The reports of BlackBerry's death were greatly exaggerated, with 5G smartphone still coming... someday
In many ways and for many hardcore fans that devoted years of their lives and thousands of bucks of their hard-earned money to the company, BlackBerry died a predictable yet painful death back in 2016, when TCL became the brand's global licensee.
For other loyal QWERTY keyboard followers, 2020 dealt another huge blow, as TCL unceremoniously decided to give up on the once mighty handset brand as well and instead improve its focus on self-labeled devices for major markets like the US.
Further rubbing salt into a wound that may never heal for some mobile productivity addicts, the beginning of 2022 just so happened to bring with it the inevitable end of BlackBerry OS support while OnwardMobility remained silent on the brand's first "5G smartphones", which were supposed to be released in 2021.
That promise from just a few months after TCL threw in the QWERTY towel obviously didn't pan out, but for what it's worth, we're finally getting confirmation that an "ultra-secure 5G enterprise smartphone (still with a keyboard!)" is very much in the pipeline.
In all fairness, no one explicitly claimed or speculated that the little-known Austin-based outfit had cancelled its 2020-announced plans to revive BlackBerry, but after nearly six months of complete radio silence, it does seem fitting for the company to come out and deny its death.
Unfortunately, we still have no idea exactly what this 5G-enabled "ultra-secure" handset will be all about, and it's certainly not encouraging that OnwardMobility has dropped the plural from its buzz-building messaging to refer to a single smartphone that may or may not hit store shelves this year.
That's right, the new BlackBerry brand licensee is not ready to commit to any launch timelines or schedules whatsoever this time around, merely vowing to provide "more regular updates starting this month" that should "clarify and answer many of your questions" surrounding the legendary name's future in a more competitive and harder to penetrate market than ever before.
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