Is there any chance to have SFOS on some of the Blackberry phones? The latest Air 5G looks like a decent hardware for the future and I personally would fancy the Key2.
Very much doubt you can unlock the bootloader on a BB, the security is considerably hardened normally.
What device is that “Air 5G” ?
BlackBerry devices have locked bootloader, so no way to install Sailfish on them.
Blackberry uses the same Android as Sony with perhaps some more security features. There are unlocked BB phones with the Android system but I don’t know how they did it. Blackberry only supports Android for two years and then no more updates. Perhaps some deal between SFOS and TCL which is the company that builds the phones for Blackberry could do it.
There is no unlocked BlackBerry device.
TCL stopped doing BlackBerry device in 2020.
Currently no OEM do BlackBerry device anymore.
Some people claim that Blackberry started selling unlocked phones to get rid of the stock. There are videos of Blackberry phones with unlocked bootloader on YT.
BlackBerry or TCL never sold BlackBerry devices with unlocked bootloader, and no one succeed in unlocking it either.
I used to dream about designing a PCB for the BlackBerry Playbook to run Sailfish OS on that.
To keep the costs low I would go with a SOM having castellated holes on the sides and mount it on a carrier PCB which would interface with the existing connectors. Unfortunately there is not any leaked schematic for the device and reverse engineering the connector pinouts would be cumbersome.
There are some neat RK3399 SOMs in the wild, however I do not know how power efficiently could they work. Furthermore I lack the knowledge of properly designing the power management subsystem for such a battery operated device.
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