Blackberry

It is an end of an era for BlackBerry. Under the charge of CEO John Chen, the former smartphone giant has shifted its focus from a complete product stack to a software development house. There will still be BlackBerry phones of course, but those will no longer be made by BlackBerry itself. And chances are, they will be your traditional all-screen smartphone.Well, except one. Chen has finally confirmed that the company will pay tribute, perhaps one last time, to the classic keyboard-wielding phone that made the company popular.

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While the BlackBerry Passport may have been the company’s most popular smartphone by way of eccentricity, the Priv is arguably it’s most contentious because of how it represented the company’s full embrace of the Android platform. Still, it has had its fans, especially with its sliding keyboard, and BlackBerry hasn’t forgotten them, and neither has Verizon. Now months after rival AT&T did so, Verizon is finally pushing Android 6.0 Marshmallow to the BlackBerry Priv, along with some special features of its own.

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BlackBerry has penned a deal with Ford that will see it developing car software, the company has announced. This could prove a vital part of the company’s efforts to grow beyond the bounds of its failed mobile business, but the extent of BlackBerry’s automotive efforts aren’t clear at this time. Ford isn’t new to using BlackBerry-built software, though it has previously acquired it through Panasonic. With this new deal, the automaker will be getting it straight from BlackBerry.

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To the complete surprise of no one, BlackBerry has finally and officially acknowledged the existence of the BlackBerry DTEK60. Of course, that also means that sales can finally kick off as well. BlackBerry must already know that almost everything about the DTEK60 has been leaked anyway, so instead of focusing on the smartphone’s high-end hardware, the company instead turns your attention instead towards why you’d want to buy the BlackBerry DTEK60. Aside from not exploding, of course. In a nutshell, it all boils down to whether you buy into BlackBerry’s idea and implementation of enterprise-level security.

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It’s almost ironic that just after BlackBerry officially confirmed that it’s turning itself into more of a software development and licensing shop, more tidbits about BlackBerry smartphones start popping up. And it isn’t just the BlackBerry DTEK60 “Argon” either. Now we’re also hearing more word about what is only known as the BlackBerry “Mercury”, seen on Geekbench bearing some rather mid-range specs. What is interesting, however, is the revelation that it would run Android 7.0 Nougat right out of the box. Or the rumor that it will have a physical QWERTY keyboard.

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Some retailers just can’t contain their excitement and “accidentally” put up product pages even before their official debut. That’s usually the case with popular smartphone brands, but it seems that even BlackBerry is not safe. B&H Photo might have gotten ahead of its self when it started the pre-order season for the BlackBerry DTEK60. Problem is, BlackBerry itself hasn’t even formally acknowledged its existence yet. Then again, we mostly already know everything there is to know about the higher end cousin of the DTEK50.

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It is almost ironic that the move that many have billed as the death of BlackBerry might actually be the one that saves BlackBerry 10 OS as well. Now that BlackBerry has moved towards being more of a software development and licensing shop, it means that the company won’t have be concerned about tanking sales of BB10 devices. Instead, they can simply license the operating system to manufacturers with a vested interest in it and let them worry about the sales instead.

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BlackBerry has announced that the company will no longer be developing hardware internally in their latest quarterly earnings call. In their latest announcement, they've suggested that their newest strategy includes "focusing on software development, including security and applications." This should come as no surprise to those familiar with the unit sales numbers of BlackBerry devices over the past several years, with each year - and indeed each quarter - decreasing in size for quite some time now.

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BlackBerry’s third fully Android smartphone, and probably its last for the year, is perhaps the strangest yet. Not exactly in terms of specs but in the price for those specs. Although related to the already launched DTEK50 by name, it is pretty much a high-end beast, at least based on BlackBerry’s own spec sheet. At the same time, however, the company might actually be putting a price tag that’s lower than equivalent smartphones this year.

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Barely a week ago, we saw signs that BlackBerry’s once rumored “Argon” Android smartphone was actually still on track to be launched. In fact, it would be formally named as the DTEK60, after the DTEK50 unveiled just last July. That has now been practically confirmed in certifications spotted at both the FCC and the Wi-Fi Alliance. In addition to the confirmation, the sighting also hints that the smartphone is likely to break cover soon, wrapping up BlackBerry’s schedule for Android devices for 2016.

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BlackBerry apparently isn’t done with Android smartphones yet. Or at least isn’t half done. If you remember the days preceding the announcement of the oddly named DTEK50, there were rumors about “Neon” and “Argon”, even a “Mercury” smartphones coming up. Well, “Neon” eventually became the DTEK50 we know today and, apparently, Argon is going to be the DTEK60 after all. That is according to a product page that was, funnily enough, “accidentally” published by BlackBerry itself. And even if BB takes the page down, the Internet now knows and will remember.

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We've been seeing BlackBerry enter the realm of Android hardware with the release of the PRIV and the recently revealed DTEK50, but now the company is looking to make a splash on the software side of things. BlackBerry announced today that it's rolling out BlackBerry Hub+ to a wider range of Android phones, giving Android users who don't own BlackBerry hardware a chance to try out its software suite aimed at organizing their social lives.

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