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Research in Motion’s plans to save the BlackBerry brand in the next year have been revealed, with the product roadmap for its new BlackBerry 10 software leaking online.
The Canadian firm recently had to let BlackBerry fans down with a setback to BB10’s launch, with the OS pushed back until the first quarter of 2013. We can now see that the QNX-based operating system will launch between January and March 2013 on two different devices; the Nevada and the London.
We reported a while back that BlackBerry 10 smartphones will be split into two types; the full touch ‘L series’ and the QWERTY keyboard-sporting ‘N Series’. The London and the Nevada are the first examples of these, and will carry the flag for BlackBerry 10 until later in the year, when devices codenamed the ‘Nashville’ and ‘Naples’ will launch sometime between Q3 and Q4. Going by the names beginning with ‘N’, we’d say these will fit into the N series phones, and so will be QWERTY keyboard devices rather than full touch.
Before any of this happens, the roadmap indicates that the much-rumoured 4G BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will launch in time for Christmas this year. Codenamed the ‘Winchester 2’, the 4G PlayBook is expected to look the same as the current model, but offer blazing-fast 4G LTE connectivity for supporting markets.
The PlayBook will be updating to BlackBerry 10 as RIM has promised, and this will be happening between Q1 and Q2 of 2013 – so between January and June, which is quite a vast timescale in terms of updates.
Once the PlayBook is updated, RIM looks set to launch another tablet device later in the year called ‘Blackforest’. According to the image’s source, BlackBerryOS.com, this will be the 10-inch PlayBook that has reared its head in the rumour mill a few times in the past. We can’t confirm anything, but we’d expect this device to launch running BB10.
It’s not clear right now if this roadmap represents RIM’s plans pre or post-financial review – if they were drawn up before the announcement of delays to BB10, we could be looking at delays on all of the aforementioned devices.
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Via: BlackBerryOS
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