If you are a loyal Blackberry user, and you still have one of the old devices, you will not be able to use it come January 04. The Blackberry Operating System will no longer be supported by the company.
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Unreliable
Although technically, the old devices will still work, certain important features such as making calls -including dialling emergency numbers - and sending SMS messages will cease on Tuesday.
Blackberry has confirmed it is dropping support for BlackBerry OS devices. However, its more recent handsets that run Android software will not be impacted. In a statement, the company said:
The legacy services for BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier, BlackBerry 10 software, BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 and earlier versions, will no longer be available after January 4, 2022.
The statement also listed the functions that would no longer be available on older devices:
As of this date, devices running these legacy services and software through either carrier or Wi-Fi connections will no longer reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS and 9-1-1 functionality.
A Possible Comeback?
The Blackberry brand, which helped drive the mobile revolution, had lost its market share to smartphones from Apple and others.
In 2016, it announced that it was shifting its focus away from phones into making software that would provide security solutions to companies and governments.
The Black Berry brand has now been sold to a company called Onward Mobility that has said it will continue to make devices with the name.
It is thought the company will introduce its 5G Blackberry device in 2022, after failing to meet its 2021 launch date.
