No Berries for you! - OnwardMobility reportedly loses Blackberry brand license

[Lightwreather]

Summary

Both Daniel Bader of Android Police and Kevin Michaluk (the founder of Crackberry) are independently reporting that OnwardMobility has lost its Blackberry license.

 

Quotes

Quote

 Bader says, "According to sources, BlackBerry is looking to further distance itself from its days as a smartphone vendor after selling the remainder of its mobile patent portfolio for $600 million earlier this month."

OnwardMobility seemed like a company that could deliver on its promises, mostly thanks to a partnership with Foxconn's FIH Mobile, a turnkey smartphone operation. OnwardMobility said the phone was "coming in 2021," and its website continued to make that claim several days into 2022. The company finally added a blog post to the site on January 7 saying the device wasn't dead. While the site still contains several BlackBerry logos and trademark notices, the latest blog post only says the plan is to make an "ultra-secure 5G enterprise smartphone (still with a keyboard!)."

OnwardMobility hasn't confirmed the loss of the BlackBerry license, but its latest blog post does seem to go out of its way to not mention BlackBerry. We would ask OnwardMobility for comment, but the company doesn't have any public email addresses. So far, nothing has gone to plan for OnwardMobility, and it would not be surprising to see the company quietly die.

 

My thoughts

Well, let's make something clear right out of the gate, this is still technically within the realm of leaks, speculation and rumors, so maybe make use of that salt jar near you until officially confirmed (Tho, with these kinds of companies, it may likely never come). Tbh, I'm not entirely surprised, this is afterall a brand that's been tried to be revived for sometime, albeit unsuccessfully. So, uhhh, stop kicking it, it's already dead (3 times, I think)

 

Sources

ArsTechnica

AndroidPolice

Crackberry

[da na]

Why do people want to revive blackberry at this point... 

[dizmo]

Not surprising. They were super sus.

2 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Why do people want to revive blackberry at this point... 

Keyboard. They've always had the best. I'd still consider buying a physical keyboard phone.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

People trying to revive blackberry phones: "hey lets go revive this long dead phone brand! Im sure someone wants a phone with a stupid keypad nowadays"

 

*People failing to revive blackberry phones*

 

Blackberry phones after every attempt:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[da na]

2 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Not surprising. They were super sus.

Keyboard. They've always had the best. I'd still consider buying a physical keyboard phone.

From someone who daily drives a 15 yr old keyboard phone, yes - physical keyboard is always best. 

However, the Blackberry brand definitely seems to carry a connotation of "less advanced" so people never buy them (IMO) 

[That Franc]

17 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Not surprising. They were super sus.

Keyboard. They've always had the best. I'd still consider buying a physical keyboard phone.

There are options. I got this one, it was released in 2021

Unihertz makes them.

Spoiler

[dizmo]

28 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

From someone who daily drives a 15 yr old keyboard phone, yes - physical keyboard is always best. 

However, the Blackberry brand definitely seems to carry a connotation of "less advanced" so people never buy them (IMO) 

Right, but that's easy to overcome with simply upgrading the spec that comes in the phone and charging a little more for the device.

I think companies that try to put them forth are trying to capture too much market; it's a niche market, and it needs to be put forth as such.

15 minutes ago, That Franc said:

There are options. I got this one, it was released in 2021

Unihertz makes them.

  Hide contents

Yeah, I've seen those...would never buy one though. Chinese company, they don't even bother listing the CPU, just bad vibes. Hardware doesn't look terrible though.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, That Franc said:

Unihertz makes them.

I am almost sold haha… how bad is the camera really though?

 

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

Chinese company, they don't even bother listing the CPU,

Its a helios 720 P70 or whatever for the "pocket" version… i think thats adequate … its just not really for gaming…

 

 

however:

 

Quote

the phone has a notification LED, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and even an IR blaster

Thats the stuff I care about more, even though Im not quite sure whats the IR blaster good for lol…

 

[Lightwreather]

6 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

whats the IR blaster good for

I've found it useful when I had some old tech thing that I'd lost the remote to and the physical buttons are justplain terrible for navigating the UI

Admitedly that is rather rare

[That Franc]

17 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

how bad is the camera really though?

Hard to tell. It's godawful compared to my Canon R6, but it doesn't produce a total blurry mess so I can't call it completely useless.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

2 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Why do people want to revive blackberry at this point... 

/s I don't know if the CPP has that many shares in RIM anymore.

 

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

it's a niche market, and it needs to be put forth as such.

I remember when Linus reviewed I think it was the Key2 and the moment he complained about not being able to watch YouTube videos correctly... I just stopped watching the review. 

[Mark Kaine]

12 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

I've found it useful when I had some old tech thing that I'd lost the remote to and the physical buttons are justplain terrible for navigating the UI

Admitedly that is rather rare

yeah… i do remember at 1 point i thought it would be cool to have, idk also TVs and stuff maybe…

 

 

2 minutes ago, That Franc said:

Hard to tell. It's godawful compared to my Canon R6, but it doesn't produce a total blurry mess so I can't call it completely useless.

I see… well most modern phones have terrible cameras for some reason…

 

Well, actually, i like the idea of a keyboard, but i dont really like the 1:1 screen… i think the atom xl/l would  be a better fit for me, i kinda love the design, and its small, i really hate how big phones are now, even the "compact" ones… and this has 6gb of ram, more than my Samsung  A41!

[That Franc]

7 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

i like the idea of a keyboard, but i dont really like the 1:1 screen

It's a quirky nugget, I mostly got it for the fun of confusing people at work and on public transport.

[dizmo]

17 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I remember when Linus reviewed I think it was the Key2 and the moment he complained about not being able to watch YouTube videos correctly... I just stopped watching the review. 

Yeah, he totally missed the point of what the device was, as did most people. I almost bought one, but by the time it was time to buy a new phone they were already hard to get due to poor sales.

[divito]

10 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Why do people want to revive blackberry at this point... 

As others have said, keyboard. There really is no comparable feeling, and a lot of people sadly will never understand or get to experience it given the situation. I still have issues with typing on touchscreen keyboards. I even use the BlackBerry Android one, but it's still not the same as physical keys.

 

The BlackBerry Classic was excellent, and the sideloading of Android apps helped immensely. And moving onto the Priv, having a full Android touchscreen phone with slide out keyboard was such a good blend, and BlackBerry's launcher for Android had excellent touches to it as well. If someone made a modern spec'd Priv, I'd buy it instantly. The only real downfall for me was the camera. 

 

It always used to bug me when Android or iOS had announced new features, or Youtube videos of phone reviews mentioned these features, but BB10 already had those far earlier. Unfortunately I don't think BB will ever get enough credit for what they did. I still use BlackBerry's suite of Android apps, and nothing compares to the BlackBerry Hub.