Some blurry shots out of China are showing what is supposedly the first BlackBerry smartphone to run QNX, which is the operating system currently sitting on their PlayBook tablet. This is a transition that RIM has admitted they would be making sooner or later, with most estimates for a launch pointed at early next year.
The flashiest feature QNX will have to offer RIM’s smartphones is the ability to run Android applications. That’s still something we’re waiting for on the PlayBook, but it’s well on its way. Aside from that, QNX will hopefully provide more powerful multimedia capabilities than the old BlackBerry OS was capable of handling, as well as secure, stable multitasking. The app environment is still a little scarce, but hopefully that will change once RIM gets the native software development kit out of private beta.
As for the hardware shown above, I’m tempted to think that this is just an engineering testing model to make sure the software works; it’s far too blocky to be marketable, and from the looks of it, was designed to be as cheap and easy to make as possible. The little bit we can see of the OS on the left side looks pretty similar to the standard OS 7 experience we have available now, meaning RIM has either done a good job disguising QNX, or the new OS hasn’t been loaded up yet. We’re still not sure about the internals, but if this is the rumoured Colt, it may only have a single core processor. Of course, there’s always the possibility that this is yet another Chinese knock-off, but that “Property of Research In Motion” sticker on the back is something we’ve seen plenty of in the past, and adds at least a bit of legitimacy to these shots.
Whatever it ends up having on the inside, does anyone think RIM will ship a device that looks this dated?
Update: According to the source’s Weibo profile, the device isn’t currently running QNX, but it’s powered by the same 1.2 GHz processor as the Bold 9900, and may bear the model number 9980. Thanks, @richardlai!