You know how we heard QNX still doesn’t support BES? I guess one way around that is to create yet another operating system and that’s exactly what the Waterloo crew have decided to do, today announcing the next-generation BBX OS for BlackBerry smartphone and tablet devices.

Mike Lazaridis, who is still recovering from the recent BlackBerry outage, took the stage at RIM’s app developer conference to announce the new development. Basically, BBX is a middle ground between QNX and the company’s usual BB OS stream.  After apologizing for the outage and offering $100 in premium app downloads to those affected, Lazaridis continued.

Research in Motion is encouraging developers to create their games using HTML5, since that’s supported by QNX, as well as older platforms like BlackBerry OS 5 and OS6. This way, they can code once and deploy everywhere. There’s also something called Cascades, which is a native UI framework built into BBX, giving developers access to low-level APIs.

On the Enterprise side, unlike pure QNX, BBX should fully support BES. What’s more, enterprise apps can get their own shelf in App World and they would then be hosted by a company’s BES (and be undeletable by employees). There’s also something called BlackBerry Balance that will provide a “corporate partition” for separating BES (work) stuff from the rest of your life.

There was a brief moment discussing how BBX will support the Android Runtime.  A demo was later shown to developers in the Technical Session, but a simple app with menus was just ported.

Even though it’s yet another OS for RIM to handle, BBX could be the unifying factor to help minimize fragmentation and hopefully improve profits for BB app developers. Until we get some more details (like screenshots and demo videos), we’ll have to reserve judgement.

The post RIM’s New BBX Operating System Marries BlackBerry With QNX appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

One of the hottest features on the new BlackBerry Torch 9800 is the new BlackBerry OS 6. What if you don’t want a slide-out keyboard or touchscreen display? Well, based on this video, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 has no trouble with the new OS.

We already knew that this smartphone would be getting the upgraded operating system, but it is good to see the new OS in action on the BlackBerry Bold 9700. The short video seems to demonstrate that OS 6 is relatively smooth on the older hardware and we get to have a look mostly at the web browser.

According to the reviewer in the video, interestingly enough, BB OS 6 might be running even faster on the Bold 9700 than it is on the newer Torch 9800. Maybe this is because it doesn’t have to deal with more complex touchscreen input; there is no pinch-to-zoom, for instance.

It probably won’t be long before OS 6 is made available official to 9700 owners, but if you want the latest you’ll want to wait for the BlackBerry Bold 9780 with its 5MP camera, 512MB memory, and OS 6 pre-installed.

BlackBerry OS 6 for BlackBerry Bold 9700 video walkthrough [BGR]

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