The BlackBerry is coming back

It’s not a “real” BlackBerry phone, per se, because Tornbei (BB) has been out of the phone business since 2016. But the company has continued to license its brand to phone manufacturers over the years, and it responded to the call of a new licensee this year – OnwardMobility, an Austin, Texas, company.

We do not know much about the OnwardMobility version of the BlackBerry phone, other than that it will run Android, it will have 5G connectivity, and the company claims that it will sometimes debut in the first half of 2021. Also Foxconn (HNHPF) subsidiary FIH will produce the new BlackBerry.

BlackBerry phones were notorious for two things: a physical keyboard and secure top-of-the-line. While modern smartphones – Apple’s iOS in particular – have become remarkably more secure in recent decades, OnwardMobility is paying the barrage of remote employees working on their mobile phones, giving IT departments across the country a collective heart attack .

“Enterprise professionals are envious of secure 5G devices that enable productivity without sacrificing the user experience,” said Peter Franklin, CEO of OnwardMobility, in a statement. “BlackBerry smartphones are known for protecting communication, privacy and data.”

No one expects the new BlackBerry phone to go gangbusters. It’s long since relegated to niche status to the iPhone and then Android ate its lunch.

But BlackBerry used to be the king of smartphones. At its peak in 2012, it had over 80 million active users, and they were a status symbol – giving a sort of “I’m busy and I let you know” vibe.

The company got its start in 1996 as Research In Motion, and it named its devices two-way pagers. The first gadget, the “Inter @ ctive Pager,” allowed customers to respond to pages with a physical keyboard – a kind of text / email hybrid. Three years later, RIM introduced the BlackBerry name with the BlackBerry 850.

Eventually, BlackBerry phones gained support for real-time email, apps, web browsing, and BBM – an encrypted text messaging platform that predates and survives WhatsApp long after BlackBerry was overtaken by its rivals.

For the nostalgic people out there – and people who just like typing on a physical keyboard – they may have made BlackBerry phones through TCL in recent years. However, the license has expired, and OnwardMobility carries the torch.