BlackBerry 10 (BB10) is a discontinued proprietary mobile operating system for the BlackBerry line of smartphones, both developed by BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research In Motion). Released in January 2013, BlackBerry 10 is a complete rework from the company's previous BlackBerry OS software.
It is based on QNX, a Unix-like operating system that was originally developed by QNX Software Systems until the company was acquired by Research In Motion in 2010. BlackBerry 10 supports the application framework Qt (version 4.8) and in some later models features an Android runtime to run Android applications. Prior to version 10.3.1, BlackBerry 10 also supported the Adobe AIR runtime. The user interface uses a combination of gestures and touch-based interactions for navigation and control, making it possible to control a device without having to press any physical buttons, with the exception of the power button that switches the device on or off. It also supports hardware keyboards, including ones that support touch input.
On October 26, 2015, BlackBerry Limited announced that there were no plans to release new APIs and software development kits (SDKs) or adopt Qt version 5. Future updates, like versions 10.3.3 and 10.3.4, would focus on security and privacy enhancements only, effectively putting the operating system in maintenance mode. At the same time, the company introduced its first Android-based device, BlackBerry Priv. The BlackBerry Leap was the last smartphone released on the BB10 platform. After BlackBerry Limited ceased making smartphones in 2016, its successor BlackBerry Mobile by licensee TCL abandoned the platform and only developed devices based on Android, starting with the BlackBerry KeyOne.
On December 15, 2017, BlackBerry Limited announced that there would be at least another two years of support for BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS devices; in August 2019, however, BlackBerry stated in a press release that they would continue to support "critical infrastructure" for BlackBerry 10 beyond the end of the year. BlackBerry 10 became end-of-life effective January 4, 2022.
History
The operating system was originally called BBX, but this was changed when BlackBerry was blocked from using the BBX trademark after legal action from BASIS International, who already used it for their software.
On November 12, 2012, CEO Thorsten Heins announced a 30 January 2013, launch of the BlackBerry 10 operating system version 10.0 and the first smartphones running it. The operating system, as well as two devices, the Z10 (a full touchscreen device), and the Q10 (a device equipped with a physical keyboard), were announced simultaneously around the world on January 30, 2013. The company also announced that the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet would receive an update to BlackBerry 10 later in 2013. Subsequently, BlackBerry stated when releasing their Q1 2014 financial results that the BlackBerry PlayBook would not be receiving an update to BlackBerry 10, citing that the hardware would not provide a good experience of BlackBerry 10 and were focusing on future devices. BlackBerry continued to support and develop the PlayBook with its separate Tablet OS.
On 14 May 2013 BlackBerry OS 10.1 was launched. This brought improvements to many features requested by users.
On 13 September 2013, in Asia, BlackBerry announced the launch of BlackBerry OS 10.2 and a new BlackBerry 10 device, the Z30, providing performance increases over the previous BlackBerry 10 devices.
On June 18, 2014, BlackBerry announced an official relationship with Amazon.com, which resulted in the 10.3 update bundling the Amazon Appstore.
On 15 December 2017, BlackBerry CEO John S. Chen announced that there would be at least two years of support for BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS devices. At that time, the operating system was expected to be end of life at the end of 2019, with many built-in software packages having their support ended (such as Facebook, Dropbox, Evernote, LinkedIn, etc.).
BlackBerry Limited have announced that the operating system BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier, BlackBerry 10 software and BlackBerry PlayBook will become end of life effectively starting from January 4, 2022. After this period, some of the applications and services such as data, phone calls, SMS and 9-1-1 functionality built into it may not function properly.