Submitted by “At D:Dive Into Mobile this evening, Waterloo’s outspoken co-CEO went on record that they’ll be taking the PlayBook’s QNX platform to smartphones just ‘as soon as [he has] dual core baseband CPUs’, though power consumption remains a limiting factor. At any rate, RIM seems to be fully acknowledging now both that QNX is a little too beefy for today’s smartphones and that BlackBerry OS isn’t quite beefy enough, which leaves these guys in a bit of a pinch until the dual-core revolution takes hold.” It’s clear QNX isn’t Engadget’s forte (I don’t blame them – I know jack-all about gadgets compared to them), but of course, we know better. QNX itself will happily run on current-gen mobile phones; heck, even a simple PII will do the job. The problem here is most likely BlackBerry’s own userland.
I think you are right about the userland. Assuming it uses the same AIR based interface as the playbook then thats quite an ask.
Clearly its Such a big as that they think a modern dual core is needed!!
Isn’t that a bad joke to say that QNX is beefy. Compared to Linux (Android/Meego) and Xnu (OSX/iOs) kernels it’s a featherweight.
Userland is definitely a problem. Previously, they used java for their userland, and now they are going to use AIR. I have to guess that’s going to be alot of new code.
That was a bad interview. He does a great job of not being candid.
Here’s what I took away from the article:
Playbook is a beta lab, and they will use it to work out issues with QNX/BBOS.
The next gen BBs will be dual core and still emphasize battery life, messaging, and call quality. BBs won’t become mp3 players with a cell modem in them.
RIM is going to get wide and take advantage of the QNX microkernel. (I think Marvell has demoed a 3 core ARM chip with 2x 1GHz and 1x 600MHz-ish core. This would be a good fit for RIM; currently, they use a 635MHz ARM chip to save power. The core is aimed at tablets, but they should be able to scale it down.)
The torch is a last gen product, and Playbook is the first next gen product.