The Classic BlackBerry Phone Is Officially Dead & They All Just Stopped Working At Once
Face it: it's time to give up that keyboard and get a touchscreen.
Attention physical keyboard diehards: as of now, the only place your BlackBerry belongs is in a museum.
BlackBerry has officially stopped supporting its classic lineup of phones, meaning anyone who's been holding onto one since 2013 is about to have a really frustrating day.
The company ended support for devices running its BlackBerry 10, 7.1 OS on Tuesday, in an "end of life" move that basically turns the affected phones into paperweights.
Phones that use BlackBerry's own operating system can't reliably make calls, send texts, access the internet, connect to Wi-Fi or even dial 911 in an emergency, BlackBerry says. The only BlackBerry phones that will continue to work are those running Android operating systems.
The Canadian-based company was once a major player in the smartphone market, and it really leaned into the physical keyboard as a feature that set it apart from the likes of Apple.
But times changed. Apple blew up, more companies entered the smartphone market, Google's Android software took off and BlackBerry more or less fell out of the game.
BlackBerry started using Android in 2015 and continued to offer phones with its signature physical keyboard, but the company hasn't released any new models since 2018.
BlackBerry Limited says shutting down its old phones is part of a shift in the way it does business, as it moves to focus on "providing intelligent security software and services to enterprises and governments around the world."
Nostalgic users mourned the classic BlackBerry on social media this week, with many of them saying they'll miss the feel of a tiny physical keyboard under their fingers.
Others acknowledged that we're all slaves to the touchscreen and its autocorrect now, and with BlackBerry gone, there is no going back.