
BlackBerry confirms it will end in-house hardware development - endswapper
http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/28/blackberry-confirms-it-will-end-in-house-hardware-development-will-outsource-to-partners/
======
whitecarpet
I've been never more productive with my smartphones than with a Blackberry.
The BB's keyboards are still unmatched. While I can type as fast with my
iPhone 7 where cursor control is thanks to 3D touch great a BB Classic is
still better—reasons why:

\- You can rest your fingers on the keyboard like on a real keyboard without
pressing the keys (you can't do that on a touch screen)

\- After a short time you start to touch type; although it's possible with an
iPhone too, it's not that convenient and most keep looking on their keyboards

\- Cursor control with the BB mini trackpad above the keyboard (Classic and
other models), is just terrific and often needed

\- Best is that all good apps including the launcher support keyboard short-
cuts and you will heavily use them since the keyboard is always present
(Classic and other models)

\- To give you a comparison: using a BB with a keyboard feels like using Vim
vs a GUI-based editor; you use Vim only with Vim's key binding fast and
reliable, no need to open sliding menus, touch buttons, etc.; it's very
satisfying and I really miss those times

The path BB went the recent months—putting Android on BB devices + some extra
security stuff (the so called DTEK)—was a good decision. But they brought the
super expensive Priv device with a slider keyboard which is for a BB rather
mediocre and not like the ones from the Classic, Bold, etc. Few weeks ago,
they brought us a non keyboard Alcatel-OEM phone which does not differ from
any other Android except this DTEK software which you can just download on any
phone (why???).

What they just need to do is to put Android on the Blackberry Classic or some
phone with a similar form factor. _That 's it._ Before they don't do this
final step, they can't claim that hardware is not profitable. I don't get why
the CEO didn't do this as the first thing when he started his Android
strategy.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_The BB 's keyboards are still unmatched._

Yeah, but does that really matter any more? I've found that my iPhone's
speech-to-text is pretty darned good, as long as I speak with a slightly
staccato cadence to make it clear where the word divisions are. I can do that
much more quickly than I can type. Generally I only have problems when the
connection to the server doing the conversion is poor.

I've never used Android's speech-to-text, but I have to assume it is
equivalent. Can an experienced BB typist really outperform speech-to-text
conversion?

~~~
jagermo
Does it work without Internet?

Tbh, I find it kind of creepy to have Apple, Google, Microsoft or Amazon
listen to everything I say. I prefer keyboards

~~~
imglorp
Anything typed can probably get scarfed up in a dozen ways, anyway, because
you don't know what's going on in the apps, platform, or malware. So speech
and kbd are probably around the same privacy.

------
camelNotation
There is a growing market for "dumb phones" among those of us that are
disillusioned with the smartphone lifestyle. It's not enormous, but it's out
there. Blackberry needs to target them.

If you buy a dumb phone, you not only give up the life-sucking abyss of social
media and mobile gaming, but you also give up decent cameras and useful tools
like navigation, group messages, and keyboard typing.

For those that want to escape the hole of smartphone existence, there is a
horrible trade-off to be made. Basic tools we are used to having must be given
up just for us to escape mobile app hell. It shouldn't be that way.

I want a Blackberry that allows me to group message, use a mobile browser, use
GPS navigation, take great photos, and type on their excellent physical
keyboard without any of the other temptations that come with smartphones. As a
bonus, I would love for it to be super secure. If they created a device for me
that did that, I would pay them so much money.

~~~
alex_c
>Blackberry needs to target them.

Why? Dumb phones are more or less a commodity - margins are tiny, and volumes
are likely small.

If Blackberry lost at the high-end smartphone game, then switching to
enterprise security or whatever they're working on makes way more sense than
shipping a few hundred thousand units of $100 dumb phones.

~~~
camelNotation
If you read my full post, I'm arguing for them to change the paradigm of the
"dumb phone." A dumb phone as it stands now is a commodity. I'm arguing that
there exists an untapped market of people who want a hybrid, capable of
filling the multi-functional tool role of a smartphone WITHOUT the focus on
social media, video, music, and other entertainment roles.

Why do I need to buy a flagship smartphone to get the best camera? Why do I
need to buy a smartphone to get group messages? Why do I need to buy a
smartphone to use my phone as a flashlight or navigate with Google Maps? Why
do I need to buy a smartphone to type on an intuitive keyboard?

I'm not a teenager. I want a productivity device, not a gaming system or a
miniature television or a twitter feed.

~~~
laumars
There's already a pretty wide spectrum of smart phones on the market. You
don't have to spend half your monthly income on a handset to get navigation,
messaging, etc.

~~~
camelNotation
True, but then you sacrifice other features in the package. You can't pay with
NFC on a cheap phone. The cameras suck on cheap phones. The screen quality
sucks. The build quality sucks. There are tradeoffs if you just go cheap.

I would pay flagship prices for a hybrid phone that focused on productivity
and ignored entertainment.

~~~
laumars
Android and Apple do also focus on productivity as well as entertainment. It
sounds like what you're asking for is basically a high end phone but only
supporting a subset of apps and a slide out keyboard. This sounds like
commercial suicide in my opinion.

As much as I'd love to see more handsets with physical keyboard, they never
seem to sell well enough for manufacturers to invest in releasing more models.
And I really don't know where you would draw the line with which apps to allow
and which not to. There'll always be someone with slightly different
requirements who would refuse to buy the handset because application _x_ or
_y_ wasn't available.

I just can't see how your preferences would equate to a big enough market for
Blackberry to make any money.

~~~
camelNotation
> "As much as I'd love to see more handsets with physical keyboard, they never
> seem to sell well enough for manufacturers to invest in releasing more
> models."

Because like the Priv, they attach keyboards to massive screens. Those screens
aren't necessary in a productivity phone. They make it unwieldy and ridiculous
to use. The form factor of a Blackberry Classic is all you need, just
integrate with Android.

~~~
Silhouette
_The form factor of a Blackberry Classic is all you need, just integrate with
Android._

I think you just inadvertently highlighted why that business model would be so
difficult.

I was almost 100% with you in this thread until that point. I too would like
to have a modern phone with a good hardware spec that is primarily a
communications tool and personal organiser, rather than an entertainment
product. I would like good battery life, security, privacy, and a convenient,
robust design that fits in my hand and my pocket. I don't see any phone on the
market today that is anywhere close to meeting my ideal requirements.

But then you mentioned Android, and for me that would immediately raise
security and privacy issues because of all the Google integration.

~~~
camelNotation
I'd be perfectly happy with a Blackberry Classic running BB10 OS. I just
really like Google's productivity apps and would miss them a great deal.

~~~
Silhouette
Fair enough. :-)

------
eumenides1
BB's strong suit isn't software or hardware. It's semi-competent at both.

BBM is amazing and BB10 OS is pretty amazing (name a phone that can multi-task
now, i.e. play youtube and write an email). But it also has lots of stinkers.

The keyboard is pretty rocking, devices can take a beating, but BB has various
hardware issues. Battery pulling to solve problems etc.

Now that they are going android, nobody knew that the world could only support
2 phone ecosystems as opposed to 3, i think they need to leverage the
strengths. Keep making the excellent software, cut the chafe (BB virtual
keyboard, BB Hub, BBM, etc). Also they have should leverage their hardware
group and make excellent and robust android phones.

1\. keep making the BB Classic using android OS. People want it. 2\. Make
phones that are robust. People want phones that can be beat up, 3\. Make
android phones that have better than 2 years of support. iPhones support 3-5
years which is amazing compared to android. I want to buy an android phone
that i don't have to throw out every 2 years. They have excellent devs that
could extend the shelf life of older android versions or just BB phones.

~~~
hobbes78
Even my cheap Android phone allows writing an email whilst watching a YouTube
video:

[http://imgur.com/a/s9MpE](http://imgur.com/a/s9MpE)

It's a Galaxy A5 (2016) and it's a fraction of the price of a Galaxy S7 or
iPhone 7...

------
nailer
BlackBerry owns a bunch of patents around Elliptic Curve Cryptography [1] -
since they own Certicom [2]. Maybe they're going to troll as a business model?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_patents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_patents)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Limited#Certicom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Limited#Certicom)

~~~
erichocean
And yet they don't seem to apply[0] to what may be the most widely used ECC
library, NaCl[1]. So maybe they're not really worth much...

[0] [http://cr.yp.to/ecdh/patents.html](http://cr.yp.to/ecdh/patents.html)

[1] [https://nacl.cr.yp.to/](https://nacl.cr.yp.to/)

~~~
nailer
Thanks re: [0]! Re [1] wouldn't openssl/boringssl/etc be the most widely used
ECC library? Most people are using ECC with older style non-Edwards curves,
also openssl has curve25519 in the next major release. NaCl seems to only do
newer algos according to [https://nacl.cr.yp.to/securing-
communication.pdf](https://nacl.cr.yp.to/securing-communication.pdf) \- what
software uses NaCl now? Thanks!

------
anexprogrammer
That's a shame, I figure we need a few players trying to be different. The
phone space has become so homogenised.

I had half an eye open for the next model in the Classic range, to switch from
Android.

As my usage has changed the last few years, having a proper keyboard again is
more appealing, along with less desire for a passive consumption tablet.

------
IshKebab
Someone at work had a Blackberry Android phone that I had a brief play with.
Hardware seemed nice and it had the latest security updates.

Maybe they just need to rebrand.

~~~
Silhouette
_Hardware seemed nice and it had the latest security updates._

Ironically, it was security that put me off BlackBerry as a brand.

There was the whole mess over whether their messaging systems were actually
secure in technical terms, and the final conclusion seemed to be that some of
them weren't. Apple handled the related issues much better.

More than that, when they brought out the Priv and made a big deal about
putting their DTEK software on top of Android for security and privacy, there
was a glaring hole in their presentation: it was all about _detecting_ bad
things when they were already happening, but I never found a single reference
to _preventing_ those bad things from happening in the first place.

Those two issues convinced me very clearly that modern BlackBerry is more
about style than substance when it comes to security and privacy. It's sad,
because as someone with a very productivity/professional focus with mobile
devices, I should have been their ideal customer and they should have been the
closest to my ideal phone maker of any of the major brands.

~~~
ClassyJacket
When Blackberry went Android, they threw security out the window. Until
Marshmallow, Android made absolutely no attempt at any kind of security
whatsoever - any app could read anything on your phone and there was nothing
you could do to stop it - messages, contacts, microphone, location - and to
this day, apps still have to voluntarily opt in to the permission system.

~~~
IshKebab
That totally untrue. You needed to ask for permission for those things at
install time. It wasn't a great system, sure, but what you said is objectively
false.

And apps do not have to voluntarily opt in to the permission system. Any app
that targets Android 6 or later is required to use it.

Android has enough security problems without having to make them up.

~~~
ClassyJacket
>You needed to ask for permission for those things at install time

No, apps didn't have to _ask_. They had to _tell_ you, but they didn't _ask_
\- you couldn't say no. All you could do is never install the app, which we
all know is not realistic. Everybody's just clicking straight through that
screen because every app simply requests almost every permission. People
aren't gonna buy a 1000$ phone and then not install Facebook because it needs
Contacts permission.

Personally, I just gave up on Android and got an iPhone.

> Any app that targets Android 6 or later is required to use it.

Sure, but apps can simply target Android 5 to avoid it. It's not like enough
Android phones get updates for apps to be able to be exclusive to anything
less than Android ~4 years old.

I'll concede my wording should've been more specific, but my main point is
correct.

------
Cuuugi
I've got a Priv, and i am happy with it. Being a resident of SW Ontario, i
knew this was coming for years. It's still sad though.

------
nathcd
I'd been holding out hope for a good Blackberry Classic-like with Android for
a while (like others in the thread, clearly). If the BB Rome/Mercury is indeed
cancelled, my only other hope is that a future Fairphone[1] device gets a
physical keyboard module. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of hope that it'd
be anywhere near as good as a BB keyboard, nor that it'd have features like
sliding over the keyboard to move the cursor/scroll a page like recent BBs
have had.

[1] [https://fairphone.com/](https://fairphone.com/)

------
hbosch
How many companies not named Apple are doing great hardware AND software
anymore? Sounds like a cold world for these types of players... Seems more and
more people who did both are simply picking one side anymore.

~~~
SG-
For a while Nintendo, and they also got rid of the headphone jack on the GBA
at one point.

------
protomyth
I was pretty excited about the concept[1] (maybe not the exact execution[2])
of the keyboard on the Passport. It seems like there was still a place for
BlackBerry but the chasing Apple doomed them[3].

1)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNVT95S6_eE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNVT95S6_eE)

2) I would have preferred more keys

3) from the book [https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Signal-Extraordinary-
Spectacul...](https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Signal-Extraordinary-Spectacular-
BlackBerry/dp/1250060176/)

------
JohnTHaller
I'd still pay good money for an Android phone with a proper landscape slide
out keyboard. Think an updated G1/Dream or G2/Desire Z but with a nice 5"\+
screen and top tier specs.

------
_Codemonkeyism
I was a Blackberry user and evangelist vor many years (keyboard shortcuts made
me very productive and the old Blackberies were built like tanks).

Then I've got a Passport, which is the crappiest phone I've ever had. I did
love the swipe to mail, message hub, scrolling keyboard and keyboard.

Reception was so bad to render it unusable.

It fell to the ground from hip level and had a cracked board.

"Android" compatibily never worked for me as most software I've tried to use
needed Google Play services which were a pain to maintain and install.

------
gcb0
as an owner of an Android black berry, i say they are killing the wrong side.

the hardware is still good (Android phone with slide out keyboard where each
key has capacitive touch sensors)

the software not only is pure garbage, it keeps getting worse with each
update.

if blackberry did open hardware, and released all specs so we could have true
open Android phones, it would dominate the market as the pc clones dominated
the computer market of the past.

------
Taylor_OD
BlackBerry's keyboard is its killer app. I still cant type on my touchscreen
without looking. When I was 14 I was able to have a conversation via text
under the table while eating dinner with my family thanks to my old keyboard
phone. If a android phone was released with a keyboard I think it could carve
out a profitable chunk of the market.

~~~
oldmanjay
There have been many failed attempts at exactly that. Those who want a
keyboard are vocal about the ostensible size of the market but don't seem to
spend enough money to support the claim.

------
Fej
How is BlackBerry going to pivot? Does anyone actually care about their
software?

Don't Apple, Google, and Samsung provide "good enough" enterprise services? If
so then I really don't see what their plans are.

~~~
anmorgan
They also have QNX.

[http://www.qnx.com/content/qnx/en.html](http://www.qnx.com/content/qnx/en.html)

------
budhajeewa
Just kill it in entirety already and move on to new things. Neither Android
nor Apple is going to die in the forseeable future, so a BlackBerry operating
system doesn't stand a chance.

~~~
maxsilver
> Just kill it in entirety already (snip) a BlackBerry operating system
> doesn't stand a chance.

They did that already. BlackBerry's last two phones were 100% pure Android
devices, with full access to Play Store apps, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs,
etc, just like every other major Android phone has.

~~~
dan1234
If they're not making BBOS and they're not designing new hardware, what are
they doing now? Are they now just app developers?

~~~
roymurdock
They have a strong embedded OS/tools/middleware (QNX) and cryptography
(Certicom) portfolio with QNX in particular being a major player in the
automotive embedded software/middleware market and they are moving into the
medical market.

They are reorganizing around the IoT movement as their software assets can be
retooled for more lucrative "connected devices" markets outside of
smartphones.

------
maxsilver
For what it's worth, the BlackBerry Priv is hands-down my favorite Android
phone I've ever owned. It's a great product that deserved more success than it
received.

~~~
51Cards
Friend of mine just bought one a couple weeks ago and has been thrilled with
it. I may take a look at one myself.

------
phodo
This is out of the Sega playbook
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega)

------
scj
I have to admit that I've never used a BB, but isn't their brand identity
around the keypads on their phones?

Or do they have an amazing piece of software that I'm missing out on?

~~~
Cuuugi
IIRC their big money maker is the Blackberry Enterprise Server, or BES. I'm
not up to date on the feature's so don't quote me on it. It used to partition
my phone so i had a Work/Personal work space (so that work could wipe my work
related info) They pivoted to a multiplatform system back when things started
to look grim for Blackberry, and that's probably whats kept them afloat.

It's massively overpriced for what it is, but people still seem to be buying
it.

[http://ca.blackberry.com/enterprise.html](http://ca.blackberry.com/enterprise.html)

~~~
Cuuugi
Oh, Yeah! To add on to my point, Blackberry released their private keys to the
RCMP, so all BBM traffic could be decrypted. They didn't release the BES keys
though because feature?

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rcmp-blackberry-hack-
montr...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rcmp-blackberry-hack-montreal-mob-
murder-pub-ban-lifted-1.3629222)

~~~
snuxoll
Can't release BES keys unless BlackBerry put a backdoor in the software, the
whole point of BES is you don't go through the BIS but communicate with the
BES directly with encryption managed directly by it.

------
amenghra
BlackBerry had a fine product for a specific market segment until the
press/media started comparing them to consumer devices.

What if they had focused on what they were good at?

~~~
pwthornton
It eventually became a point where the iPhone was a better consumer and
professional device. The Blackberry simply wasn't a real smartphone with a
real OS.

------
jagermo
This sucks. The Priv is a decent android phone with an excellent keyboard and
monthly security updates. So sad.

On the other hand, they screwed themselves pretty good.

------
ultrasaurus
I was at the (only?) Blackberry store in New York. They had some nice looking
phones, but the magic was gone.

------
eat_your_potato
It can give something good like Google's Nexus, or something very poor
depending on the manufacturer chosen

------
pcollinsmokonut
"BlackBerry confirms it will stick to its knitting as a patent troll"

------
wcummings
I have a Q10, pretty decent phone, love their keyboards. This is too bad.

------
sxcurry
On mobile trends: "The most exciting mobile trend is full Qwerty keyboards.
I'm sorry, it really is. I'm not making this up." Lazaridis, May 2008. Almost
Trump-like in his dogged grasp of fantasy.

------
kebolio
Echoes the sale of the ThinkPad to Lenovo...

------
msh
This can hardly surprise anyone.

------
aziraphale
Anyone who did Blackberry development back in the day, before OS 10 and
Android, knows why they're now in this state. It was an abysmal experience,
and they either didn't care or didn't understand the importance of keeping
developers onside once Apple and Google started taking market share. Code-
signing servers that were down on a regular basis, sometimes for days, which
meant you couldn't deploy your app to real hardware. Simulators that took 5-10
minutes to start up and had no hot-reloading. God knows how many different
system configurations that you were expected to support, with different screen
sizes, bit-depth, input devices, internet connectivity (they used to offer
mobile data plans which would only connect to "approved" services), etc. No
official developer support beyond the sparsely-populated community forums. It
was just horrible.

Then when something finally did click it was far too late (by at least 5
years) to improve their own ecosystem, hence the jump to Android.

I have very little sympathy for them now. You reap what you sow.

~~~
avh02
Man, I'm always surprised there aren't more pissed off BB developers. It was a
horrible experience, and I agree that it's their stubbornness and
unwillingness to improve and go all the NIH-syndrome that ended them up here.

If anything, their hardware wasn't bad, it's their software that was rotten.

------
TruthSHIFT
"We'll be fine." -BlackBerry CEO Jim Balsillie

~~~
wreft
What was he supposed to say? "We're fucked, sell the stock, guys."

------
jkot
They should have done this 5 years ago. Dozens Chinese companies can produce
quality phones with keyboard.

Imagine if BB would produce hardened-secured-enterprisey version of Android,
rather than doing their 'not invented here'. They could had 30% of market by
now.

~~~
wreft
They do provide an android phone.

~~~
jkot
too little, too late

