In the “take this with a grain of salt” department, we’re hearing rumblings that the first Research In Motion smartphone running BBX could be called the BlackBerry Surfboard. Cowabunga.
The news comes from a trademark that RIM filed for with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office but that doesn’t mean much, as TechCrunch points out that if we follow previous filings, the PlayBook could have been called the “SurfBook.” We’ve also hard that this BBX phone is being called “London” but that’s likely an internal code name that won’t see the light of day.
Whatever the first BBX phone is called, there will be a lot of scrutiny over the device because it will give us an idea if RIM can really compete in the modern smartphone era or if it will continue its tailspin. While there are now more BlackBerry smartphones in the world than there ever have been and the company is still profitable, the wind is definitely not at RIM’s back.
I’m actually pretty excited about the first BBX phone because RIM showed that it can still design jaw-dropping hardware with the Bold 9900 but BlackBerry 7 was a huge disappointment and not representative of what modern smartphone computing should be. While the PlayBook is considered a sales flop, the QNX software which will be the foundation of BBX is quite fluid and full of potential.
So RIM, I don’t care if you call it the BlackBerry Surfboard, London or the BlackBerry Raspberry, let’s just get it right and hopefully have it out soon.
[Via TechCrunch]