who's using an older pre-Android Blackberry, so I'll have to figure out for them if they need to get a new phone next week. As they only use it very occasionally, I'd be glad if they could keep using it for simply making calls.
The devices _should_ be able to make calls and text (baseline SMS), but they might error out in various things (browser dead, contacts gone, even some menus dead or stalling) and if they are reset you might not be able to get texting back (since it _might_ not rely on the SIM card to set the SMS message center, etc.)
There were so many changes over the years that I’m not sure how much will still actually work, but I think it’s a given that calls will work — just try to get them to backup their contacts somehow, since I think that is the most basic info that was read off the SIM card on initial setup but not written back.
(I was a PM for BlackBerry services at Vodafone in the early 2000s)
That is why I said it _should_ still work for base calls (and likely SMS), but nothing else, really.
I’m not a programmer , I deal with oily things, but why the hell would you rely on a central server for basics like SMS? Surely it should have some basic SMS ability if only to background text the network for the proper SMS setup.
It feels like baked in obsolescence or supreme confidence that you’ll be around forever to send out the settings.
Please pass that message to RIM/BlackBerry. And yes, they did feel like that, until Apple have attacked.
As an aside, Most Android phones below ICS are now also "dead" (https://support.google.com/android/answer/10313246?hl=en, note that Honeycomb do not have phone services baked in) and cannot be provisioned even for very basic service (except for emergency calls).
But Blackberries just don't operate like that. They never did while I was using them (until 2015, IIRC, and I had family using theirs for a few more years, so I know the setup process remained the same).
The underlying point is that the Blackberry was not your average smartphone.
Your average smartphone (assuming it is not carrier locked) can be used forever (although it would not be advisable to do so due to lack of security and OS updates).
The Blackberry was a wolf in sheep's clothing. It might just look like another smartphone, but it had heavy upstream dependencies:
- Specific carrier contracts were required (i.e. similar to when the iPhone originally came out, although for a long time now you can use an iPhone with any 4G/5G SIM ... this is not the case with Blackberry).
- If it was an enterprise model, you needed to be running Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) somewhere (it would figure out how by first doing a phone-home to Blackberry HQ in Canada). If it couldn't talk to BES, it became an unusable brick.
- If it was a consumer model, it needed to phone-home to Canada (Blackberry HQ where they ran a "cloud" servers). I can't remember if you needed an account in Canada, I suspect you did because I think that's how email worked (they would login to IMAP on your behalf and push the mails to you).
So I guess the obvious implication here is that the Canada datacentre is going to be killed off. At the same time, many carriers have no doubt already been removing Blackberry plans for new customers already (and perhaps nudging existing customers off).
It was almost a thin client, really.
My DevAplha died years ago, but, if you want me to stop using my Q10, you will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. Same with my Palm Pre, BTW.
The BlackBerry Passport is one of the affected models, and was released in October 2014. I bought mine new around 2017.
I could touch type and required less autocorrect.
Like autocorrect today still doesn't support typing Spanish with 'vos' conjugations well.
For example it keeps wanting to change the 'to be' verb 'sos' to 'SOS' or a 'SOS' emoji.
Has any of you used modern phones with physical keyboards? How has your experience been?
I miss those too.
My favorite was the Samsung Sidekick 4G. I was able to modify the keyboard map to include the missing ASCII characters, and actually did a little programming with it. The HTC G1 had a decent keyboard too. After the Sidekick 4G was past its prime, I considered trying to mod a Motorola Photon Q to work with my carrier, but the phone was expensive.
I never really liked the phones that had portrait mode keyboards like the BBs though.
[1] - https://www.unihertz.com/collections/all-products/products/t...
It saddens me that I can't continue to use Blackberry devices. They were amazing.
Duck autocorrect.
Whether the issues with the 83xx are glossed over between both it being my first phone which had practical utility beyond phone/sms and nostalgia, or if there was something particularly good about it, I'm not sure.
I do know that Microsoft should have bought RIM back in 2008, it was their only chance to compete in the mobile market, the blackberry was actually popular in a way XDA etc wasn't.
RIM lost because of stuck-in-the-mud boomer IT departments locking down so the CFO couldn't play candycrush or angry birds on his phone, and Microsoft had a similar mindset back then, so it likely wouldn't have work. Instead CFO buys an iphone, then tells IT to make email work with it, and it's gone. It was the embodiment of the star wars "tighten your grip and systems fall through your grasp" phrase.
I hope Shopify heeds the lessons of previous examples and stays the hell away from Canadian politics and government, as they too will be smothered with subsidies and breaks with strings attached, and then get taken out by someone who still has to impress consumers and succeeds at it.
Heh, I chuckled.
> Will BlackBerry Android devices still work after EOL date?
> BlackBerry Android devices will not be impacted by the EOL of infrastructure services unless they are receiving redirected email sent to a BlackBerry hosted email address, or assigned an Enhanced Sim Based License (ESBL) or Identity Based License (IBL). ...
[1] https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/support/devices/end-of-life
It's too bad because the playbook, like other BB devices from that era is running QNX and with a terminal emulator could have been a handy tablet to play with if it could connect properly to the internet
Android was blindsided by iPhone reveal, but the developers had the foresight to see where it was headed.
Then the whole business culture did change, the rigid suit brigade was not so much the core business base and form over function seemed to change in balance.
Ironically, was many core blackberry users who stuck with earlier models of the phone, shunning the colour screens etc and personally, the jog wheel was brilliant for email navigation one handed and yet to be equaled for me.
The experience of using one was always great. They took usability very seriously in a market that was easily impressed with 3D accelerated transitions.
What I really liked was having all messaging streams converging into a single app. Now I need to keep two Outlook windows (email and calendar) along with another for Teams and monitor stuff happening from all sides, as if I’m NORAD for messages.