Reaching the end of its journey, BlackBerry devices with the original operating system and services will no longer be supported from Tuesday, 4 January.
Ontario-based BlackBerry Ltd said that handsets running its in-house software "will no longer be expected to reliably function" from Tuesday, Bloomberg reported.
The company said that the legacy services for BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier, BlackBerry 10 software, BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1, and previous versions, would no longer be available from Tuesday.
The Canadian company had stopped manufacturing its smartphones in 2016 and had shifted to a software-only business.
BlackBerry had then licensed its brand and services to TCL Communication Technology Holdings Ltd, which released the devices until 2020. TCL’s devices were powered by Alphabet Inc's Android operating system and will be supported till August.
According to Bloomberg, the company wrote, "These devices will lack the ability to receive over the air provisioning updates, and as such, this functionality will no longer be expected to reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS, and 9-1-1 functionality. Applications will also have limited functionality.”
(With inputs from Bloomberg.)
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