Time for Unification: RIM Announces BlackBerry BBX for Smartphones & Tablets
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 18, 2011 1:12 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- RIM
- BlackBerry
- PlayBook
- Mobile
- BlackBerry BBX
- Tablets
With its PlayBook tablet RIM introduced a brand new mobile platform built on QNX's Neutrino 6.5 OS. The result was an extremely smooth user experience with great multitasking support (reminiscent of webOS) on a platform that simply needed more apps and maturity. At the time, RIM indicated future Blackberry smartphones would be based on a QNX derived OS although this year we only got BlackBerry OS7 devices.
At its developer conference today RIM announced BlackBerry BBX, an upcoming QNX based OS for future BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. It's too early to know when we'll see devices but the obvious assumption is it'll be in 2012.
RIM also released a beta version (2.0) of its PlayBook OS to developers with support for running Android apps, a feature we originally discussed in our PlayBook review.
Today's announcements do signal continued commitment to the market by RIM. Although Apple and Google have done their best to convert BlackBerry users, this is still anyone's game. RIM definitely has a lot of the right pieces in-house (QNX, webkit team, etc...) to make for a serious revival in the mobile market, but ultimately it boils down to execution and iteration. A BBX launch in 2012 isn't too late, assuming it can execute quicker than the competition. It's the latter that makes this a tall order.
Source: RIM
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retrospooty - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
You cant be that thickheaded... You said "it does look awesome after they stole lotsa features from BlackBerry, WinPhone 7 and iOS. Whatever, I'm not interested in copycats, RIM and MS mobile platforms at least look original and interesting, Android ripoff - not at all yet.RIM usually introduces interesting stuff first, like BBM and Blackberry Tag, then others copy it "
Well, RIM's whole business is a copy of Palm, remeber, the Treo, the first smartphone? The one that all others copied. Every iPhone, android , RIM, and all others are copies in many ways to Palm. They also all have innovations. including Google and RIM. Its an evolving business and they all copy and add thier own stuff. RIM is no different, only that they are slower to innovate these days.
Pirks - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
bah, everyone is then a copycat according to you. still at least MS and RIM get something fresh out the door, while Google is copying others, I mean out of all three vendors Google is the most thiefy one, not RIM. 'cause RIM never blatantly stole from iOS like Google did, so it's all relative you knowSleepyFE - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
I have decided to stop the arguing with this post.I myself like android at the moment, but am interested what RIM will do with QNX, which looks like the best kernel at the moment (being a microkernel means you can kill any process not in use because they are all in userspace).
Talk about sheep: Android is the only open source project at the moment, so Apple and RIM costumers could be considered sheep because they follow these companies.
Same could also be said of anyone, so that argument is pointless.
Android is my prefered platform, because it is fast growing, open source, and since hardware manufacturers don't have to pay to use it there is a lot of choice when buying a decently priced phone.
And for my final point: Everybody copies everybody, because otherwise they cannot satisfy costumers who want certain features.
Pirks - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
Please stop lying about Android being open source and read http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/google-android-30...After reading this you should understand why Android users are, in fact, the same sheep as Apple and RIM users.
SleepyFE - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
Interesting. I forgot about that. The phone version 2.3 is still open though.I wonder what they will decide for Ice Cream Sandwich, since it will be used on both the phones and tablets
SleepyFE - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
Yay, i am no longer lying.http://www.anandtech.com/show/4999/google-to-relea...
Pirks - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
lucky bastard