“What is dead may never die” – The famous adage from George R.R. Martin’s epic is quite apt for BlackBerry, a smartphone brand that keeps dying and being revived. After TCL announced they have parted ways with BlackBerry, it was assumed the brand will now finally retire from the hardware business, after being thwarted by the rise of Android and iOS. But it turns out there’s still more left for the BlackBerry saga to unfold.
You might just be seeing the BlackBerry logo stamped on a smartphone in a near you soon enough, thanks to a little-known mobile security company called Onward Mobility. And this time, BlackBerry will come back with 5G.
The licensee-manufacturer claims that the upcoming BlackBerry phone will be “highly secure” and will offer a “suite of end-to-end security solutions”. The brand will get the smartphone manufactured by Foxconn-subsidiary FIH Mobile, who will also be designing the smartphone. And if rumours are to be believed, there will be a hardware QWERTY keyboard, like the old BlackBerry smartphones.
Onward Mobility is a little known company in the smartphone hardware space, so we will have to wait and watch how this new saga in BlackBerry’s timeline plays out. But whatever be it, it’s commendable for the Canadian company to continue staying relevant even after giving up on smartphone hardware a few years ago.