BlackBerry OS
BlackBerry OS is a discontinued proprietary mobile operating system developed by Canadian company BlackBerry Limited for its BlackBerry line of smartphone handheld devices. The operating system provides multitasking and supports specialized input devices adopted by BlackBerry for use in its handhelds, particularly the trackwheel, trackball, and most recently, the trackpad and touchscreen.
| Developer | BlackBerry Limited |
|---|---|
| Written in | C++ before 2002, Java since 2002 |
| OS family | Mobile operating systems |
| Working state | Discontinued (replaced by BlackBerry 10; and Android) |
| Source model | Closed source |
| Initial release | January 19, 1999 (as Version 1.0 for BlackBerry 850 pager) March 4, 2002 (as Version 3.6 for BlackBerry 5810 smartphone) |
| Latest release | 7.1.0.2931 (BlackBerry 9790/9900) / November 2013 |
| Marketing target | Smartphone |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Package manager | BlackBerry Desktop Manager |
| Platforms | BlackBerry line of smartphones |
| Kernel type | Proprietary |
| Default user interface | Java virtual machine |
| License | Proprietary |
| Succeeded by | BlackBerry 10 |
| Official website | http://us.blackberry.com/software/smartphones.html (Archive) |
| Support status | |
| Unsupported | |
The BlackBerry platform natively supports corporate email, through Java Micro Edition MIDP 1.0 and, more recently, a subset of MIDP 2.0, which allows complete wireless activation and synchronization with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise email, calendar, tasks, notes and contacts, when used with BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The operating system also supports WAP 2.0.
Updates to the operating system were automatically available from wireless carriers that supported the BlackBerry over the air software loading (OTASL) service.
Third-party developers wrote software using the available BlackBerry API classes, although applications that made use of certain functionality needed to be digitally signed.
Research from June 2011 indicated that approximately 45% of mobile developers were using the platform.
BlackBerry OS was discontinued after the release of BlackBerry 10 in January 2013, and support for it ceased on January 4, 2022.