Research In
Motion’s next Curve will be touch-screen only, according to specs leaked on a
BlackBerry rumor blog.
The Canadian
company, currently fighting to maintain its share of the smartphone market in
the face of fierce competition from the Apple iPhone and Google Android, is staying
firmly tight-lipped about news of upcoming products. During a recent meeting
with eWEEK, for example, executives responded with a firm “no comment” to
questions about the BlackBerry Dakota, a smartphone in development that
supposedly combines a physical QWERTY keyboard with a touch-screen.
RIM’s
reluctance to share details of its devices and roadmap, however, has done
little to stop the constant flow of rumors and speculation on blogs such as
Crackberry, which posted details Jan. 27 about the so-called “Curve
Touch.” Reportedly due on store shelves in the “late 2011/early
2012” timeframe, the Curve Touch’s unconfirmed specs include a 3.25-inch
display with 480 x 360 resolution, 5-megapixel camera, Qualcomm MSM 8655 800MHz
processor and WiFi capability.
Design-wise,
the Curve Touch’s hardware—at least based on an image posted on
Crackberry—resembles nothing so much as an iPhone or Droid mated with the
BlackBerry Curve. But as with any rumor that bounces around the echo chamber of
the Internet, until RIM confirms something definite, any such designs should
probably be taken with a dump truck worth of salt.
Nonetheless,
rumors about RIM’s future products are contributing to the theme of a company
in drastic transition. Anxious to establish a presence in the tablet market,
the company is prepping its 7-inch PlayBook for reported launch in a few
weeks—complete with an all-new operating system from software assets acquired
during its April 2010 takeover of QNX Software Systems from Harman
International.
RIM executives
have suggested that the QNX-based operating system will eventually find its way
onto BlackBerry smartphones, the latest of which run BlackBerry OS 6.
On top of
that, still other rumors suggest that RIM, in a bid to appeal to the developer
community, is considering ways for Android applications to run on BlackBerry
devices.
“The company
has publicly stated that it is looking at getting a Java virtual machine
running on the PlayBook—not so much for app development going forward, but for
legacy support, custom apps corporations have deployed and don’t want to
recreate, etc.,” the blog Boy Genius Report posted Jan. 26. “We
have been told RIM is very much considering the Dalvik virtual machine, and we
ultimately expect the company to choose Dalvik.”
The Dalvik
virtual machine factors heavily in the running of Android applications, and its
presence on RIM’s software platforms would theoretically translate into support
for those applications—once the inevitable developer, security and corporate
concerns have been addressed.
However, a RIM
spokesperson told eWEEK in a Jan. 26 e-mail: “It’s RIM standard policy not to
comment on rumors and speculation.”
Embracing
Android applications would put RIM’s application library on par with that of
Apple’s App Store. Along with a touch-screen-only phone, that would intensify
RIM’s competition with the iPhone and Google Android smartphones—but until RIM
starts making official announcements, its roadmap remains largely unclear.
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