It looks like the first Blackberry 10 devices will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor.
BlackberryOS.com reports that it has heard from sources both at Research in Motion and Qualcomm that RIM’s new Blackberry phones will be powered by the Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset.
The exact launch date of Blackberry 10 remains unclear. RIM recently recanted that it was trying to come out with BB10 before the end of the year and has pushed back to early next year. But of course, RIM originally promised to have the new operating system here at the beginning of 2012.
Rumored specs include that Blackberry 10 devices will still have physical keyboards, and that RIM is working on a Siri-like voice control platform.
There will also be touch-only Blackberry 10 phones, so RIM will be playing both sides of the field. Of course, RIM is going to have to do something that dazzles everyone.
And that’s an understatement. The delay of Blackberry 10-powered phones into early 2013 has been criticized as a potential company-killing misstep.
Blackberry 10 is what RIM needed to do years ago – a brand new mobile operating system built from the ground up. It is completely independent of any of the architecture of the Blackberry platform of today, which still has remnants of the operating system from more than a decade ago.
All signs point to Blackberry 10 being too little, too late. But it is nice to see RIM finally coming to terms with reality.
