There was a time not long ago when BlackBerry seemed indomitable—when they were everywhere you looked and Stanley Tucci was boasting about their two-megapixel cameras and "email in over 130 countries."
Well, those days are long gone, and now the end is nigh for the CrackBerry:
BlackBerry, the company that once dominated smart mobile devices, recently announced it is finally discontinuing key services that support its phones. As of today, the phones will no longer be provided with provisioning services, meaning they will gradually lose the ability to join networks, including the cellular network...
The key change is that BlackBerry will no longer be sending out provisioning updates to these devices. Provisioning information provides details on how the devices should establish connections with different types of networking equipment, including cellular and Wi-Fi networks. At some indeterminate point in the future, networking updates made by service providers will mean that the BlackBerry devices can no longer connect. As a result, BlackBerry says its devices "will no longer be expected to reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS, and 9-1-1 functionality."
Whew. Imagine breaking your leg and pulling out your BlackBerry to call 9-1-1- and not being able to get through. You gotta prepare for this.
Just in case you needed a specific breakdown of all the stuff you're not gonna be able to do:
There are a handful of software services that relied on connections to BlackBerry servers in order to function. So, if you relied on something like BlackBerry World or BlackBerry Link, those will stop functioning today.
Picture being the last guy in the BlackBerry Link offices, turning off the lights one last time as you shut the whole thing down for good. I feel like that would be a really momentous, moving occasion. Or maybe it wouldn't. I dunno.
Of course, Wired couldn't resist taking a gentle jab at the near-total irrelevancy of BlackBerry:
The number of people likely to be affected by this is vanishingly small.
Yeah, but if you're one of those people, think about what it must feel like!
You made it this far and you're finally gonna have to toss your BlackBerry. It has to be a very emotional turn for you.
Godspeed, Blackberry users!
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