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Rumor: RIM to release first BlackBerry 10 OS smartphone in October
According to an exclusive by BlackBerry news site N4BB, Research in Motion looks set to debut BlackBerry 10 OS in August, with handsets to follow a couple of months later, in what many in the industry regard as quite possibly the Canadian firm's last attempt to even the scales of their dramatic downward spiral in recent years.
N4BB's unnamed sources at RIM say their intention is to announce the revamped OS mid-August, and follow it up with new handsets in the first half of October, ahead of the crucial Christmas period. The same sources say the first smartphone to launch will be a touch-only model.
The rumors fit well with plans revealed earlier this year by RIM CEO Thorsten Heins to release a new smartphone based on the new Blackberry 10 operating system before the end of 2012.
Those hoping to order a traditional qwerty keypad-based BlackBerry will unfortunately have to wait until sometime in the first quarter of 2013, if the sources are to be believed. In either case it will be a crucial launch for RIM, and it's expected that the phone maker will push considerable advertising dollars into the OS' upcoming release.
It is also widely expected that the first device will be the touchscreen BlackBerry London that first surfaced in rumors last November. If the hardware ends up correct, it will feature a Texas Instruments OMAP 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of on-board storage. Sitting atop the reported 3.7" touchscreen display will be a front-facing 2-megapixel camera coupled with an 8-megapixel version on the rear.
The road to releasing BlackBerry 10 has not been smooth. It was originally named BBX, but had to be changed last December after Basis International won an injunction in the US Court of Albuquerque preventing the handset maker from using the "BBX" trademark right before their planned Asian DevCon conference.
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User Comments: 5
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psycros said:
It really is their last chance. As someone who loves the traditional BB form factor, good QWERTY experience and many of the innovations they pioneered, even I realize that this is a company whose time is up. Their devices have gotten progressively harder to set up and keep running correctly with each OS version. App selection is nearly stagnant. Most absurd of all is their pricing - their the most expensive thing you can buy on contract, for the least capable device on the market. RIM was so myopically obsessed with fat government and corporate contracts that they ignored the consumer market almost completely, punishing any employee who dared point out this fatal mistake. The Playbook showed just how lost they really are: a tablet whose only market would be people who already had a Blackberry. Or maybe the fools thought leaving out a cellular radio would somehow prompt people to buy a phone, too. If they manage a turnaround it will be one of the greatest comeback stories in corporate history..and if not, it will be the final chapter in this sorry tale of managerial incompetence.
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m4a4 said:
Most absurd of all is their pricing - their the most expensive thing you can buy on contract, for the least capable device on the marketI found that they were the cheapest when I picked up my smartphone (which is why I went with BB), even with the "fee" for their server...
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princeton said:
Not for the high end models they aren't. Maybe for the curve and the old bold models. But their Bold 9900 and Torch 9810 are right up there with superior smart phones in terms of pricing.
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Wizz-Fizz said:
In my opinion, its only the enterprise level of device administration (BES) that is keeping RIM alive.
I know for a fact that in our organisation we will be seriously considering alternate smartphones once enterprise administration is available.
So RIM really only have a small window of time left to come up with something that keep them alive or I can see "RIP: RIM" headlines coming.
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psycros said:
I did forget about the older Curves..their usually free, esp. online. But you could still get a better equipped Android free as well, so what I really should've said was, "they're the worst value".
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