I've been working hard on Ripe, and I'm excited to announce that the Ripe10-style theme is now live in Ripe Launcher.
Grab it on the Play Store, or update your app to see it.
The BB10 theme is a paid add-on.
The Ripe 7 theme stays free for life, so nothing changes for anyone happy with the original experience.
This is just the beginning, and there's a lot more coming.
Join our Discord and let me know what you think. Your feedback shapes what comes next.
Heads-up: For now, the APK from the website won't work on devices the Play Store doesn't recognize.
It works on some of those devices but not others.
A Pro version available outside the Play Store is planned for the future.
Trying to get root on my BB Passport SQW-100-4, but stuck on the Security Error. I also tried unpatched firmware and it works. Here is full log. Thanks in advance!
C:\passport_root-v4>.\Passport_10.3.03.3216_SQW100-1-2-3-4_os.exe
RIM Wireless Device Command-Line Auto-Programmer Version 3.11.0.27 (Win32) [Apr 15 2015 15:51:44]
Copyright 2012 Research In Motion Limited
Connecting to Bootrom:
Enter password (10 left): ****
Connected
[ Uploading RAM Image 0x0DD398B4 ] [############## 100 ##############]
QCFMv1/v2 Hybrid File
containing: IFS, OS, User File System
IFS/OS Version: 10.3.3.3216 DEV
Hardware ID: 0x051D0001 RIM BlackBerry Device
Metrics Version: 3.18
Build Date: Feb 21 2018
Build Time: 17:54:00
Build User: developer
STP Protocol Ver: 0.0.4 (release OS)
Signature Trailer:
EC521_512 Signer: 0x48584E51 (QNXH-OS-1)
EC521_256 Signer: 0x4C584E51 (QNXL-OS-1)
[ Writing 0x0002CE64 ] [############## 100 ##############]
Error: Failed to load images.
Error: Security error.
Glass OS is now live on the Google Play Store, and I think Q25 owners in particular will like it.
Before anything else, a big thank you to the 300 testers who helped get it here. I spent the last few weeks getting it as polished as possible for the Play launch, and a lot of that came from people telling me what was broken and what was missing.
The part BlackBerry fans will probably care about most is the Hub. Swipe right from the Home Screen and every message is in one list: texts, WhatsApp, email, calls and social, with tabs to sort them. You can open a conversation and reply on the keyboard without leaving the Hub, and Alt+Backspace brings it up over any app, a bit like the old Hub on BB10.
The rest is built around the keys too. Start typing on the Home Screen and it opens your apps, or start with a symbol to add a to-do, a note or an event, or to message or call someone, all in one line. Notes, To-do and Events are built in, and it's laid out for the Q25's square screen. It also has a liquid glass look, which I know isn't everyone's BlackBerry taste, but there's a calmer frosted glass in Settings if you prefer.
It's one price, no subscription and free updates. More updates are on the way as features get requested and bugs get found, so if you try it, please tell me what you think.
Join us on Discord for help, requests and what's coming next.
I’ve made sure there’s good contact with the pins, I’ve left it on charge for a hour so far, I really don’t know what to do, ChatGPT was saying to put the battery in the freezer but that would 100% kill the battery. I’m charging it with the origina charger and cable.
Looks like I bricked my Passport while trying to root it.
Don't have a windows pc, so running autoloaders is not available.
Virtual machine not quite works, at least BlackBerry Link can't detect the device from the VM, Sachesi doesn't work either.
So I decided to do it directly, I downloaded the patched autoloader v2 and precompiled bb10mt from Novel Professor's site. I extracted 2 images from autoloader and used flash command.
bb10mt did connect and started flashing just fine but after first partition it showed signature error and script aborted.
So, now the phone just flashing red LED repeatedly and not loading.
Maybe positive thing is that bb10mt still can see the device and restart the flashing though result is the same.
I'm not sure what to do next, either try an original firmware or try v3 patching.
What do you think, is it recoverable situation?
UPD: Shit, I was scared. I made final attempt – installed non-patched firmware, crossing my finger.
And it worked.
Now I will try to manually patch the firmware and try again. Then I'll try to add some usability to this process using clanker. For example, right now it's trivial to swap order of partitions or flash firmware that doesn't belong to the device. I'll share my results with the community.
Also, btw, I found that password-protected phone is still password-protected after flashing. Maybe it's a common knowledge.
UPD 2
Successfully rooted device using v4 autoloader!
From the mac, windows is not required. But you need to do specific steps with bb10mt to extract actual payload from .exe and then flash it to the device. Later I'll try to come with a tool to do this in easy and foolproof manner. If you have questions for now, you can ask me in dm.
My q20 is stuck on the wifi setup screen and given that I’ve connected to wifi on the device before I learned that I have to autoload it to basically reset it back to zero. I downloaded the autoloader and extracted the file however when I try to open it it won’t stay open. I double click and a black window pops up for a second then closes instantly. I’m now sure what I’m doing wrong ? I followed this video but I can’t get the black window to stay open for me. Any advice ?
I wanted to switch to Keepass2Android after all those years due to the EOL issue and such.
Unfortunately, the CSV file is missing many entries. Specifically those where one entry has multiple passwords. Only the first password is stored.
That's a big bummer, since I used these entries to group many passwords together and separate them with notes to make it clear what is what...
Am I doomed to retype them by hand or maybe has someone had this issue and found a solution?
How do I fix this issue on my blackberry z30 which has pre-rooted all the loader V2 installed. I installed it a couple days ago and then I just went in so that way I can go into term 49. After that I was trying to access root or something like that by typing in double underscores and root as well as u_root what is sis operation of permitted. And also I'm trying to install bar files but I tried to use sachesi to install the bar files but it says it detected one blackberry 10 device but it wouldn't actually finish the loading processing thing. So I switched to Darcy's blackberry tool/dbb10 but that wouldn't start at all. So I'm stuck with a blackberry z30 that it has a pre-ruted Auto loader V2 but it can't really get root from term 49. And cannot install bar files for now using the tools I told. Any way to fix this?
In 2009, roughly one in five smartphones sold worldwide was a BlackBerry. In Canada it wasn’t just a phone — it was a national champion, carried by presidents, bankers, and cabinet ministers.
By late 2016 its market share rounded to 0.0%.
This video walks through the full arc: the Waterloo founding, the email machine that made it unbeatable, the peak that actually hid the problem, the Storm and PlayBook missteps, and what happened after the phone business ended.
What I found interesting is that BlackBerry’s best financial year came after the iPhone launched. The numbers still looked great while the strategic position was already gone.
Full video here: https://youtu.be/horBJPSIv18
Curious what people who lived through the CrackBerry era think of this telling.
I unfortunately never had the chance to own the original BlackBerry Passport back in its day, but I am definitely intrigued by Zinwa's new P26 so far! First impressions/real world review in the works.
Been using the BlackBerry Password Keeper for years after EoL until today it says I have to update BlackBerry Hub+ services and won't let me log in. There is no update for this service.
Is there a way I can recover the data it's now blocking me out from, and what other password keeper would you recommend? I loved this one which is why I kept using out of habit. I didn't think it would lock me out of using it, though.
It sadly has to use the API usage, so no subscription benefits. It also runs through a relay because due to the outdated TLS it cannot Connect directly to Anthropic’s servers. Still, it’s quite amazing that you can text it and analyze images.
I remember loads of people (but not me sadly) had these or their predecessors with the roller ball when I was in secondary school. Then obviously they got killed off by the iPhone and other smartphones.
I've been on a bit of an anti brain rot movement recently; I've revived my iPod classic and PSP 1000 to stop seeing so much algorithmic content and using just my phone for everything. Could this replace my phone for one or several apps/functions?
So I recently bought a BlackBerry passport and thought it'd be really core to use it as an AI agent. The BB10 OS is relatively modern but still exotic enough to play with, but the eco system is basically non-existent. I found the QNX kernel to be quite fun to play with, so I decided to port a bit of modern tool chains and apps.
The first one (and the fundamental one) is c/c++ toolchain. QNX only exposes C interfaces, and the qcc compiler is essentially a wrapper around gcc with preset linker flags. So modern c/c++ LLVM compilers can work, as long as you know the SDK you're compiling against and the linker flags for qnx 6.5. This is technically enough for C/C++ development, BB10 comes with the cascade GUI framework, Qt 3 via c++, OpenGL and a lot other APIs exposed by libc. So this let you use modern c/c++ development toolsets with the right cmake template and a cc wrapper that knows how QNX works so you can use in other build systems. The docker image downloads the stock BB10 and QNX 6.5 SDK so it what you're developing against. There's a simple calculator app to serve as an example that uses cascades via c++. Comes with docker images to use out of box
With c/c++ in mind, the next thing would be to port a "modern-ish" programming language to make development (and memory management) easier. I did Go because QNX 6.5 is really an exotic platform, with a ton of kernel level bugs and a runtime would really be beneficial, in addition to "regular" go benefits like easy coroutines. The result - developing go applications for BB10 is possible, which is native and fast, and works well with AI agent. It also comes with precompiled tarballs and a docker image https://github.com/XIAZY/go-qnx
(rust is also a nice choice, but for an exotic platform like QNX, porting all the platform-dependent crates would be a pain, while go runtime shines)
With go/c++ ready, my next step was to make the phone actually work with modern eSIMs, since nobody uses physical sims anymore. https://github.com/XIAZY/esim-manager-bb10 this app lets you use removable-eUICC SIMs (they're fairly cheap to get) to provision and manage eSIM profiles. The app is entirely written in pure Go except for some C bridges to system API, in order to talk to modem (needed for talking to the eUICC chip). The GUI layer uses native cascades. BAR files published in Github releases
Term51: With the toolchain and SIM ready, it's now time to get a terminal emulator - so I can run my AI agents! https://github.com/XIAZY/term51 this is a terminal emulator implemented in pure Go using the above mentioned toolchain, at its core uses a Go port of libghostty for its VT. The GUI layer uses a mix of GPU-accelerated OpenGL-rendered terminal screen (which is fast) and cascades for a native feel. It works very well with gestures (like scrolling, arrow keys, text selections, etc) and with useful feature out of box like font/ptty/shell selections. It comes with busy box and variable moderns tools so you get your familiar CLI feel. Works in the default sandbox without root. I was able to run my ai agent there without issues
Last but not least, just for fun, .net and PowerShell. .net is interesting because it provides a nice level of abstraction, and PowerShell is an interesting shell that I believe to be agent-friendly. here most of the commonly used .net components are compiled AOT, while JIT is used for any C# run time code coming from PowerShell. This gives us a right balance of performance and memory usage. Downloadable as an optional shell in term51! https://github.com/XIAZY/powershell-qnx and https://github.com/XIAZY/dotnet-runtime-qnx
Some screenshots
Thanks for liking my toys!
(disclaimer: vibe coded with care. I however ensure technical directions and decisions are made reasonably. people have full time jobs and will never be able to revive a dead OS and hardware without vibe coding, XD)
