Google Play Services For Blackberry Passport
Daisy Hughlett
Long time it seemed to be impossible to install a fully functional version of the original Google Play Store on a BlackBerry device. Those days are over. I proudly present the Google Play store, with all the bells and whistles.
Disclaimer: This is a modified/patched software. It is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind. Applied modifications: Rewrite of downloader code, rewrite of app installation/uninstallation code. Patch to prevent GMS core updates. Patch to prevent selfupdate. The purchasing part is UNTOUCHED.
Step 1: Add a Google system account to your device
Install com.google.android.gsf.login. Run the app and login with your Google credentials. The app will close (minimize) if the step completed successfully. You should now be able to see your Google account in Blackberry Settings -> Accounts -> Third Party Accounts.
Step 2: Register your device with Google Play
Install cobalt.blackberry.googleID. Run the app and register your device with Google Play. Close the app after successfull registration.
Play Store is crashing when I'm trying to download or update an app
Remove (uninstall) Play Store from the device and install the new build 2 version from the file share. Do NOT update the new version over the old one!
I can't login with Google Account Manager
Assuming that you have entered the correct password, you now have the following options:
1) Turn OFF 2-Step Verification for your Google account here: Google Account settings. Then enter your normal Google email password to login. This is the easiest way to get it running.
2) If you want to use 2-Step Verification with your Google Account, you'll have to create an app specific password for the Google Login app and then use that password to login. I'm seeing the message "Error while retrieving information from server [DF-DFERH-01]"
This error may occour if Google changes something on their servers and the Play Store app did not sync correctly. It is a well know issue that also happens on Android devices. To fix this problem, go to Blackberry Settings -> App Manager -> Device Monitor -> Storage -> Play Store and click on "Clear Data". This will clear the cache and fix the problem.
I downloaded an app from Play Store and now it's asking for Google Play Services
Google Play services is a Framework that is provided by Google to help developers to speed up and simplify app development. Some apps that you download from Play Store may require Google Play services (mostly apps from Google, apps that display some kind of geographic map and apps that require Google+ login). These apps can be patched and will work to a certain extent. Read this post for more details:Cobalt's official Google Apps Landing Page
Are you logging my account data or stealing my money?
I can assure that no data is logged or transferred anywhere else than to the Google servers. Your data and your money is secure.
Where can I get help if everything goes wrong?
For help and support check my Play Store thread on CrackberryIs this all for free?
Yes, it is! But please consider that I've spent hundreds of hours doing the reverse engineering of all this stuff, patching it, rewriting code and testing it. So if you really appreciate my work, I would be happy if you donate a few bucks. But it's up to you.
This type of user may:
- want efficient phone, text, and email communication, with advanced capabilities to manage these communications
- want the ability to access remote information of whatever form, the ability to do so being the essence of an internet connected device, more than consuming social media posts
- want as secure an operating system as possible, with the ability to secure communication an integral part of the OS
- for philosophical reasons not want the the features provided by a smart phone to come at the cost of privacy, or becoming "the product"[1] when using the free service
Because I take this statement to be genuine, I recently purchased two Blackberry Passports from Amazon -- two for fear that they may not be available for much longer, and I would like to have the use of the device as long as possible, guaranteed to a certain extent by having a backup. This decision was aided by two recent instances of Google intrusion; one was an advertisement for some CVS service that appeared as a notification when I was near a CVS, and the other was an update to the Waze app (recently acquired by Google) that requires High Accuracy mode in Android location settings in order to start.
After using the Passport for a few days, I was glad I purchased it, and saw that I could get the functional end of a modern smartphone appropriate for my needs without the intrusion of Google Play Services, the closed source background service that Google uses, and encourages developers to use, in place of the open source ASOP services to provide functionality -- such as location awareness and inter-app communication -- to apps. Unfortunately, I found Google Play Services to be more intrusive and limiting despite the benefits mentioned in Google's overview of GPS Without it, it is impossible to perform an essential task of business users, specifically, viewing a PDF attached to an email. I noticed this when I needed to perform this task while I had turned off all permissions for Google Play Services on my Android phone, a Blackberry PRIV. I don't recall exactly what the exact failure was, but despite numerous attempts at turning on some Google Play Services permissions, the download couldn't be completed and I couldn't view the PDF. Then the PRIV's battery died, and I used the Passport to view the PDF. The process of downloading and viewing the PDF -- which was automatically saved to the default download location and opened automatically in the pre-installed Adobe Reader app -- went so smoothly, I was impressed. (Incidentally, all attachments found in all emails are easily accessible from within a view of the Hub.) I was also left with the impression that the only reason Google Play Services was necessary to complete this task was so that Google could extract data -- at least the metadata from the downloaded file.[2]
This was a very recent indication of privacy intrusion, but from the very beginning of my relationship with Google, when I signed up for a Gmail account in the late '00s to use as a disposable email address for an immediate need, I knew that the revenue generation model of Gmail involved scanning emails to in order to know the user to serve better targeted advertisements. But at that time Google wasn't as pervasive as it is now. Over the intervening years, Google has grown as has its ability to learn more and more about its users in order to be better able to serve its ads.
At the same time it seems that as its range of products grew and users took advantage of the free product while becoming "the product," Google has attempted to lock in its users to its products. I was repulsed by one such mechanism to do this in its Google Drive product a few years ago. I had uploaded some PDF documents in order to be able to access them from multiple devices, only to realize that when I downloaded it later to my PC, the PDF had been processed and modified such that it couldn't be opened in Acrobat Reader. It seems that Google Drive and Google Docs took over my documents so I couldn't modify them or even view them outside of Drive/Docs.
So I stopped using all of their products except for Android and that with all Google apps and convenience features like Location History and the Google Assistant disabled. When I recently saw the Passport in the in the wild, in addition to admiring its unique design, I thought this may be a way to completely break free of any device and bundled services that makes its users the product.
The pictures below show mostly iPhone users and some Android users presumably posting pictures of Lady Gaga to their social media when she visited a Starbucks to promote her charitywhere I coincidentally happened to be working on this post. Blackberry 10 users can also do this with the pre-installed Facebook and Twitter apps which are integrated into the Hub. Some other social media apps that are native to the Blackberry 10 OS are available from third parties in Blackberry World, but these may not be integrated to the Hub. And some other popular social media platform apps are not available at all as native BB 10 applications.
- Lady Gaga Is an Honorary Baristaand treats her fans to some refreshments.
- Lady Gaga Is an Honorary Baristaand treats her fans to some refreshments.
- Lady Gaga Is an Honorary Barista and treats her fans to some refreshments.
- Lady Gaga Is an Honorary Baristaand treats her fans to some refreshments.
- Lady Gaga Is an Honorary Barista and treats her fans to some refreshments.
- Lady Gaga Is an Honorary Barista and treats her fans to some refreshments.
- Lady Gaga Is an Honorary Baristaand treats her fans to some refreshments.
- Lady Gaga Is an Honorary Baristaand treats her fans to some refreshments.
This lack of important social media apps and messaging apps, and even other types of apps, apparently was the downfall of Blackberry as a mobile device manufacturer and the motivation for its initial switch to making Android powered phones with custom apps, and Android hardware and software security hardening -- the PRIV, and then a further move away from manufacturing phones by licensing the Blackberry name to outside companies --
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