No actual device announced, just a licensing agreement for the Blackberry brand to a Foxconn subsidiary "to deliver a new 5G BlackBerry Android smartphone with physical keyboard, in the first half of 2021 in North America and Europe".<p>Bad title, the original is "OnwardMobility Announces Agreements with BlackBerry and Foxconn Subsidiary FIH Mobile to Bring BlackBerry 5G Smartphones to Market" which I might summarize as "Foxconn Subsidiary Licenses Blackberry Brand".
Is there a name for the formula that blackberry and others follow?<p>1) successful consumer business<p>2) lose in the market so pivot to b2b<p>3) slow long decline<p>4) sell brand / assets to somebody else<p>5) new money results in a “hey we are going back to our roots” and launch products they originally were known for<p>6) finally go out of business for real, or sell remaining IP to a troll
God I wish BB10 was open sourced. Today the biggest problem with phones is their bloated runtimes, android being the largest offender. I want something with the form factor of the q10 running a QNX-based os I can ssh to and use rsync to copy music, contacts, and a calendar to.
Relatedly I find it amazing that Planet Computers has found a niche and developed multiple cell phones with tiny qwerty keyboards.<p><a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transformer#/" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...</a><p><a href="https://store.planetcom.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">https://store.planetcom.co.uk/</a>
As someone currently with a Key1 and have stubbornly held onto physical keyboards, I am hopeful this pans out. But other phone with physical keyboards have been promised and never come to fruition
I would be super into a phone with a physical keyboard, but I am on Google Fi and I am hesitant to switch.<p>I've given up on swipe typing. I have been using it for almost a decade and I still cannot type effectively with it. I am ready to go back to physical keys.
I remember a few years ago Samsung selling a keyboard case for one of it's phones [0]. If I recall the phone would detect it and scale the UI so that the keyboard wouldn't cover any important part of the screen.<p>Sounds like the ideal tradeoff. I've never seen one in real life however, so that tells me how big the demand for a physical keyboard is.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/samsung-keyboard-cover-for-galaxy-s8-plus-a-physical-keyboard-when-you-need-it/" rel="nofollow">https://www.zdnet.com/article/samsung-keyboard-cover-for-gal...</a>
What percentage of the market for phones come with physical keyboards? I know some cling to the idea but I think the technology has progressed far enough to mostly eclipse it in every practical way, certain holdouts not withstanding, and the market reflects that.