RIP: BlackBerry Priv Will No Longer Receive Monthly Security Updates

In September of this year, BlackBerry announced that the Priv would not receive an update to Nougat. This week, it announced the Priv will no longer receive monthly security updates, essentially telling its current users that it’s time to move on to something new.

This isn’t unexpected news, BlackBerry points out, as the company committed to 24 months of updates when the device launched. Provided the phone launched in November, 2015, BlackBerry stuck to its word and delivered a secure experience to its users, although, an update to Nougat sure would have been nice.

Here’s the important part of BlackBerry’s blog post.

Having now stepped outside the original 2-year window, we will no longer be delivering monthly updates for the PRIV moving forward. That said, we continue to support our loyal users as follows:

First, we will of course fulfill all warranty obligations for the PRIV.

Second, as outlined above we believe our phones are inherently more secure because of the way they’ve been designed with security features from the inside out.

Third, should a critical vulnerability be exposed we will engage our partners as needed to develop and deliver necessary patches.

Fourth, we are thrilled to announce that with our partners at BlackBerry Mobile we will soon be introducing a trade-up program for current BlackBerry customers who are still using the PRIV as well as those holding onto BB10 and BBOS devices. Stay tuned for details and get ready to upgrade to a BlackBerry KeyOne or Motion, the most secure Android smartphones on the planet.

With word of this trade-up program now available, it could be a good move for current Priv owners to hold onto the device until they’re ready to upgrade to a KeyOne or Motion smartphone. We’ll let you know when BlackBerry announces the details.

Pour one out for the Priv, folks!

// BlackBerry