Saturday, April 2, 2011

BlackBerry ‘Highlander’ will be OS 7; a mix of QNX and 6.1


There has been a lot of debate over what exactly BlackBerry OS 7 will be like and how it will be integrated onto BlackBerry smartphones. We know from the leaked software roadmap that it is definitely being worked on and RIM intends to begin it’s pre-integration later this year. Earlier today, CTO of software, David Yach, gave a keynote at RIM’s internal RDX dev conference. Below are a few of the highlights from the keynote, where Yach discusses the implementation of OS 7 and what it should be:

A big portion of the talk is focusing on the benefit RIM will get from centralizing processes and tools.
One of the key reasons OS 6.1 is falling behind schedule is miscommunication between teams in the critical path of the project
He didn’t focus on the problems as much as how RIM is going to solve them by easing conflicts in the critical path
There is a new project “Highlander” using the concept from the movies “There can be only one”
This project is taking the best features from OS 6.1 and the QNX OS to make OS 7. This seems to be where the rumors about OS 6.1 having a QNX core are coming from
RIM is “very happy” with OS 6.1 but it struggling with losing the features users love
OS 6.1 is almost 10 years old and has pushed its limits
Still they are very happy about the “Liquid Graphics” in OS 6.1 adding a WOW factor to BlackBerrys
This new OS 7 will also be the OS for the Playbook down the road. Seeing the theme of “there can be only one” ?
RIM is still in the “early stages” of OS 7 with a target of 2012

Gathering all the details from the keynote, it looks as though RIM is working towards a singularly OS for both smartphone and tablet. OS 7 seems to be a mesh between QNX and BlackBerry 6.1, pulling all of the best features into one. It is likely there will still be some differences in terms of UI between tablet and other BlackBerry devices. Which this could coincide to the tiered devices Mike Lazaridis spoke of before (superphones). RIM looks to be working very hard, but end users will most likely not get their hands on OS 7 before 2012.

Sumber :n4bb

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