BlackBerry Phones: Why There Are No New Models Anymore

Can you still buy a BlackBerry?

Not new ones. The last BlackBerry to hit the market was the KEY2 LE from 2018, manufactured by TCL. That company terminated the license on August 31, 2020, after which the American startup OnwardMobility took over with the promise of a 5G device with a keyboard. That device never materialized; the company shut down in 2022 without ever releasing a single product. Since then, no one has revived the brand.

You can still find these devices on the secondhand or refurbished market. Whether that’s a good idea depends on which model you have.

Does my old BlackBerry still work?

That varies by operating system, and the difference is significant.

• BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10: as of January 4, 2022, BlackBerry shut down the infrastructure behind these systems. As a result, making calls, sending messages, accessing data, and even dialing emergency numbers may no longer work. These devices have become collector’s items, not everyday tools.
• The Android models: the KEYone, KEY2, KEY2 LE and the DTEK series run on Android and are still technically functional. However, they haven’t received security updates for years, and many apps now require a newer version of Android. They’re fine for making calls and sending messages, but using them as a primary device is unwise.
• Replacement Parts: Batteries and screens are no longer officially available. You’ll have to rely on the secondhand market and parts of unknown origin.

What Happened to BlackBerry

BlackBerry still exists, just not as a phone brand. The Canadian company, known as RIM (Research In Motion) until 2013, now sells security software for businesses and governments, as well as the QNX operating system that runs in millions of cars. It hasn’t manufactured phones itself since 2016.

The patents are gone, too. In 2023, BlackBerry sold its portfolio of mobile patents to Malikie Innovations, severing the last tangible link to its past as a phone manufacturer.

From Market Leader to Brand Licensee

In its early years, RIM primarily developed business communication products such as modems and payment terminals. The 1996 Inter@ctive Pager was a hit because it allowed users to send and receive short messages, featuring a full keyboard instead of the receive-only pagers of the time.

In 1999, the first BlackBerry product followed: the BlackBerry 850, which could retrieve email from a Microsoft Exchange Server via the company’s proprietary BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The first true phone was the BlackBerry 957, released in April 2000. Many models followed, all sharing the same philosophy: business email, secure, with a physical keyboard.

The first cracks began to appear in 2011. The iPhone and Windows Mobile didn’t provide a solution with decent touchscreen support, and once iOS and Windows also became compatible with Exchange, business customers switched over. The company parted ways with its founders and focused on BlackBerry 10, built on the QNX platform. Meanwhile, phones became so powerful and energy-efficient that services like BES and BIS became obsolete. Revenue dried up, and in 2013, BlackBerry put itself up for sale.

That sale fell through, but the rounds of layoffs did not. Under John Chen, appointed in late 2013, BlackBerry decided to stop manufacturing phones itself. The brand name was licensed to TCL for the global market, to Optiemus Infracom for India, and to BB Merah Putih for Indonesia. That arrangement lasted until 2020.

The series BlackBerry leaves behind

All of the series listed below have been discontinued. If you come across them secondhand, you’ll know what you’re looking at.

• Bold, Curve, and Pearl: the classics on BlackBerry OS, from the years when the brand dominated the business market.
• Q and Z series: the BlackBerry 10 generation, with the Q as the keyboard model and the Z as the touchscreen-only device. Largely unusable since January 2022.
• DTEK series: the first Android devices, featuring a large touchscreen and a strong focus on security.
• KEY series: the final models, the KEYone and the KEY2, featuring Android and the familiar physical keyboard. The KEY2 LE from 2018 marked the end of the line.
• Evolve series: entry-level models from Optimus for India, never officially released here.

The Porsche Design models

The Porsche Design models deserve a special mention. BlackBerry collaborated for years with the automaker’s design studio, resulting in luxury versions of existing devices: sleeker lines, more expensive materials, and a significantly higher price tag. With the brand’s decline, that collaboration also came to an end.

Still looking for a phone with a physical keyboard?

The demand for keyboards hasn’t disappeared—but the brand behind them has. There are still three options, and none of them bear the BlackBerry name.

• Unihertz Titan 2: a modern Android phone with a full keyboard, from a manufacturer that specializes in this very niche. We previously reported that the Passport gained an unofficial successor with this device.
• Clicks: not a phone, but a case with a keyboard that you click onto an existing iPhone or Android device. This way, you keep your own software and updates.
• Converted Classics: The Chinese company Zinwa is retrofitting old BlackBerry Classic cases with modern Android hardware. Nostalgic, but it remains a small player without the warranty and updates of a major brand.

Will BlackBerry ever make a comeback?

Nothing has been officially announced, but the rumors keep coming. In 2025, a mysterious post surfaced on Reddit about a BlackBerry Classic running Android, though no one ever showed any actual hardware afterward. Such posts almost always rely on anonymous sources without verifiable evidence. As long as no one presents a license, the conclusion remains the same: the physical-keyboard phone lives on with other brands, but the BlackBerry name does not.