10" PlayBook Production halted to focus on QNX Superphone Report
-
- Everyone needs to go back and learn how to read carefully. The thing that is said to be scheduled for release in 2011 is the 4G Playbook. It is said that there is no release date for the QNX phone.
I discount the QNX phone specs entirely because Mike Lazaridis said that QNX requires dual cores. It would probably be too much work (and time) to change this part of the spec.
Some ARE suspecting a QNX type of phone. Single or dual core is yet
to be seen.
As I have stated before, I think we will see at least one QNX based phone touch screen (no BB keyboard) for the holiday season. The Blackberry Touch.
Not sure what this means for the Bold Touch, but then I thought it was a half
baked idea to start with along with OS7.
Blackberry Touch - Full touch screen only phone. Like the Torch but no BB keyboard and larger HD display. 8-10 mega-pixel camera and 3 mega-pixel front chat cam.
They could then follow close with a Torch HD. Same screen specs but with the
slide out BB keyboard. (but not only on ATT. CDMA and GSM both.
Let see how close RIM comes to this.
Tim06-28-11 09:16 PMLike 0 -
QNX Neutrino (2001) has been ported to a number of platforms and now runs on practically any modern CPU that is used in the embedded market. This includes the PowerPC, x86 family, MIPS, SH-4 and the closely related family of ARM, StrongARM and XScale CPUs.
Per wikepedia06-28-11 09:33 PMLike 0 - its not the QNX kernel itself that needs the extra processing power. Its everything else that is going to be on top of it and how that will need to interact and multitask with the kernel06-28-11 09:36 PMLike 0
-
- Good! RIM doesn't need to get into the 10" tablet shark infested waters. Too many 10" or (large) tablets out right now, not many worthy 7" tablets. It's a far better strategy that they focus on getting QNX out on their phones ASAP and focus on improving their 7" Playbook to get a head start on the 7" HP tablet that's coming out later this year.
This is really good news.06-28-11 09:41 PMLike 0 - you can run QNX on a 1.5-2 ghz single core just the same as you can run windows 7 on an older 3.6 ghz single coreor whatever. BUT technology has advanced and if the chipset and OS/kernel can support it, a multicore processer will yield steller results at a much less clock speed. that is why clock speeds actually have gone down quite a bit but yet operate the software "faster."06-28-11 09:48 PMLike 0
- QNX exploits multi processors like no one's business. That is what it is really good at. That's why RIM bought QNX. If you're just going to have a single core processor, there really isn't any reason to run a QNX OS.06-28-11 10:37 PMLike 0
- Just imho, but the QNX superphones will not be single core, by the time they're released (I'm guessing March 2012 at the earliest) dual core will be everywhere, there's no way they can come to market with a single core at that time.
And no way will the 9900 run QNX, but that doesn't matter as QNX 1.0 on phones will be far from feature complete as compared to OS7 phones. Not a slam, just that OS7 phones have so much tight integration and tuning that they really are competitive and complete, QNX will be whiz bang wow but not feature complete.06-28-11 11:02 PMLike 0 - Just imho, but the QNX superphones will not be single core, by the time they're released (I'm guessing March 2012 at the earliest) dual core will be everywhere, there's no way they can come to market with a single core at that time.
And no way will the 9900 run QNX, but that doesn't matter as QNX 1.0 on phones will be far from feature complete as compared to OS7 phones. Not a slam, just that OS7 phones have so much tight integration and tuning that they really are competitive and complete, QNX will be whiz bang wow but not feature complete.
Great if they dump the 10" because if they don't catch-up on the phone front there will be NO support for PB because there will not be a blackberry for long.
The 7" form factor is a winner and portability, multitasking, gestures, and elegance of interface is how rim SHOULD be selling the PB. Drop the stupid flash commercials and focus on the fact you will use your playbook so many places you would never bother to pull out an ipad. Give it a few PIM apps for gods sake and they might actually sell some of these to the 500K Androind Users a DAY that are defecting from RIM and even win over some iOS fans in the process. You just can't ask someone to buy a Playbook if they don't have a BB because they would simply be humiliated by the obvious shortcomings of such an investment in a media player.
Honestly the biggest competitor PB should be worried about is the new readers running android or the 7" honeycomb tablets that with a quick look in any retail store looks similar and half the price to the average Joe - most the Janes going to buy an iPad won't bother to change course so grab the customers where you can. With a little polish they might even get people to want to buy a blackberry again.
10" PB is a waste of bandwidth for a company that needs to focus on it's core and if they don't fail they can do a 8.9", 10" and 11.2" PB if they want.06-29-11 12:16 AMLike 0 - No they are not. In fact, it was explicitly stated during the earnings call that QNX phones will be released in the first quarter of calendar year 2012. This has always been the case.
Matthew Thornton - Avian Securities: Mike, I think I may have missed this, but the comment on QNX timing, I think the previous guidance was early; now the 2012, was that unchanged?
Mike Lazaridis - President and Co-CEO: That's unchanged.06-29-11 05:57 AMLike 0 - If there was a 10" playbook in the works and BB halted it, it would make more sense that the reason for not going forward is that the 7 inch playbook has been a disappointment. Why go forward with a variant of a product that has not been succesful? Using the cover of focusing on a QNX phone is totally logical.
I am not saying the playbook isnt a great device, becuase I really like it, but the initial momentum it had certainly seems to have abated.06-29-11 06:49 AMLike 0 - If there was a 10" playbook in the works and BB halted it, it would make more sense that the reason for not going forward is that the 7 inch playbook has been a disappointment. Why go forward with a variant of a product that has not been succesful? Using the cover of focusing on a QNX phone is totally logical.
I am not saying the playbook isnt a great device, becuase I really like it, but the initial momentum it had certainly seems to have abated.
Assuming that a 10" Playbook was planned, I think it was smart to say, "let's scrap it and focus on phones." Part of RIM's problem is that it has too many form factors and too many phones. It needs to focus of fewer things but do those things better. Apple only has one phone at a time and you can't argue that it is not successful. I think that we will still eventually see a 10" Playbook. I'm fine with that not being in 2011.06-29-11 07:01 AMLike 0 -
Tim06-29-11 08:03 AMLike 0 -
If you think about what it takes to get a phone released you will see that QNX in 2011 is not possible. RIM has not been able to release the BB7 phones yet.
I expect that a QNX phone could be demoed in 2011 but forget about a release this year. It's not going to happen.06-29-11 08:12 AMLike 0 - One of QNX's capabilities is multitasking (like any modern OS). Multitasking is totally independent of multiprocessing. QNX has been around long before multiprocessor (or multicore) CPUs were common. In fact, many of the industrial applications of QNX have it running on some very primitive low-power/low-performance single processor embedded hardware (traffic light controllers, for instance).
So really, don't fall into this arbitrary bi-polar notion that QNX is unique in *needing* or *enabling* multiple processors, because that is not the case. What is the case is that all the stuff RIM is building on top of QNX as we know it in the BlackBerry Tablet OS runs best on a multicore CPU architecture. Whether that's due to coding practices or ambitious goals is up for debate (the world has had plenty of multitasking OS/device combos that have run just fine on a single CPU core). I know they could scale it back or code it more smartly to run on a single core if they wanted to. The CPU power of a typical modern single-core smartphone these days is already many many times more than some of the embedded hardware QNX has run on over the years.howarmat likes this.06-29-11 09:14 AMLike 1 - IMO that's a good thing, I don't think the 10" Playbook would sell well anyways, I've noticed the demand between 7-8" tablets sell more than 10" ones, in exception of the obvious iPads.06-29-11 09:29 AMLike 0
- And I think just opposite to the majority here!
My initial intention was to wait for the 10", as I believed it would be free from the early childhood diseases the 7" suffers. Unfortunately it was put on hold, and I need to consider whether to get the 7" PB, or get any cheap Android tablet while waiting for the 10" to be released...06-29-11 02:59 PMLike 0 - I'm expecting QNX to be available on the new handsets, except the Curve, since they are essentially the same hardware wise. It wouldn't be very nice for RIM to release phones in August for them to be obsolete by February/March of the following year. I would expect RIM to make this announcement once they start showing off their shiny new 'superphone'.06-29-11 03:27 PMLike 0
- And I think just opposite to the majority here!
My initial intention was to wait for the 10", as I believed it would be free from the early childhood diseases the 7" suffers. Unfortunately it was put on hold, and I need to consider whether to get the 7" PB, or get any cheap Android tablet while waiting for the 10" to be released...07-21-11 11:55 AMLike 0
- Forum
- BlackBerry PlayBook Forums
- BlackBerry PlayBook
10" PlayBook Production halted to focus on QNX Superphone Report
LINK TO POST COPIED TO CLIPBOARD