The BlackBerry Ontario - a retrospective
The BlackBerry Ontario.
It's the code name for a BlackBerry device which has never seen the light of day. Not a single leaked image on the internet, and very few accurate details other than pure speculation. The sad thing is, the Ontario never will see the light of day. It was scrapped some years ago now and relegated to the archives of BlackBerry's labs.
The Ontario was the sequel to the BlackBerry Z30. Not only a visual redesign, but a significant horsepower upgrade designed to be competitive with the likes of the iPhone and flagship Android devices.
I was one of the lucky few to see it - or more accurately, a series of detailed marketing brochures with gorgeous renders and specifications.
It was in a closed door meeting with BlackBerry representatives in my former job. I was told that they wanted to show me something which no-one else in the country outside of their senior management had seen. I was handed an iPad with a PDF open on the screen.
"Introducing… Ontario" it read.
A gorgeous full-length image graced the right side of the brochure, shot from an angle with a glint of rendered light reflecting off the bevelled aluminium base of the phone. It was a beautiful design. The base was an evolution of the Z30 design – but the sculpted aluminium bezel curved and swept up towards the sides and become part of the protective perimeter surrounding the device.
The second page showed a close-up of the back, featuring a dimpled soft-touch backing and a camera which more closely resembled the one found on the modern day Priv. The second page also revealed the specifications of the device, which were for the time, quite cutting edge. A powerful quad core cpu + multi core GPU, 3GB ram, massive battery – all mediocre these days, but when the Ontario was due for release, this was second to none. Of course, it was running BlackBerry 10, and a new version of it at that. I had never been more excited about a device and I couldn’t believe I had seen pictures and specs of it.
The very next week I received a call from the BlackBerry representative. He told me the Ontario was on hold. Later that month I received confirmation the device was cancelled.
I still have a sketch of the phone sitting in a folder of all my old work things, specs scrawled on the side of the paper.
It was the killer device which never was. I still wonder though, would anything have been different if BlackBerry released it? Maybe, maybe not, but I’ll always remember my first glimpse of a phone that never was.