End of the Line Finally Coming for BlackBerry Devices
End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices:
BlackBerry, the company that once dominated smart mobile devices, recently announced that it was finally discontinuing key services that support its phones. As of January 4th, the phones will no longer be provided with provisioning services, meaning that they will gradually lose the ability to join networks, including the cellular network.
It may seem difficult to imagine if you weren't using cell phones at the time, but BlackBerry once dominated the smartphone market. Its keyboard-based hardware was widely adopted in corporate settings, in part because the services it provided typically ran through BlackBerry servers, allowing for high levels of security and control. An indication of its importance is that early internal builds of Android looked like a cheap BlackBerry knockoff, rather than the cheap iPhone knockoff that was eventually released.
Unlike the people who developed Android, BlackBerry's leadership was blindsided by the iPhone's popularity. It dismissed on-screen keyboards, and counted on its stranglehold on corporate services to maintain its market. It took over a year after the iPhone's release for the company to come out with its own touch screen phone, and its software remained an awkward mix of old and new for some time after. In the mean time, corporate users fell in love with their Apple and Android phones, and compelled their IT departments to support them.
BlackBerry to End Support for its Classic Phones on Jan. 4
BlackBerry to end support for its classic phones on Jan. 4:
To be clear, the BlackBerry phones impacted are old. BlackBerry 10, the last version of mobile OS released by RIM, came out in 2013. RIM discontinued its BlackBerry line in 2016 and shifted its focus to security software under the name BlackBerry Limited.
Also at Ars Technica
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @09:27AM
And now it's time to meet the goatse in the sky.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Sunday January 02 2022, @10:51AM (3 children)
A lot of people still want to use mechanical keyboards on their mobile phones: the trouble is, in total, they don't make up a large enough market.
I sympathize with the manufacturers: it is trivial to modify an on-screen keyboard to have keys appropriate for the language the user wants to use, and you can use the same hardware for all versions - with mechanical keyboards, it is a huge headache. I routinely write in three different alphabets on my phone, which would be difficult to achieve elegantly on a mechanical keyboard - as it is, a long press on the virtual space bar pops up a menu of 8 language options (chosen from a larger selection available), and other gestures allow me to choose emojis (I almost never use these, not being an emoji-user kind of person). Even so, I am looking forward to getting a PinePhone Pro [pine64.org] with keyboard [pine64.com] when they become generally available (they are developer versions right now, and not quite ready for use as a 'daily driver' unless you are unusually dedicated).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by kazzie on Sunday January 02 2022, @12:54PM (1 child)
It's even worse if you're not shopping with a several-hundered dollar budget. While there are a few niche manufacturers making keyboard phones, I can't afford the shelf price, and if they don't sell them to somebody else in the meantime, I'm never going to find them second-hand at an affordable price.
I got an Android Blackberry Keyone second-hand a few years back. (Got there via a Nokia N95, E71, N900, then N9.) It's not affected by this announcement, but it's no longer receiving OS security updates as of a year or so. It's still serving me fine for now, but when I look around I don't see any likely candidates for replacement in a few years' time.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @05:04PM
One of my biggest disappointments with mobile devices is that the Motorola Backflip wasn't taken more seriously by Motorola. Between being underspecced to begin with and the massive amount of crapware that AT&T installed on it, the phone was unusable. It's a shame because the idea behind it was actually pretty good. I liked having the keyboard there on the back where it could be easily flipped out as needed, but with such pathetic specs to begin with and a ton of crapware that couldn't be removed, I returned it. It's literally the only time I've ever had a cellular device so bad that I returned it. Even just basic connections were an issue as it wasn't powerful enough to be able to process the incoming stream and I'd have to constantly be switching back and forth to get a connection.
Probably the only device that I've had that was worse was an LG that had to be returned about every 2 months for a replacement due to bad soldering.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 03 2022, @12:05AM
Speaking of market: how many crackberries are left? I had a corp issued one from 2005-2006.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Sunday January 02 2022, @12:28PM (5 children)
10 years ago when I worked at the Clinton Foundation they handed me a Blackberry on my first day. The other department heads dated from the Whitehouse in the late 90's and had the devices almost surgically attached to their hand. I used mine as a paperweight to hold down the interoffice memos that they used to keep everyone au courant.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @03:49PM (1 child)
I threw mine in the trash. After all, if I needed to check my Clinton Foundation email, I just walked over and read my email directly off the server in the closet.
When I wasn't at the office, there was only a 30-minute delay before my messages showed up on Wikileaks.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday January 03 2022, @05:21PM
The server you're thinking of was Hillary's private server, and lived in her house in Chappaqua. I never touched that one, but once I did talk to the guy at the State Department who administered it when he offered to host Haiti earthquake relief-related material from it.
Funny enough, though, the actual servers at the Clinton Foundation did live in a closet in the conference room. It took the head of IT several iterations of servers melting before they figured out why.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @09:18PM (2 children)
"worked at the Clinton Foundation"
OMG, WTF, LOL
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 03 2022, @01:11AM
It's a job. But if he had been important, he could have read his emails after a flunky printed them out for him.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday January 03 2022, @05:15PM
Posted using a Motorola flip phone...?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday January 02 2022, @01:01PM (1 child)
This is the creative destruction of capitalism. Older companies with old ideas and old processes who will not or cannot innovate and stay relevant - they die and are destroyed. The pieces and the people that added real value to the first company go work for the new players, or they start their own companies now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @05:30PM
Those same people ate polluting social media today trying to build their personal brand …
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Sunday January 02 2022, @01:59PM (7 children)
Just think about it - if Apple and their Reality Distortion Field hadn't came along, smart phones would still be considered boring devices that you would only use if you absolutely had to. Just like any other piece of technology.
Instead, thanks to Apple, smart phones are something that appeal to every teenage girl on the planet.
I still don't want a stupid smart phone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @03:58PM (6 children)
I've worked in IT for nearly 30 years now. I've had a cell phone attached to my hip since 1997 (and a Motorola pager for several years before that).
About a month ago I dropped my cell phone in a puddle at 2 AM while chasing a raccoon away from my chickens and didn't notice until the morning. I found it submerged about 2 inches down...dead as a doornail.
Bad time of year to kill a cell phone. I've always bought direcet from Google so there's no crapware (like the preinstalled Verizon / NFL Football app) that you can't uninstall.
Google gave me an initial estimate of 60 days before my new phone would arrive. It's dropped over the last few weeks and now it looks like it will arrive about 30 days after I placed the order. One of my local "competitors" was complaing to me a few weeks ago that their new staff won't be able to get iPhones until mid-February...and even then it's only if they want the Rose Gold colored iPhone...other colors are back-ordered until March or April.
Anyways...for the last ~30 days...I haven't slept so good since I was a baby. No after-hours pages, no checking email at 10 PM, no watching some shitty re-run (Hollywood can't seem to produce anything new or interesting over the last few years...er...decades) before I drift off to sleep. No people frantically calling my personal cell at 6 AM instead of calling the main number for our company that is staffed 16 hours out of the day.
When the new one comes, I might just accidentally drop it in a puddle again. Either that, or it's time to move to a remote cabin in the woods with no internet to write a manifesto about the evils of technology.
What do you mean StarLink works well at remote cabins in the woods? ;)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @04:19PM (4 children)
Those two are, partially, cured by use of the "do not disturb" settings. Setup automatic do-not-disturb settings to go on at XPM, and remain on until YAM, and none of those after hours pages nor frantic calls to the cell will get to make any noise.
Of course the above does not work if you are "expected" to be on-call during those wee-morning hours.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @05:34PM (3 children)
Yes, and if you only allow starred contacts to ring through during those hours, you can still be reachable during those hours, but not for stupid bullshit from people that could be getting helped elsewhere. Recent versions of Android allow for multiple schedules to be set for DND, but I don't think it's yet possible to have different sets of lists of contacts that can reach you during different schedules. I hope they address that in the future. Being able to specify lists of contacts by group rather than just starring them would be very helpful for some people. I personally, refuse to answer my phone from anybody that I'm not related to after bedtime and until I wake up again.
The GP can probably set up time when the call center is open to not be reachable by random folks, and then only be reachable during the portions of the night where there isn't a call center available to deal with it. That alone should help a bunch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @05:47PM (2 children)
And this, here, is the key. There are some (well, lots, actually) of people who just don't "get it" (or are simply arrogant enough they don't care) and the only way to train them that "away after hours means 'not reachable'" is to never take their frantic, after hours, calls/texts/emails/etc. Slowly they will realize that they don't get their pet problem resolved at 2:34am like they thought they should, and give up calling.
But do note, they do not ever understand why they were being trained, so even one slip-up and they will be right back to calling multiple times a night, every night.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @09:35PM (1 child)
That's exactly how boundaries work. If you don't enforce them consistently, you shouldn't be surprised when they start shifting in undesirable ways. Some jobs don't allow for much of that, but those jobs should come with a golden handcuff bonus of some sort to make up for it.
I do it at work all the time and if I didn't do it, I wouldn't be valuable to the company. Some asks are just not worth it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @11:31PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 02 2022, @05:22PM
I like my Nokia phones, HMD has done a pretty good job with them since they acquired the rights to the name. They use Google One for the OS, so you can uninstall virtually everything, including things that you shouldn't be allowed to uninstall, and you get regular updates for several years after purchase.
One thing I've noticed about more recent Android versions is that the do not disturb settings have gotten a lot better. I'm sure that there's still room for improvement, but things seem to be moving in the right direction. It's nice to be allowed to have only contacts, starred contacts and/or anybody calling twice within 15 minutes to get through and nobody else when the mode is on. It's always a bit tricky if you've got a job where you don't know who's going to need to get through during that time, but since the early versions of Android, there have been a lot of improvements made to the do not disturb.
It does depend a bit on the job, but it's important for people to understand that if you're not available, you're not available. I personally wouldn't take a job at a company where I can't get sleep at night, unless I'm being compensated for that. Either that will be my time off, and I can completely shut my phone down if I like, or I'm going to be properly compensated for the loss of sleep that comes with interruptions. And preferably the former, as you can't get that sleep back.
A couple of years ago, I spoke with somebody that works in the Costco IT department, and they don't get paid as well as many other IT jobs, but they also have a lot better scheduling in terms of not having to work crazy hours most of the time. I'm sure that when there is a significant update, that folks need to do the work in the evenings, but on a day-to-day basis, they have a sane schedule. This is in contrast to Amazon, I used to work security in one of their buildings, and it was disturbing how many times I'd be there in the middle of the night as see people still at work.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday January 02 2022, @02:52PM
It was two different business models top to bottom, one where you get your phone from your job and it doesn't matter how well it works as long as the upper mgmt is calm, and the other business model is you personally take out a high interest loan to buy a very expensive phone of your own at a fashion store "at the mall". Everything else about design and tech and eventually, financial results, followed from that.