It’s tough to forget the name Blackberry. Earlier this century Blackberry was one of the most successful mobile phone manufacturers. Blackberry phones were like dreams to normal people. But the bad news is old blackberry phones are going out of service from this January 4.
So those legendary qwerty keyboard blackberry phones can no longer be used. This news was announced on September 20, 2021. Blackberry Limited is now totally focused on providing security services to governments and some other enterprises.
They left the phone business in 2016. As a long time passed, it seems they lost interest to compete again in the smartphone market. Blackberry even tried Android. But it was too late to beat the grown-up competitor Apple and Samsung.
However, The Android operating system running Blackberry phones will work normally. I mean if one of these rare pieces still exists in your drawer! Jokes apart, the old Blackberry button phones will lose functionalities like using data, messaging, and accessing the internet.
Well, Blackberry 10, 7.1, and earlier operating systems will stop working from this January 4. This OS was last updated in 2013. I remember in early 2000 Blackberry was a VIP phone. At the peak of success, it had over 80 million users.
At that time people loved texting. That made the Blackberry qwerty keyboard handsets so famous. Another selling point was security. Blackberry was known as the most secure phone with a custom encrypted texting app.
Many fans are still expecting that Blackberry will launch 5G devices. But it’s not sure if Blackberry will launch new devices with TCL. It was just a decision to turn off supports for the older Blackberry OS phones.
As Blackberry is still licensing as a phone manufacturer, anything can happen in the upcoming days. So, remember that only the older classic Blackberry phones are going out of service.
Blackberry and TCL were supposed to bring a new 5G phone under the Blackberry banner in 2021. If they are still working on the phone, it should be released later this year.