If you think Apple’s new iPhone lineup needs even more buttons, on October 7th you can preorder iPhone 16 versions of Clicks’ BlackBerry-like keyboard case, with shipping expected in November.
The cases will be available in three colors: surf, spice, and onyx, and will be $139 for the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro, or $159 for the iPhone 16 Plus and 16 Pro Max.
We’ve already seen the story of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry turned into a cinematic drama, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, director Eddie Schmidt is in the early stages of production on a documentary about the iconic smartphone.
After over a month with interim CEO and ex-Verizon CTO Richard Lynch, Blackberry gave the job to John Giamatteo, who led its cybersecurity business. Lynch will stay on and chair its board of directors. Giamatteo took over for ex-CEO John Chen.
Blackberry has also decided not to take its IoT business public after all, as it said in October it would after spinning the division off from its cybersecurity branch.
If you can, then you my friend are a Waterloo supernerd. But it’s wasted knowledge as John Chen is retiring next week, after serving as CEO since 2013, six years after the iPhone (and later Android) put the brakes on Research In Motion. Stepping into the roll as interim CEO will be Richard Lynch, BlackBerry board member and ex-Verizon CTO.
It’s going to separate its IoT and cybersecurity businesses, reports Reuters, and is planning an IPO for the IoT side of the house next fiscal year. We’ll see how that goes!
We mourned the end of BlackBerry devices running BlackBerry’s software in December 2021. But earlier this year, we got to relive the history of those devices thanks to the BlackBerry movie — which is a movie I still need to see.
If you do, make sure you listen to our interview with Matt Johnson, who directed the movie and also plays Doug, the headband-wearing sidekick. We talked about his favorite and least-favorite tech movies, why BlackBerry lost to the iPhone, and why the world might still want and need something like it.
If you’re not planning to see the movie? You should. It’s great.
As always, if you’re not a fan of The Always Sunny Podcast, it’s time to change that. This week’s a good one even if you’re not into It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, though, because the gang talks about BlackBerry, which stars Glenn Howerton as Research In Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie, and comes out this Friday.
The BlackBerry stuff starts about 30 minutes in. It’s got lots of fun takes on the iPhone, and behind-the-scenes stories about the movie.
Not the new ones, whoever is making those now. I mean a new version of the old idea, about a phone that made you more productive but didn’t try to capture all your time and money. BlackBerry director Matt Johnson, who we interviewed on The Vergecast this week, thinks you might. I kind of think I would.
(This whole episode is really fun, by the way: we talked about computer-screen movies, directors commentary, and much more. Check it out!)
The Research in Motion story is back in the news because of the (great-looking!) Blackberry movie that’s set to hit on May 12th — and we covered the story intensely during our early years when it wasn’t a guarantee that the iPhone and Android would come to dominate the smartphone market. Here’s our deep-dive feature from back then, which holds up. (Apart from the layout being a little broken. Apologies — it has been a long decade for legacy web pages.)
Seriously, it looks great.
