One of the most awaited phones of last year – a BlackBerry phone with 5G support is officially dead! This comes after its parent company loses rights to the brand name.
OnwardMobility, the current parent of BlackBerry has lost rights to the brand name, as the concerned rights are canceled. The last BlackBerry launched was years back, bearing its brand name but running on Android and manufactured by TCL.
BlackBerry is Almost Dead
Just when we thought BlackBerry phones are dead, the company made a surprising announcement last month. Noting as “Contrary to popular belief, we are not dead“, BlackBerry stated they’re working on a 5G supported new phone that’d come soon. And promised to give updates every month.
While they failed by providing no update on this last month, a new report now tells that the brand’s planned 5G phone is officially dead! This is according to Kevin Michaluk, founder of CrackBerry, who said the OnwardMobility (parent company of BlackBerry) is not moving forward with the project, as its license to use the BlackBerry name was canceled.
BlackBerry’s touted 5G phone was originally scheduled for August 2021 but failed due to a number of issues. One among them is the supply chain constraints, and also the CEO John Chen’s change of mind to divert brand onto something else.
The last product from BlackBerry was KEYone and KEY2, which run on Android and were manufactured by TCL after it licensed its brand name to it. But, with OnwardMobility losing rights to the BlackBerry brand now, shelves the anticipated 5G phone project forever.
Though no renders of the phone were ever released, it’s said to model like its Priv counterpart, and still, comes with the keypad. The company has already sold $600 million worth of its mobile patents earlier this month.
