Old BlackBerry Phone Trade In Plan Announced

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An old BlackBerry phone trade in plan was announced by the company in a statement earlier today.

Old BlackBerry Phone Trade In

In an effort to increase adoption of their newer flagships, BlackBerry announced today the launch of their old BlackBerry phone trade in plan. This new program allows owners of older models to easily upgrade to a new BlackBerry handset. People who are currently using phones that are running BlackBerry OS 10 or earlier will enjoy a “significant discount and incentive” to upgrade to the recent BlackBerry KeyOne or Motion. Those using the BlackBerry Priv from 2015 will also be able to take advantage of the trade in to score a new model as well.

BlackBerry Priv

Accompanying this announcement is news that the Priv will no longer receive updates, considering that it’s over 2 years old at this point. While it’s disappointing that the life of the phone is only a couple years long, it’s becoming expected in a sea of Android phones that release on a yearly schedule. The upcoming old BlackBerry phone trade in plan should do a little to alleviate that annoyance, too, as getting a brand new phone for cheaper is definitely a nice perk. Owners of the Priv who don’t want to upgrade will not be completely left out to dry, as the company will “fulfill all warranty obligations” related to the phone and will release necessary updates “should a critical vulnerability be exposed.”

BlackBerry OS 10

Also announced in this update is some software-related news for those of us still using a phone running BlackBerry OS 10 or earlier (meaning, all phones released including and before the BlackBerry Leap.) For all phones running this operating system, BlackBerry promises “at least two full years of additional support for BB10, and at least two full years of BlackBerry network access for [older] BBOS devices.”

The company recognizes that there are still millions of people using phones that run BlackBerry’s operating system, and they are committed to supporting their old devices for a reasonable amount of time while providing customers incentives to upgrade to a more current device through the old BlackBerry phone trade in program.

Launch Date

There’s currently no word on when we’ll see a launch of the old BlackBerry phone trade in plan, but it’s likely to go live in the near future. The program will likely start in North America, with rollouts worldwide soon to follow.

As BlackBerry has made the jump from their proprietary operating system to Android, they’ve opened their product line up to the much wider support of the Android community. A big detractor from previous BlackBerry devices was the inability to add popular apps to the device, and while the phones are still primarily intended for business use, the fact that you can enjoy your favorite programs on a BlackBerry device is a good thing in our books.

It remains to be seen how widespread the adoption of this plan will be, but BlackBerry definitely has an incentive to get more people moved over to their new operating system. With such a drastic departure from BlackBerry OS, it only makes sense that the company would desire a user base that’s all on the same page.

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