Dear friends, we’re gathered here today to mourn the death of that once-beloved monarch of the mobile world: BlackBerry. And, yes, I realize that this is not the first time we’ve announced the death of the company or its devices (and, for reasons I’ll explain below, it likely won’t be the last) but this is a very definite ending for legacy BlackBerry hardware.
As of January 4th, any phones or tablets running BlackBerry’s own software — that’s BlackBerry 7.1 or earlier, BlackBerry 10, or its tablet operating system BlackBerry PlayBook — will “no longer reliably function,” says the company. Whether on Wi-Fi or cellular, there’ll be no guarantee you can make phone calls, send text messages, use data, establish an SMS connection, or even call 9-1-1. That sounds pretty darned dead to us.
This seems ripe for a community of dedicated fans to build custom servers to keep things going – much like exist for many older games.
My view is these companies have a liability and should either cover it themselves or have insurance to cover it, place their patents, designs, and code in escrow if necessary, or provide a simple way of enabling on board functionality.
As for anyone stupid enough to connect themselves to any form of direct or indirect “off switch”, privacy invading “fishing expedition” software, or remote services without standard i.e. plug compatible replacements covered by adequate human rights and consumer protection law…
Drifting off at a tangent:
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/260681/top-story-of-2021-windows-11
I cannot disagree with Thurrott’s observations about Microsoft and Windows. The comments are a sight to behold and pretty much match my view and in fact yes I did put my money where my mouth is and completed a shift to Linux within weeks. I had already been trialing it on and off for a few years.
Of particular note is Microsoft gave their “insider” wannabes (the type who imagine themselves as sitting on the cutting edge and being on the inside track and somehow privileged above all other dirty common users) a good life lesson. Like working class Tories who imagine voting for the establishment and big business and billionaire party is enabling their aspirations and they are in the club the reality is they are held in contempt and treated accordingly. Former British Prime Minister David Cameron is reported to have called rank and file members “toilet seats”. I wonder what Microsoft management call Windows “Insiders”.
As for Blackberry I hope someone sues them.
Thanks for this PSA, Thom. It gave me occasion to fire up my 9 working BlackBerrys OS 10 devices to make sure that BlackBerry Protect was disabled. I greatly miss BlackBerry OS 10 still. I occasionally dust off my Passport SE and my son still uses a PlayBook for games every time he’s in my office. (Jetpack Joyride, Angry Birds, Need For Speed, no in-app purchases!)
In BB OS 10, BlackBerry perfected what Palm started with WebOS. Thankfully, Apple (and presumably Google) have appropriated many of the better UI concepts that BB OS 10 and WebOS pioneered.
At least in 2022 iOS and iPadOS have good multi-tasking, good universal search, a reasonable file manager, and decent mouse support, All of this was ready to go in 2013 in BlackBerry OS. Heck, my iPhone 11 Pro has inductive charging, just like the Palm Pre in 2009.
The BlackBerry Passport was the best portable device I have owned. It felt like I could do almost anything on it. The Hub was outstanding. I still miss it.
But you can’t go back. The browser, once industry-leading, is barely usable. It is slow. The camera, decent for the vintage, doesn’t hold a candle to what we expect now. Then there’s Apple Music, TV, Office 365, Photos, MFA everywhere, and all of the modern trappings we take for granted.
Time marches on.
I remember a few years ago when there was a BB outage and everyone who had a BB device couldn’t do anything with it, including access the web or make phone calls. I remember wondering, if these devices had phone capability, why on earth were they dependent on a server at BB HQ (possibly in another country) to make them? Isn’t that extremely inefficient, given that the phone and internet systems were local? Other smartphones were available by then, so why had people been buying devices that had this limitation? I could understand that the email or other proprietary services could go down, but making phone and internet dependent on BB’s servers struck me as crazy.
Matthew Smith,
I agree with that. BB may have been a precursor to this, but now in the “internet of things” era we’ve created what I believe is a very dangerous prescient where *local* devices and functionality are engineered to be dependent on remote servers. IoT devices can range from toys, lights, others are more important though, like thermostats, alarms, and now days even cars.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/as-google-shuts-down-revolv-anxiety-about-the-220451678.html
I like the idea behind IoT devices but I strongly dislike bad engineering that creates a strong dependency on remote servers controlled by a corporation. This is wishful thinking because corporations typically build these dependencies into our devices on purpose, but in the *ideal* world IoT devices would have two engineering requirements to protect owners:
1. There needs to be a fully local fallback mode so that owners can continue to use the smart device even when the internet is out or corporate servers are offline.
2. The “remote” components of the stack needs to be available to users so they can run independent servers. Ideally this should be FOSS.
But most consumers don’t think about it at the time of sale, and it gives corporations a very easy way to retain control over devices after sale. This is why IoT is such a mixed bag for consumers. It’s clearly very frustrating for devices to be remotely disabled, but even for consumers who educate ourselves about this problem it can be just as frustrating buying a device not knowing if it was engineered this way or not. Personally I’ve found it extremely difficult to identify which IoT products are vendor locked before buying them.
This would have been quite a while ago. This was how BB OS 7 and earlier worked. They required BIS or BES to be useful at all. BB OS 10 was very much like a “normal” OS with almost nothing flowing through BB servers. (BBM, BB Travel, BB Protect were the only things that were reliant on BB servers, once the device was setup.)
Not sure if anyone else reading OSAlert has BB OS 10 devices. If you do, this thread is useful:
https://forums.crackberry.com/general-blackberry-news-discussion-rumors-f2/blackberry-10-blackberry-os-shutdown-faq-1192266/
The short version is that you need to turn off BlackBerry Protect if you want to wipe and reload the OS. There is advice about also removing the device from BlackBerry ID and wiping it to skip the BB ID login. This appears to be because Protect tends to turn itself back on:
https://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-10-os-f269/removing-blackberry-id-z10-1186107/
Personally, I am turning off Protect and leaving the devices off until after BlackBerry shuts the servers down. Hopefully that works and I won’t have need to reload anything in the future. The perils of closed source operating systems.
This has been a fun weekend project.
benmhall,
Your post is extremely informative. I just wanted to comment on the “closed source” part.
I always go open source when I can but unfortunately even android devices are often locked down in consumer products. My oneplus 8 phone, which has a lineageOS image, is both bootloader and root locked from the factory. You have to apply to the manufacturer to get an unlock code, which in my case took exactly two weeks for a phone that I bought specifically to run lineage after my previous phone died. Who knows how long they will honor unlock requests for. Anyways the point is that an open source OS is important but not sufficient, you also need open hardware!
Agreed. I moved from BB to iOS despite iOS being as closed as they come. I love the idea of Android and do appreciate that as much of it is open as it it, but there are definitely limits wrt boot loaders. Not to mention that Google wields and incredible amount of power with Play and the various services that every Android user assumes should be available.
Alas, the remaining options all have their downsides.
Quick follow up: further in the thread above, this link was pointed out:
https://protect.blackberry.com/protect/managedevices
Despite being careful to remove devices from Protect, there were a few still listed on this site. I removed them from this side and it appears to maybe have worked.
As far I can tell, most of pre-BB10 devices will die anyway with 3G shutdown in USA now in 2022 and Europe at 2025 (perhaps earlier).
Still, this shows the perils of these “phoning home” devices, that are perfectly functional by themselves, but due corporate decision, relies on a remote server just to “enable” for use once powered up. A glimpse of the Brave New IoT World…
Yea here in norway 3G was turned off in 2020 and 2G (alias gsm voice) will go by the end of 2025 (no big loss since both MNOs have promised , I even think that it is a precondition for them being allowed to shut 2G down , to have the same area coverages as 2G has now on 4G/5G by then). So unless the blackberries have wifi, and hence can utilize hotspots from other phones etc, the will in fact be bricked, oh well all tech eventually dies and we can’t keep old mobile networks around forever. edit: woops went a bit of topic there, this was unintentional