Back in mid-December, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis confirmed that his company would eventually port its QNX operating system to its BlackBerry smartphones. In an interview with PC Magazine’s Sascha Segan, Lazaridis has shed more light on these plans.
Lazaridis reconfirmed that the QNX-powered BlackBerries will use dual-core processors. With other companies starting to announce dual-core smartphones, you might think that we would see such devices sooner than later. But it appears that RIM is not quite ready to make the jump. Lazaridis suggests that current dual-core processors are not ready for smartphones, citing battery life, size, weight, thickness and cost as concerns.
Lazaridis also revealed that future QNX devices will likely be able to run existing BlackBerry Java apps. This would ensure a smoother transition from the BlackBerry OS over to QNX.
No timelines were given for the migration but don’t expect RIM to move very fast…