End of an era? Bye bye, BlackBerry

The BBM is going away forever

From this week the Blackberry is officially no more, as the Canadian founded mobile phone company will cease to provide all software support for them from January 4.

Once the favoured mobile phone of the glitterati in the early 2010’s (who can forget Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton’s treasured BlackBerry which became every much a part of the pap-snaps as the reality stars themselves) long before iPhones and Samsung, the BlackBerry since waned in popularity. With the latent introduction of the the touchscreen, many favoured the new apparatus over BlackBerry’s trademark external keyboard.

Back September 2020 BlackBerry originally announced that it would discontinue its phone service. On December 22 2021 they reminded they customers of the fact in a statement on their website saying, “As a reminder, 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.  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.”

BlackBerry has been slowly making the pivot to, “intelligent security software and services to enterprises and governments.” In 2016, BlackBerry executive chairman and CEO John Chen announced that the brand’s transition from mobile phone provider to software company would be complete.

Now it appears that all former BlackBerry devices will cease to function as the company is stopping all software support for them. For those of us who can remember a time when “BBM was life, this is certainly the end of an era in tech.”