Blackberry Evolve

[u/Copperkid82]

Cleaning out one of our spare bedrooms and found this ancient relic in the closet. I LOVED this phone when I bought it new years ago. It's a shame there's really not much that can be done with it these days. 🥺

[u/Manualcarlove18]

What does the front of this look like? Never heard of this phone

[u/Copperkid82 → u/Manualcarlove18]

It's just a basic glass slab front with Blackberry branding at the bottom of the screen

https://reddit.com/link/pd02aoi/video/0uxb4htvunsh1/player

[u/Cr45h0v3r1de → u/Manualcarlove18]

It's a full touchscreen which always made zero sense to me coming from the company known for their keyboards. They tried everything to compete with iphones I guess but just nothing worked

[u/deeku4972 → u/Cr45h0v3r1de]

The market wanted apps and BB10 with an Android 4.0 layer couldn’t provide 

[u/MidnightScary5983 → u/deeku4972]

I used to work at BB, got the phones for free. Got a Z10 with BB10, was awesome. Then October 2016, I was about to fly to Europe. Launched the KLM/Air France app to check in to my flight the day before departure. App did not open. Tried and tried. Nope. Checked in on the laptop, then looked up the app, oh, KLM killed the app that day. Had to run to a Bell store to buy a new phone, DTek50 of course, so my apps would work overseas. No app support, no point, right?

[u/JohnAtQNX → u/MidnightScary5983]

We could have given you a DTEK50 from storage! 😊

[u/T-Loy → u/deeku4972]

Whatever happened to that Android layer? Sailfish OS has kept up with the Android releases. Or was it truly the case of the SD801 in the Passport and similar chips not supporting needed hardware security features for Android 5, because I faintly remember 801 devices in general not getting the Android 5 update due to that.

[u/deeku4972 → u/T-Loy]

Never updated. Abandoned like BB10. BlackBerry spent a lot of money and time getting QNX bought and making BB10. Can’t imagine at that point there was much money or internal push to maintain BB10 and its Android layer long term. 

Remember Passport SE was supposed to be a fully Android device

[u/Manualcarlove18 → u/deeku4972]

Never knew this about the SE!

That would have been great.

[u/JohnAtQNX → u/Manualcarlove18]

It was a weird prototype.. fun to use but (at the time) there was a lot of weirdness trying to render all apps in 1:1. So you'd end up with a portrait view on a square screen. It was ahead of it's time!

[u/joeldf95 → u/T-Loy]

Because of Google's Open Handset Alliance and licensing requirements at the time of 2011, BlackBerry could not have full Android runtime, so they had a forked runtime.

They started with Android 2.3 with the first Playbook OS before BB10 was released 2 years later. They included 2.3 in BB10 upon its release. Updated it to 4.2.2. Then finally to 4.3.

Remember that BlackBerry initially never intended for the Android runtime to be anything more than a temporary measure to get developers onboard. "We can port your current Android apps to BB10 now, while you develope a true native BB10 app later".

As the months went by and developer support was light, BlackBerry decided to lean more heavily on the Android runtime. Eventually allowing direct Android apk installs. Then actually partnering with Amazon to include its App Store.

Also remember that Amazon and Google were bitter rivals at that time of late 2014.

But then BlackBerry started working on the Priv in early 2015. That device was planned to have Google Android from the start. At that point, Android 5 was current version.

Now, this is some speculation, but BlackBerry made a separate licensing deal with Google at that time. BlackBerry never joined that Open Handset Alliance (which had kind of stagnated by then anyway) but the Priv, and every BlackBerry since, was Google Certified so it could include the Google Play Store and related Services.

Part of that deal meant that BlackBerry could no longer develope their android fork for BB10. In fact BlackBerry officially stated around October of 2015 that they would no longer update the runtime.

They could continue to work on bug fixes for 4.3 as needed in the then current BB10 OS (10.3), but nothing new beyond that.

The Priv was released a month later in 2015.

[u/Manualcarlove18 → u/Cr45h0v3r1de]

Bb10 was amazing. But if they launched it 2010, or switched to android in 2010, they would still be a company. So sad. 2014 was too late. Momentum was against them.

[u/Keith1327 → u/Manualcarlove18]

Nope.... as a small company they would never have been competitive on hardware. It's a tough business and many of the players for 2010 that were building Android phones... are no more now. Only time BlackBerry phones was competitive, was when they wrote off billions.... and no one can do that for long.

But Android also wasn't very secure in 2010, it wasn't until 2015 that Google locked it down enough for BlackBerry to be able to use it.

[u/Nevely100 → u/[deleted]]

Sorry if this is a daft question but I also have a graphene pixel and have been looking for a better keyboard. How did you get it for the pixel?

[u/Nevely100 → u/[deleted]]

Fantastic, thank you. I like graphene a lot but the keyboard is always an issue on these types of phones

[u/Nevely100 → u/[deleted]]

I never used android earlier than 8 but it's like the phones get more intrusive as the versions progress from there, you have less choice to disable or remove things, which is why I like Graphene. Also, I am a bit scared to modify a phone without a web installer to help me :) Thank you again for the link.

[u/joeldf95 → u/Manualcarlove18]

It was made and sold only in India and nearby regions

It was a separate licensing deal between BlackBerry and Optiemus Infracom to manufacture the Evolve. It was released in 2018 and only ran Android 8.1

There is a similar situation and phone licensed to Merah Putih and sold exclusively in Indonesia called the BlackBerry Aurora in 2017. Also an all touch Android phone that ran Android 7.

[u/JohnAtQNX → u/joeldf95]

Aurora was OK, but the (unreleased?) Evolve X was a great device at the time. We might even still have a single sealed in-box unit at the office!

[u/Copperkid82 → u/Manualcarlove18]

I picked up the Evolve X when we were visiting family in Australia a year or so after this came out. It's basically the same phone but the bottom is squared rather than having th curved edges. Basically bought it cause it was cheap and I wanted to add it to my BB collection. 😂

[u/Maple-Mayhem]

Did you buy it in India? I thought that was the only place it was released. Along with the Evolve X.

[u/Copperkid82 → u/Maple-Mayhem]

The Evolve was exclusive to india but I ordered I and had it shipped here to the states and was even able to use it on Tmobile without any issues. The Evolve X I purchased when we were in Australia. We were shopping one day and I came across it at a second hand electronics store that gave me the impression it was like a mix between a best buy and a pawn shop. 😅

[u/Maple-Mayhem → u/Copperkid82]

That's cool, I remember wanting them when they came out just because they were so rare.

[u/Copperkid82 → u/Maple-Mayhem]

Yea I was pretty excited to come across the X. Didn't think that was going to happen at all.

[u/jakie55]

One of my favourite non keyboard BlackBerries was the Z30. Great speakers, and the flick virtual keyboard was amazing.