No QWERTY for BBX Smartphones, RIM Says

Canadian mobile phone maker Research in Motion is gearing up for the release of a new mobile operating system and of new devices that will run under it, namely BBX, and it seems that it will also adopt a new design for these devices.

Unlike previous BlackBerry smartphones that packed QWERTY keyboards, future handsets from RIM will include only touchscreen displays, which will bring them closer to the BlackBerry PlayBook launched last year.

In a recent article, PCMag cites RIM’s vice president of developer relations and ecosystem development Alec Saunders, who stated that the company planned on moving away from the popular BlackBerry Bold form factor with the upcoming BBX devices.

Moreover, he explained that the company intended on making these devices resemble the PlayBook even more, and that they would come with the same screen resolution as the tablet PC.

That would be a 1024 x 600-pixel resolution, which differs from what today's smartphones have to offer, namely 800 x 480, 960 x 540, or 1280 x 720.

“Look, if you build [an app] for the PlayBook, then it will run on BBX. We have maintained aspect ratios, BBX also has the ability to upload multiple dimension graphics … [and the standard resolutions] are the same as PlayBook,” Saunders stated, PCMag reports.

Some of the previous rumors suggested that BlackBerry Colt, supposedly the first smartphone that RIM will bring to the market with the new BBX platform on board, would feature a similar design as the BlackBerry Bold, but it seems that this is not the case.

Basically, RIM plans on making the BBX platform superior to the OS that was loaded on its PlayBook devices, and it would make sense to drop the physical keyboard from future devices, although this is one of the most popular feature of existing RIM smartphones.

The first BBX smartphones should be released sometime next year, with native email and BES support on board, Saunders confirmed.