Many BlackBerrys about to become paper weights as service ends
BNN Bloomberg
BlackBerry Ltd. says many of its mobile phones will stop reliably working on Tuesday after the company decommissions several of its services.
BlackBerry Ltd. says many of its mobile phones will stop reliably working on Tuesday after the company decommissions several of its services.
The Waterloo, Ont.-based business says it is decommissioning services for BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier, BlackBerry 10 software, BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 and earlier versions.
The decommissioning means devices running these legacy services and software through either carrier or Wi-Fi connections will no longer have reliable data, phone call, text message and 9-1-1 functionality.
The decommissioning will not impact BlackBerry devices running on Android software.
BlackBerry first announced it would end services for many of its devices in 2020, as part of its transition away from producing phones and toward being a software company.
BlackBerry phones were popular in the 1990s and 2000s, but lost many users in recent years to Apple's iPhone products and Android devices.
