This week the world mourned the death of classic BlackBerry phones… after first realizing that they weren’t already (entirely) dead. BlackBerry stopped making phones running BlackBerry OS software years ago, and has been phasing out support for the devices ever since. But the company announced it was pulling the plug on legacy services used by those phones to connect to the internet, make phone calls, and send text messages this week.

It turns out that the shutdown didn’t have an immediate impact. Folks who are still using older BlackBerry phones haven’t seen any real difference in service yet. But now it may just be a matter of time. But what about newer BlackBerry phones that ship with Android? Those should continue working indefinitely. And it’s possible that a new model could be coming this year.

BlackBerry Key2 (Android phone made by TCL, launched in 2018)

While BlackBerry doesn’t make its own phones anymore, the company has partnered with third-party companies to sell BlackBerry-branded phones running Android software and using BlackBerry services. We haven’t seen any companies launch one in a few years… but maybe that’ll change in 2022. Maybe?

Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.

OnwardMobility Declares Itself Not Dead [CrackBerry]

A year and a half ago OnwardMobility announced plans to launch a BlackBerry-branded smartphone with a physical keyboard and Android software in 2021. That didn’t happen. After a long silence, they now say it’s still in the works though.

Until then, the closest thing you can probably get would be a phone like the Unihertz Titan, which clones the BlackBerry design and keyboard, but which lacks the BlackBerry name and software. 

Intel Alder County high-end reference laptop with Intel CPU & GPU & Serpent Canyon NUC 12 Enthusiast coming this year [VideoCardz]

Intel confirms that “Serpent Canyon” and “Alder County” NUC systems are on the way. The former is expected to become the NUC 12 Enthusiast mini desktop with Arc graphics, while the latter is a laptop reference kit with 12th-gen chips.

Honor Magic V Full Specs and Renders Leaked: To Feature Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC, 12GB RAM, [MySmartPrice]

Honor Magic V foldable phone design and specs leaked ahead of Jan 10 launch. Expect 7.9 inch interior display, 6.45 inch cover display, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, 12GB RAM, up to 512GB storage, and 3 x 50MP rear cameras.

Your Google home speakers are about to get slightly worse because Sonos sued and won [The Verge]

Sonos has won a patent infringement suit against Google for its implementation of speaker groups. And that means if you’re using multiple Google speakers you’ll need to adjust the volume on each individually. You also can’t do that with the volume buttons on your phone anymore. The good news, I guess, is that Nest speakers are on sale for $75 right now, which is $25 off the list price. Maybe that’s a concession? Maybe it’s just a regularly-scheduled sale. 

Tablo announces its first ATSC 3.0 OTA DVR with support for 4K and HDR video [AFTVNews]

The new Tablo ATSC 3.0 Quad HDMI OTA DVR can record up to four over-the-air 4K HDR video streams at once, but it’s not a networked device like Tablo’s earlier products, which means the $300 DVR is designed for use with one TV at a time.

Sytem76 Kudu Linux Laptop [System76]

System76 Kudu is a new 15.6 inch Linux laptop with Ryzen 9 5900HX, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 and up to 64GB of RAM and 4TB of storage. Coming soon for $1899.

Asus’s New Space-Inspired ZenBook Is Beyond Excessive [Gizmodo]

The Asus Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition has a custom graphic on the lid plus a 3.5 inch, 256 x 64 pixel OLED display on the lid for displaying custom graphics or messages.

Better together with Android and beyond [Google]

Google is bringing Fast Pair support to Chromebooks, Google TV, and Android TV making it easier to set up headphones or even to set up a Chromebook using an Android phone. Fast Pair is also coming to some Windows PCs later this year.

Skyline Nintendo Switch Emulator gets initial support for graphics rendering [@MishaalRahman]

Skyline is an open source Nintendo Switch emulator for Android devices with ARMv8 processors. It’s still very early in the development process, but it’s now rendering graphics for its first game, Sonic Mania.

Ubuntu Touch OTA-21 Release [UBports]

This update brings support for more phones and tablets, an updated look for the Greeter that displays before you unlock the screen, an overhauled storage statistics setting, and support for a Tamil language font. Work is ongoing to bring support for adding support for phones that shipped with Android 10 and for updating Ubuntu Touch so that it’s based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS rather than Ubuntu 16.04 LTS – this release is still based on the older version of Ubuntu first released in 2016. 

Keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Twitter and Facebook and follow @LinuxSmartphone on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news on open source mobile phones.

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