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End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

arstechnica.com

51–57 of 57 posts

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#51
The blackberry was the Avro Arrow of our time. I have such animosity toward how they fumbled their market lead, and how Nortel previously lost all its IP to "hackers." As a country we deserved it.

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.

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#52

> As of January 4th, the phones will no longer be provided with provisioning services, meaning that they will gradually lose the ability to join networks, including the cellular network. 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.

I work for an ISP, and when we provision land lines, its a sort of handshake between the device and our network. Due to older dumbphones provisioning requiring minimal effort, it seems that they don't require the same tools. BlackBerry devices however are running a full-fledged OS that requires support. Since the affected devices are at latest from 2013, it seems reasonable that most of those affected have moved off…

> the affected devices are at latest from 2013

The BlackBerry Passport is one of the affected models, and was released in October 2014. I bought mine new around 2017.

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#53
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…

I believe this impacts BB10 as well. So my beloved Z30 will no longer work.

It does not impact any of the BB branded Android phones though.

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#54
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can continue to use a Key 2 LE or any of the Android based BB phones.

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#56
post #48

Nothing about On Mobility...

There seems to be some doubt that the OnWard phone will ever arrive.

Indeed a lot of doubt. They said they would launch a phone in 2021, however about halfway that year it has been very silent from their end. It's sad really, would love an up to date android with a blackberry keyboard.

Re: End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

#57
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can continue to use a Key 2 LE or any of the Android based BB phones.

I needed a newer android revision for work.
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