Sources suggest that OnwardMobility’s promised 5G BlackBerry is dead.
In the wake of OnwardMobility’s 2021 ambition for a 5G-enabled BlackBerry revival, many feared that the ousted king of smartphones was doomed to a life of mediocrity.
Just 34 days ago, OnwardMobility said “we are not dead” and promised frequent updates, with the first coming later that month.
New reports indicate that the quiet is due to the fact that it has now been confirmed that the game is no longer playable.
Although Kevin Michaluk, CrackBerry’s well-connected creator, never signed an NDA, he was forced to stay vague to protect them and commented on the site’s forums, “Dead as of yesterday,” citing “many sources.”
Even yet, he wasn’t afraid to be abrasive. There may or may not be an official announcement, but my hunch is that John Chen/BlackBerry wishes them to quietly go (he’s definitely done with phones) and it’s probably best for all of us to forget about this train disaster,” he said. A train crash is too flattering since it implies they created a train and then destroyed it. “They never made it that far.”
OnwardMobility’s rights to utilise the licence have been revoked, according to AndroidPolice’s sources. Not to note that the January blog post didn’t include the name “BlackBerry” once. OnwardMobility may develop a keyboard-based phone without BlackBerry branding. But it would make the climb considerably steeper than it already is.
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Is this the end of the road for yet another time?
However, the signs don’t seem good for another company’s attempt to encourage BlackBerry to apply again for the licence. John Chen is “obviously done with phones,” according to Michaluk, who also stated that BlackBerry sold a number of historical patents for $600 million at the beginning of the month.
No matter how much BlackBerry would want a licensee to take on the task, it’s not obvious whether anybody would be willing to take it on. The fact that TCL Communications let the final two years of the agreement to go by without any fresh additions speaks loudly about the company’s commitment to the contract. That signals a commercial failure based on the context.
Although this may be the last straw for many BlackBerry devotees, it seems that physical keyboards are no longer fashionable. Samsung used to create keyboard covers for its Galaxy S flagships that looked like BlackBerry keyboards, but it stopped making them after the Galaxy S8, which shows that there was little demand.
OnwardMobility’s 5G BlackBerry may have snuffed out expectations for a mass physical keyboard rebirth, but there are a few Android device manufacturers making an effort to emulate the present BlackBerry experience; the $299 Titan Pocket comes the closest.