Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 57 posts

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#31

Post by p_l »

ncpa-cpl wrote: post #16
p_l wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blackberry was always the weird one out that effectively depended on special service from your provider combined with special tariffs for using them. This is a legacy from when they were explicitly enterprise devices and you couldn't exactly buy them normally. Similarly, the core functionality of the original BB - email - is no longer supported (though you can probably run it still) because the special server softwar…

Even today some apps like Outlook for Android use Microsoft servers for proxyiing email service and don't connect directly to the mail servers from the phone.

Outlook for Android goes a bit differently (depends on your Exchange setup).

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.

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#33

Post by version_five »

I have a BlackBerry playbook and it has not worked properly for years: I think it has something to do with https support or some other aspect of authentication to websites, but 90% of websites don't work with it, even with the latest update which is years old.

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

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#34

Post by lukeschlather »

ncpa-cpl wrote: post #15

I was more productive with phones that had a physical QWERTY keyboard. 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've been using a BlackBerry Key 2 for the past few years, that I got new. It's a great Android phone with a keyboard. I'm sad they discontinued the line, the build quality is great and the keyboard is great. Fortunately it's just an Android phone so there may come a time when they discontinue support and I have to flash it with a modern distro but that should at least be possible, assuming the phone lasts that long.

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#35

Post by blindfly »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #20
p_l wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blackberry was always the weird one out that effectively depended on special service from your provider combined with special tariffs for using them. This is a legacy from when they were explicitly enterprise devices and you couldn't exactly buy them normally. Similarly, the core functionality of the original BB - email - is no longer supported (though you can probably run it still) because the special server softwar…

Note that this only applies to the older BlackBerry OS (7 and earlier) phones, which used the BES. BB10 and later Android phones worked and will continue to work like any other phone. 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 e…

To add some more detail from when I worked there: We had two users which were BES and BIS. Not all devices were connected to an enterprise. Consumer-owned devices were almost always provisioned using BIS. They tried to later push Black Berry ID as a way to get users to take over some half-baked control but that was a total flop. The support overhead was simply too much.

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#36

Post by tomc1985 »

ncpa-cpl wrote: post #15

I was more productive with phones that had a physical QWERTY keyboard. 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?

Maybe your phone is set to Latin American spanish?

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#37

Post by dleslie »

lukeschlather wrote: post #34
ncpa-cpl wrote: post #15

I was more productive with phones that had a physical QWERTY keyboard. 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've been using a BlackBerry Key 2 for the past few years, that I got new. It's a great Android phone with a keyboard. I'm sad they discontinued the line, the build quality is great and the keyboard is great. Fortunately it's just an Android phone so there may come a time when they discontinue support and I have to flash it with a modern distro but that should at least be possible, assuming the phone lasts that long.

I was using a Key 2 LE until about four months ago.

It saddens me that I can't continue to use Blackberry devices. They were amazing.

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#38

Post by dleslie »

version_five wrote: post #33

I have a BlackBerry playbook and it has not worked properly for years: I think it has something to do with https support or some other aspect of authentication to websites, but 90% of websites don't work with it, even with the latest update which is years old. 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…

You need to update the root certs, which is generally possible with most BB devices.

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#39

Post by visiblink »

rcarmo wrote: post #21
amaccuish wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To further this, BlackBerries relied on a special GPRS APN to get access to the internet. BlackBerry had VPNs and leased lines with major carriers and Blackberries would communicate via the APN to proxies located in BlackBerry data centers. All the network config was stored on the phone in "Service Books" and could be pushed out via carriers or BES Admins.

Yes. The Service Book carried a lot of information that these days people take for granted on most devices. And with the APN down and nothing handshaking and serving a default service book (which, incidentally, was served over a proprietary TCP connection IIRC), the phone just won't get the right configurations. That is why I said it _should_ still work for base calls (and likely SMS), but nothing else, really.

I edited an old service book to gain MMS functionality on my Bold 9900. My carrier (Koodo Prepaid, Canada) doesn't have BIS and never did. If I lose any other functions, I'll probably have a look at the other service books to find out what's in there.
Post reply on HN