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BlackBerry's 'Classic' Smartphone Is About to Disappear (fortune.com)
From a Reuters report:The beleaguered tech company continues its shift to software. BlackBerry will stop making its Classic smartphone, 18 months after launching it in an effort to entice users who prefer physical, rather than touch, keyboards, the Canadian technology company said on Tuesday. The Classic was launched early last year, with a physical keyboard in the vein of its Bold predecessor and powered by the company own overhauled BlackBerry 10 operating system. BlackBerry has since launched a phone powered by Alphabet's Android software and plans several more, and BlackBerry Chief Executive John Chen last month expressed confidence the company's trimmed-down handset business can turn a profit by a self-imposed September deadline.
McDonald's will stop making burgers and now sell burritos.
With a full unix compatible qwerty physical keyboard and android and selling it to nerds, devs, and sysadmins who need a remote computing device with a proper physical keyboard (even if we have to use function keys to get the full range of keys on their text message oriented keyboard?
I was noticing this with a bluetooth keyboard I got to use with my android bar-phone the other day. Despite being an 86 key keyboard, they had omitted overloads for a variety of important keys, notable page up and page down, which made using terminal apps without touching the phone difficult, since many console apps expect you to be able to use PGUP/DWN for scrolling purposes.
As simply another bar phone manufacturer I foresee BB shutting down by the end of the year if not sooner.
FTFY
Just sell the business to Microsoft and increase their market share tenfold. Everybody should be happy :)
I hope getting rid of Christianity - and God doing it for personal reasons - the same way NBC cancels TV series.
I heard scientists had given it a latin name: BlackBerry 'Raphus cucullatus'. Lets see if anyone gets it...
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
Blackberry is once again paying for their lack of vision. They have lost their way and are slowly dying a public death. They are the "Old Yeller" of the tech industry. It is said to see them suffer and we all wish someone would just put them out of their misery.
I still don't want the damn on-screen smudge-keys that every other vendor seems to require, and the Priv missed the mark with that top-heavy slide-out design. Just give me a taller Bold with a move-pad, four Blackberry Buttons, and a real keyboard. I'll gladly pay a few hundred for it.
I still can't figure out why my Android closes its music player mid-podcast without saving my place.
Looking at the Classic, I can see clearly why it failed. It's like something from a decade ago. Sure, it's good to have a keyboard, but not at the expense of the screen! They got it right with the Priv and its sliding keyboard, that one is something I'd consider if I were thinking of buying a smartphone now.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I was sorry to see the news of the Classic being retired. I had hoped to buy one this coming winter (maybe a x-mas gift to myself) as using an Android with no keyboard has been driving me nuts. The Classic is the only sanely priced with-a-keyboard phone I could find. Now it's being retired, so I'll have to go elsewhere for my purchase.
The only reason to buy a Blackberry these days is the physical keyboard. The company seems to be trying to kill itself off by phasing out the Q-series and now the Classic.
So, no blackberry OS, no blackberry keyboard, the same rectangle screen as everyone else, the same OS as everyone else. So what's left? The pretty logo? Congrats. Another messaging app? Watch me care. Secure? Bullshit of course. So much for pride. Ready for the fall.
It's the best mobile OS that no one is using. Sad. 100% gesture based - no buttons needed.
I love my Z10, but I'll probably be moving to the Priv soon.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Sure, I suppose, as someone who really likes physical keyboards, it's technically sad that we just lost another one, but I don't care that much, on grounds of a. Blackberry OS rather than Android, and b. keyboards should slide out in landscape mode, not portrait mode. So I would never personally buy one of those anyway.
But when I can no longer find any Android phones with proper slider keyboards to replace my current one when it dies... I will be pretty pissed at that point.
It's sad when company doesn't stick to thing which they mastered and got right. Poor management. Miss my Bold.
Its unbelievable that they didnt move to Android years ago given they get app compatability with the enormous android ecosystem, for free. Trying to develop their own OS was insane. The company would be in better shape had it done this years ago. I think the min keyboard idea is also good, after using on screen keyboards, i cannot believe there is no demand for a physical one.
My sister was dying for one of these. She is a huge BB fan. She contacted her telco when they first came out and they said, "We don't even know if we are getting them let alone when." She called around to other providers and they would only sell her one with an uber premium super deluxe extra plan. Effectively they wanted about $700 for the phone.
So she contacted BB and managed to get a fairly senior person who pretty much told her that their priority relationship was with the telcos not the consumer.
She very much enjoys her Android now.
It is not amazing that BB shot themselves in the foot. Most companies occasionally do that, but that they have just not stopped shooting themselves in the foot. I love how they got into fights with foreign governments over data privacy but then just handed the keys over to the RCMP.
Their appstore might have been one of the hardest to use and must have been inspired by a Soviet Era grocery store. But best of all is that they let the telcos and the "enterprise" users turn off any features that made the phone enjoyable at all. They might have thought that they were catering to their "enterprise" users but by pissing off every user of their phones did they not realize that some of the people who they were pissing off were the ones who picked which platform was purchase? So yes the IT people might have felt all powerful being able to set a complicated security profile. But they don't have the last stay on a company's budget.
BTW Apple is going hard into the enterprise market and is making it easier and easier for the IT department to turn the phone into a turd. Let's see how that works out for them.