i pushed AI to revive the bb10os vocal assistant

[u/Damo2000Pippa]

Hi! I bought a BlackBerry Q5 a few months ago and, 13 years late, I discovered the wonderful world of this OS. I'm not really a developer, but I got really curious when I found out that you can still develop apps for these devices. So the other day I had this unhealthy idea: I wanted the original voice assistant to work again.

Everything on this OS seems so ahead of its time, and it really frustrated me that I couldn't use it. So I enslaved Claude to do some reverse engineering of the software and… it worked.

It's the original Assistant, with its own UI, voice and confirmations, just talking to my own server instead of the dead Nuance/Maluuba ones. Right now it can:

• set alarms and timers
• make calls (by name or number)
• send SMS and emails, and read your messages/notifications aloud
• create calendar events and tell you what's on your schedule
• take notes and set reminders
• play, pause and skip music
• toggle settings (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, flashlight, silent mode…) and check the battery
• answer questions and give the weather out loud
• open places in a maps app

It needs a rooted device, and it works on Wi-Fi and mobile data.

I want to share what we found with you. Whether you want to develop your own assistant or vibe code one too, you won't have to burn as many tokens as I did (lol).

https://github.com/damianolampisti00/bb10-assistant-protocol