BlackBerry OS devices will stop working on January 4th

BlackBerry will end support for all its classic smartphones starting next January, as the company updated its support page saying that legacy services for BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier, BlackBerry 10, and BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 and earlier, will not be available after January 4th. 2022.

This means that customers using BlackBerry devices running these legacy services and software will no longer receive software patches to ensure that the carrier or Wi-Fi connection continues to work, and this will include data, phone calls, SMS, and 911 functionality for US users, but BlackBerry smartphones will not be affected. that run on Android.

Before the iPhone era that started sometime in 2007, BlackBerry phones were very popular among users along with Nokia phones, and BlackBerry launched its first handheld device in the form of a two-way pager in 1999.

By the second half of the 21st century, its product lineup included smartphones such as the BlackBerry Curve Bold and BlackBerry Pearl, among others, and not only did the classic QWERTY keyboard, but applications such as BlackBerry Messenger popped up in BlackBerry phones.

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In 2008, the company introduced the BlackBerry Storm – the first full-touch screen device to use the iPhone launched in 2007, but the sluggish performance brought BlackBerry back to full QWERTY phones even for touchscreen devices that were later launched.

At the time, CEOs of RIM (the company that made BlackBerry phones) didn’t see old iPhones or Android phones as a threat to BlackBerry devices.

Instead, they made jokes about the Apple smartphone because they believed that consumers, who were essentially businesses and business professionals, would never want a smartphone with a touchscreen and a virtual keyboard. World, BlackBerry market fell.