RIM has big things planned for 2012; most notably its brand new operating system – BBX – which it says will help the company transition to full-touch smartphones and tablet devices, in order to compete with the likes of Apple and Google.
We’ve already seen a little bit about what could be the first BBX smartphone to be released next year; a phone that has been codenamed the BlackBerry London, or Surfboard. However, we could now know of several other BBX smartphones that will be joining it next year, as some of RIM’s plans have leaked.
One of the company’s product roadmaps has leaked online and immediately picked up by many BlackBerry fansites. Crackberry reports that RIM has several other BBX smartphones in the works, with codenames such as Lisbon, Milan, Nevada and Black Forest.
Lisbon and Milan make sense to us, and fit the same theme as the rumoured BlackBerry London – European capital cities. Nevada is slightly less in tune with this theme, and Black Forest – well, that’s something altogether completely different.
The BlackBerry London and Milan handsets are reported to share very similar internal codenames – RO72 and RO71 respectively – so they could be the same devices, albeit with minor hardware changes to suit the country RIM plans to launch them in. Perhaps the London will be a GSM handset for Europe and the Milan will land in the U.S?
While the BBX operating system is said to be tailored for touch devices, Crackberry reports that the phone codenamed Nevada will keep the classic BlackBerry full QWERTY keyboard, while sporting a touchscreen above, just like the Bold 9900.
Finally, the device codenamed Black Forest is reportedly RIM’s second tablet and could be a 10-inch Playbook. We’ve heard plenty of talk about RIM releasing a larger Playbook tablet before, so we wouldn’t be too surprised if such a device did surface next year.
As always, we encourage our readers to take these rumours with a pinch of salt. Nothing is set in stone here, though what we have is certainly some juicy gadget gossip to mull over.
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Source: Crackberry