During a press conference earlier today, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins made the formal announcement that all the current BlackBerry 7 smartphones on the market today will not be eligible for an update to BlackBerry 10 when the new platform launches later this year. In fact, there is going to be very little in terms of connecting BB7 to BB10, since BB7 apps won’t necessarily work with BB10 devices, nor will BB10 apps necessarily work with BB7 devices. They’re two separate ecosystems and two separate platforms.

While Research in Motion has indicated that it will continue to support BlackBerry OS 7.1 for “a while,” it’s only a matter of time before they completely abandon the old OS (which really isn’t that old) and focus their energies exclusively on BlackBerry 10.

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As I mentioned in my post last week, it’s still a little murky as to whether the team in Waterloo will opt for a Torch-like slider form or a Bold-like bar phone for the keyboard-touting BB10 device, but it’s just as likely that they could go in both directions to give consumers a little more choice. It’s also unclear, though, how long we’ll have to wait before we see the launch of a BlackBerry 10 smartphone with a physical keyboard; we just know that it’s coming eventually.

Either way, RIM is hard at work making what it hopes to be the best virtual keyboard out there, so maybe even BlackBerry purists will finally be able to abandon the array of buttons and opt for a touchscreen-only experience moving forward.

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There’s no official model name or number for this device just yet, but we’re hearing that the first BlackBerry 10 device (formerly BBX) will be touch-only, falling in line with Windows Phone, Android, and iOS. It’s not the first tiime that RIM has released a touch-only smartphone, but it did establish itself in the market with one of the best thumb-friendly hardware keyboards out there.

It sounds like RIM isn’t going to focus solely on doing the touchscreen-only thing moving forward. As not to alienate its (shrinking) user base, a BlackBerry 10 device with a physical QWERTY keyboard is being projected for a Q1 2013 launch. It could be a slider, like the Storm, or it could have a smaller display and conventional keyboard, like the Bold.

Now if only RIM can convince more app developers to start working with the platform…

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I don’t know about, but BlackBerry 10 OS is looking a lot like Android to me. They’re introducing homescreen widgets for the first time, for instance, giving you that same kind of widgetized appeal as Google’s smartphone OS. You could also say that the panels remind you of Windows Phone (Live Tiles) in some ways too. The leak comes by way of a document for “how to position BlackBerry 10 in future advertising campaigns.”

You’ll also notice that the app tray has been redesigned too, making it both cleaner and more functional. A folder of apps shows thumbnails of some of the apps housed within, for instance. The universal inbox, borrowed from PlayBook OS 2.0, makes an appearance too.

Is this a matter of too little, too late? Or will RIM surge back into prominence with BlackBerry 10? Do these initial screens excite you? Or do they scream of a smorgasbord of everything that’s already out there.

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This isn’t exactly official, per se, as CrackBerry simply found the leaked slide, but this is pretty darn close. The BlackBerry London was hinted at and leaked before, but that was when we were still calling it the first BBX phone. Now, it’s BlackBerry 10 and the hardware design is distinctly different. There’s almost something about it that reminds me of the Galaxy S II and others of that slim smartphone ilk.

Some people are saying that the BlackBerry London is more like a shrunken down, phone-sized version of the BlackBerry PlayBook. That almost makes sense, especially with that great rubberized-feeling back. As far as specs, we’re hearing of either a TI OMAP5 or Qualcomm chipset, both of which are of the 1.5GHz dual core variety. They’ve seemingly done away with hardware buttons too, not unlike the PlayBook.

The London will also be joined by the BlackBerry Lisbon and the BlackBerry Laguna, all of which will be doing the BlackBerry 10 thing and all of which should be due for release later this year.

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Research in Motion had a tough 2011, their troubles are far from being over, and it has become such daunting task to lead the company in its current state, that co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have finally jumped off the sinking ship.  The company has announced the two are stepping down, while Thorsten Heins, currently RIM’s COO of Product Engineering, will take over as the new CEO; Heins believes he can stop the ship from sinking.

Both Lazaridis and Balsillie, who have been heading up the company for two decades, will still be on board though. Lazaridis will stay as vice chair of the board while Balsillie will be an ordinary director.  And they seem to be fully confident that Heins will be able to make things right. But it’s definitely not going to be easy for him.

Just to refresh your memory, the BlackBerry PlayBook turned out to be a painful experience for the company after it was released a couple of months back. They had to go through all sorts of trouble, including software glitches, price drops, massive competition, lack of apps and the list goes on. The big outage that came in October and the lawsuit over the use of BBX added to the agony. And the company’s market share is going down as iOS and Android are becoming more and more popular.

But still, Heins has high hopes. He believes that “everything is in place for the company to grow”. One of the first steps that he will be taking as the company’s head will be hiring a Chief Marketing Officer to make sure that the BlackBerry brand remains popular.

Check out the video to learn more about Heins’ ideas.

The post BlackBerry Down 2 VPs: Heins To Save Sinking Ship appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

We recently showed off the Blackberry London, an allegedly new phone from Blackberry that features a full-screen, the upcoming BBX OS, and no traditional Blackberry keyboard. If the leak proves true it shows off a device that is very different in design from the company’s traditional offerings and follows the footsteps of Android smartphones and iPhone designs.

According to Engadget, a source from RIM states that the company still intends to support its traditional keyboard layout phones as well. The source didn’t confirm the London but it did talk about RIM’s intention to maintain choice within its product portfolio. This leaves us to speculate what exactly is meant by that. Is RIM intending to keep their older Blackberry OS running alongside its BBX-based phones? Or will we have both keyboard BBX phones and models like the London as well?

In recent years Blackberry has lost a lot of ground to Android and the iPhone. Even Windows Phone 7 it starting to fare better than RIM. So why has this occurred? A major criticism has been that RIM’s phones just don’t look as sleek or modern as other smartphones on the market. The Blackberry OS is also starting to fall behind, from a technology point of view. So is their really a need to keep the old-style keyboard phones or the older-style OS? I guess it depends on who you ask. There are probably legacy apps for some business users that they just can’t leave without, though I’m sure alternatives for such programs will become available for BBX. Until we get more solid information all we can do is keep speculating.

The post RIM Continues Commitment To Its Signature Keyboard-Style Smartphones appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The photo shows the phone running some variation of the PlayBook’s OS, though the coloring and icons are somewhat different. According to the source the photo was of a ‘dummy’ model and so the OS in the screen is likely just a static image.

The phone has some similarities in design to the RIM Porsche Designed P9981. It is still unclear whether or not this is a scam or the real deal. The website BGR also speaks up on the Verge story and claims they have a source saying the this a real BBX handset, and that the original Playbook-looking model, the so-called Colt, was scrapped in favor of the London. According to the source the London might not be ready until the 3^rd quarter of 2012.

For now it’s best to take these reports with a grain of salt. Obviously Blackberry has not made any official comments regarding the supposed leak. Blackberry isn’t the king of smartphones like it was just a few short years ago, but I have to admit that the London is an interesting looking device at the very least.

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BlackBerry demo’d Trails today at DevCon. Trails is a visualization experience of aggregated data through time. It makes viewing an extreme amount of data easier and more functional. Contacts, BBM, calendar information, whatever you have communicated and with whomever you have communicated is turned into a beautiful visual experience. BlackBerry wants this to be an alternative to typical lists of information we are used to sifting. Graphs in trials can represent friends, time, and methods of communication. The time based interface allows you to easily expand and contract, while viewing trending topics and popular times and dates between friends. Apparently viewing trends like daytime use is more popular than night, who you talk to with the most, things like that. Trails technology will be available to developers for the upcoming BBX platform.

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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.

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