Pour one out — BlackBerry smartphones no longer work as of today

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BlackBerry (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • BlackBerry 7.1 and earlier devices stopped working today.
  • The move was first announced in September of 2020.
  • Devices can no longer make calls, connect to WiFi, and more.

Mark the date. Today, January 4, 2022 — that's the date when BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry OS officially became end of life (EOL) products and stopped working. And stopped working in a pretty final way, too. BlackBerry owners can no longer makes calles, send messages, or even use them for 911 calls as of right now.

The move was announced in September of 2020 but the two-year timescale has now come to an end and BlackBerry services are no more. That means that BlackBerry devices the world over are now deader than ever. And they were already pretty dead.

As a reminder, the legacy services for BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier, BlackBerry 10 software, BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 and earlier versions, will no longer be available after January 4, 2022. As of this date, devices running these legacy services and software through either carrier or Wi-Fi connections will no longer reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS and 9-1-1 functionality.

If by some miracle you're reading this with a BlackBerry in hand, you can learn about what's going down over on the BlackBerry website. But suffice it to say, the best iPhone feature right now is that it works — maybe it's time you treated yourself to that shiny new iPhone 13 you've been lusting after?

Today marks another nail in the coffin for a company that essentially owned the smartphone business back in the day — something that started to change on the day the very first iPhone was announced.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.