While RIM has just outed three new BlackBerry 7 devices, including our favourite, the BlackBerry Bold 9900, we’re really waiting for QNX to make the leap from the BlackBerry PlayBook to smartphones. Rumours around about the first device to make the change have been around for months but now a new report has fleshed out details about the first QNX smartphone, codenamed the BlackBerry Colt.
The news doesn’t sound that positive with the suggestion that RIM is rushing to catch up with the rest of the smartphone market and having to make compromises as a result. Will the BlackBerry Colt really arrive with a single core processor and no support for BlackBerry Enterprise Server?
Boy Genius Report, which has a good history of predicting RIM’s next move correctly, says the BlackBerry Colt is currently being tested with a single-core processor (likely to be the same 1.2GHz chip used in the BlackBerry Bold 9900). It speculates that the delay in bringing dual-core processors to BlackBerry devices is down to RIM’s continuing obsession with delivering better battery life than its rivals. That sounds about right to us.
BGR also claims that the BlackBerry Colt will not launch with support for the current versions of BlackBerry Enterprise Server, RIM’s work email system. That would be a major issue but follows the pattern established by the BlackBerry PlayBook which launched without native email. To use Microsoft Exchange email, the BlackBerry Colt will reportedly come with Microsoft ActiveSync support.
Sources say RIM plans to release the BlackBerry Colt in the first quarter of 2012. Hopefully, it will decide to ditch that single core chip in the meantime and give the QNX device a fighting chance with a speedier processor on board. Hit the comments and let us know: what would RIM need to do with the BlackBerry Colt to make you tempted to buy one?
