• Classic BlackBerry phones will stop working January 4 [telecom]

    From Sean Murphy@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jan 2 18:06:31 2022
    By Samantha Murphy Kelly

    (CNN)You soon won't be able to use that old BlackBerry phone sitting
    at the bottom of your drawer somewhere.

    Starting Tuesday, January 4, the company will stop running support for
    its classic devices running BlackBerry 10, 7.1 OS and earlier. This
    means all of its older devices not running on Android software will no
    longer be able to use data, send text messages, access the internet or
    make calls, even to 911.

    https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/01/tech/blackberry-end-of-life/index.html

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  • From Michael Trew@21:1/5 to Sean Murphy on Mon Jan 3 11:45:18 2022
    On 1/2/2022 13:06, Sean Murphy wrote:
    By Samantha Murphy Kelly

    (CNN)You soon won't be able to use that old BlackBerry phone sitting
    at the bottom of your drawer somewhere.

    Starting Tuesday, January 4, the company will stop running support for
    its classic devices running BlackBerry 10, 7.1 OS and earlier. This
    means all of its older devices not running on Android software will no
    longer be able to use data, send text messages, access the internet or
    make calls, even to 911.

    https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/01/tech/blackberry-end-of-life/index.html

    I've read through that article, but I still do not understand the
    technical aspects of it. For instance: I have a Nokia 3390 from 2001
    here. It's a 2G only phone, but if I pop the SIM card from my current
    phone (T-Mobile) into it, it still receives calls and text messages,
    almost 21 years later.

    I don't understand how "stopping support" can make the basic functions
    of the phone cease to work. Do the cellular signals to/from the phone
    some how relay through Blackberry's data servers? One would think that calls/texts/data would be direct signals from your wireless carrier to
    your phone.

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  • From Marco Moock@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jan 3 20:45:47 2022
    Am Sonntag, 02. Januar 2022, um 18:06:31 Uhr schrieb Sean Murphy:

    Starting Tuesday, January 4, the company will stop running support for
    its classic devices running BlackBerry 10, 7.1 OS and earlier. This
    means all of its older devices not running on Android software will no
    longer be able to use data, send text messages, access the internet or
    make calls, even to 911.

    It is interesting that the devices stop working when the support ends.
    Other Android devices don't have that "feature".

    (interim moderator's note: Blackberry phones receive some services from Blackberry, and those were turned off. There has been some discussion on crackberry.com about how to circumvent this, but it's not trivial. Blackberry-branded Android phones still work. As of this morning my old Blackberry Classic, with no SIM card, still works for Wi-Fi access.)

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