This is what the next generation of Blackberry smartphones will apparently look like.
The question is – when will these actually appear in stores? The newly leaked photo comes from Crackberry.com, which claims to have received the picture exclusively. Code-named the “Blackberry London,” this is the first phone to be powered by the new Blackberry 10 operating system.
Blackberry 10 will run on the same basic platform as the flagship Blackberry tablet, the Playbook. The Playbook was a flop for many reasons, but it still managed to gain praise for the operating system, QNX.
The new version of the Blackberry operating system, powered by QNX, will now be coming out in the “latter” half of 2012. It had been scheduled to be available early next year.
The brand new, from-the-ground-up operating system, answered what critics had been pushing RIM to offer for years. Bringing that interface to the Blackberry smartphone line could have given it a much needed boost.
But now, with at least six or seven months to wait until this becomes a reality, it may very well be too little too late. By then, Nokia’s partnership with Windows Phone will be in its maturity and the dominance of Android and iOS will only continue to grow on a global scale.
Nevertheless, the London, with its reported 1.5 GHz processor, will be one formidable competitor. It’s the kind of Blackberry we should have seen two years ago, so the only thing to wonder now is if it’s too little too late. Only time will tell.
