RIM tries to shoot down talk of BB10 roughness

RIM responded to claims that BlackBerry 10 was far too unfinished with an outright rejection. It called the rumor "inaccurate and uninformed" and insisted on its official position, which was a need to wait on a new chip that could give it dual-core and LTE 4G. There was no alternate explanation, RIM suggested.

"We will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready and we believe this new chip set [sic] architecture is required to deliver the world class user experience that our customers will expect," RIM said. "Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false."

The statements are partly supported by talk of demoing PlayBook 2.0 mail, which would show that the company was further along in software development than it has been in the past. The rumor gained fuel partly from RIM's own track record with the PlayBook, where it promised native e-mail within 60 days of launch and delayed it multiple times, now leaving it until February.

Its target of late 2012 still gives the company a large window to finish the OS and could be a buffer even with the chip as a main factor. RIM not only has to implement all the native mail and contact apps it skipped to rush the PlayBook to shelves but include the BlackBerry Messenger service it won't have when the PlayBook 2.0 update arrives in or near February. The timing will give RIM's competitors chances at having faster hardware or matching features before BlackBerry 10 phones are ready.

By Electronista Staff