BlackBerry stopped shipping phones and tablets with its own software years ago, switching to Android in 2015 before moving from a hardware company to a software company and outsourcing the design of BlackBerry-branded phones. to other companies.
But if you held onto an older BlackBerry phone running BlackBerry OS, you were able to continue using it for some basic tasks like browsing the web and making phone calls. That changes next week, as BlackBerry announced that it end of legacy service support for BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry PlayBook OS.
Among other things, this means that if you have a phone running BlackBerry 10 or BlackBerry 7.1 OS or earlier, as of January 4, 2022, it will no longer reliably support:
- Phone calls
- SMS
- 9-1-1 emergency calls
BlackBerry says WiFi and mobile data could also become unreliable, and apps such as BlackBerry Link, BlackBerry Desktop Manager, BlackBerry World, BlackBerry Protect, BlackBerry Messenger and BlackBerry Blend “will also have limited functionality.”
The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is also reaching end-of-life status, which means anyone who clings to the 10-year-old tablet will also find it very limited starting January 4. But the fact that BlackBerry ditched the tablet a year after its launch suggests that there have probably never been so many PlayBook owners in the first place, and that number has surely declined over the past decade.
People who are still using a device with BlackBerry OS will want see the company FAQ for advice on migrating their data to other platforms while they still can.
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