December 18th, 2007Touchscreen Blackberry on the way?
Does Canada’s wireless darling have an iPhone killer up it’s sleeve? An analyst at GMP securties has some interesting and optimistic speculation on the form factor for the next blackberry including:
We believe that RIM holds significant respect for the tactile response that the physical keyboard provides. We believe that the screen will possibly include a tactile response mechanism akin to the Nintendo Wii controller. We also believe that the device will have differing hard key positions as well as programmable keys.
Before you go scratching your head, wondering where you missed tactile qwerty keyboard on your Wii, there’s really 2 (or 3 possibilities here). One is motion and gesture sensitivity – like on the Wii and the tilt-screen feature of the iPhone and becoming more in common with digital cameras and other devices. The next possibility is touch/gesture sensitivity for basic interaction and a retractable keyboard (also mentioned in the patent) for text input. Lastly there is the possibility of something like the tactile on-screen keyboard that nokia is working on.
also interesting:
“The device will feature a half VGA (roughly equivalent to an iPhone) that will be written on a new generation operating system. The rewrite of the OS will feature multithreading capability, a key feature to using several applications at the same time.”
The speculation is for an announcement of RIM’s next gen devices at 3GSM february. Maybe WirelessNorth will have to take a break from the winter blahs to stop by sunny Barcelona this winter? You know, just in case?
seen originally at Wellington Financial, link: GMP Research previews touchscreen Blackberry
