This Tuesday, BlackBerry OS will stop working forever

The next January 4, 2022 will be the date on which BlackBerry operating system, the operating system that once dominated the smartphone world and then attempted to trade between Android and iOS, will no longer have support. In addition, BlackBerry (the company that has managed to overcome the misstep and move on) will shut down a large part of your infrastructure, which will affect the operation of devices running BlackBerry OS 7.1 or earlier, BlackBerry 10, or BlackBerry PlayBook 2.1including the courier Blackberry Messaging for personal use (the corporate BBMe, which is paid, ongoing) and other tools such as BlackBerry Protect (remote device management) or BlackBerry world. That is, all those who depend on an intermediate BlackBerry server to perform a function.

In one message on your support page The company even warns that even if the device was functioning properly, its ability to connect to the Internet, make calls or use text messages will no longer do so.

A BlackBerry Bold 9900, one of the company’s most beloved products (Rim /)

It’s not a surprise ending: the company had already warned in September of last year that would happen. And something like that was expected at least since 2015, when confirmed the BlackBerry Priv, its first Android smartphone.

That’s when the company ditched its own operating system that drove it to the top of smartphone sales in the first decade of the century (and brought the classic BlackBerry with keyboard to life), and that it then replaced by the version with which he tried in vain to regain ground against Android and the iPhone, called BlackBerry 10, in 2013, with the Z10 smartphone.

Intermediate servers

In both cases (although mostly in pre-BlackBerry 10 equipment), the company developed a model that compensated for the hardware limitations of its early cellphones with the processing content on the company’s servers, which delivered a simplified version to these devices, more suited to its small screens and modest processors. With BlackBerry 10 that changed a bit, but those middleware servers still worked for customers who still used a regular BlackBerry device.

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With the Blackberry Z10 debuted the new operating system, BlackBerry 10

Now the company is terminating them, and that is why the computers that depended on these servers to function will be orphaned (or shut down). Something similar happened with the signing Pebble, pioneer of connected watches, acquired in 2016 by Fitbit; The shutdown of the company’s servers left the clocks without service. A final update released some functionality that relied on accessing a specific company site.

In the case of BlackBerry, the age of the devices and the pace of evolution that smartphones have experienced over the past decade make such a solution less attractive (which would also imply an update of the operating system of the devices. terminals that have been abandoned for 10 years or more).

The decision affects BlackBerrys made by the Canadian firm, including the most popular, such as the BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry Passport or BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Curve 8520 or BlackBerry Torch, among many others (practically all models; this even affects, if they are in use, the devices classics like the BlackBerry 850 pager from 1999).

The BlackBerry Priv was the company’s first phone to use Android

But this does not affect models with Android, since most of its operation does not depend on an intermediary server but rather direct internet access. The Canadian firm made a model (the Priv in 2015), then in 2016 BlackBerry delegated the design, manufacture and sale to the Chinese firm TCL branded phones, but that didn’t work either: TCL stopped selling them in 2020, while maintaining support until next year. In August 2020 the firm Onwardmobility has promised a BlackBerry with physical keyboard and 5G by 2021, even if for the moment he has not kept his promise (it is true that in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic has complicated the whole world).

BlackBerry is far from the telecommunications giant that was once synonymous with mobile connectivity, but today it’s a profitable business, without the burden of being a declining smartphone maker; Today, it offers several products for the remote management of multi-platform devices, mobile cybersecurity and the development of embedded platforms, such as those used in automobiles or nuclear power plants, among others.