OnwardMobility pulls the plug on the 5G BlackBerry project after losing its naming rights

Last month, it was confirmed that a new BlackBerry 5G phone with a keyboard would launch this year. This was set to be the first BlackBerry smartphone in years, but now it appears that this device has been canceled after OnwardMobility lost rights to BlackBerry’s name.

Back in August 2020, it was revealed that OnwardMobility is the latest licensee for the BB brand for smartphones. While the BlackBerry 5G phone suffered from delays, OnwardMobility has insisted that the device is on its way.

As per an AndroidPoice report, the 5G BB project is dead. The news arrives courtesy of Kevin Michaluk, founder of CrackBerry, and other sources have revealed that OnwardMobility is not planning on working on this project any further.

The company has reportedly canceled the project despite acquiring the license to use the American phone maker’s name. In addition to this, even BlackBerry is looking to distance itself from its past identity as a smartphone vendor as it sold the rest of its mobile-related patents earlier this month for 600 million USD.

While we have not seen any leaks related to OnwardMobility’s 5G BlackBerry phone, it was believed to feature a design that is similar to the previously launched BB Priv, which was an Android slider device.

For those in the dark, the new 5G BlackBerry phone was planned to release in mid-2021, but it faced a lot of delays with the supply chain followed by BlackBerry CEO John Chen changing his decision to have another OEM try and revive the brand on another device.

So with OnwardMobility losing the license to its name, we may not see another BlackBerry device for a long time.

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