BlackBerry OS 7 “Highlander” to Meld OS 6.1 and QNX Together

There can be only one Highlander BlackBerry OS

We have been hearing so much conflicting information on the upcoming BlackBerry OS 6.1 and OS 7 making it hard to break fact from fiction. We just heard from one of our sources who passed along the gist of CTO of software, David Yach, keynote at RIM’s internal RDX dev conference today. Here are some highlights from his keynote though he kind of jumped around a bit:

  • A big portion of the talk is focusing on the benefit RIM will get from centralizing processes and tools. (what RIM’s COO of product engineering, Thorsten Heins,said yesterday)
  • One of the key reasons OS 6.1 is falling behind schedule is miscommunication between teams in the critical path of the project
  • He didn’t focus on the problems as much as how RIM is going to solve them by easing conflicts in the critical path

The second part of the keynote is where things got interesting talking about OS 7 and OS 6.1:

  • There is a new project “Highlander” using the concept from the movies “There can be only one”
  • This project is taking the best features from OS 6.1 and the QNX OS to make OS 7. This seems to be where the rumors about OS 6.1 having a QNX core are coming from
  • RIM is “very happy” with OS 6.1 but it struggling with losing the features users love
  • OS 6.1 is almost 10 years old and has pushed its limits
  • Still they are very happy about the “Liquid Graphics” in OS 6.1 adding a WOW factor to BlackBerrys
  • This new OS 7 will also be the OS for the Playbook down the road. Seeing the theme of  "there can be only one" ?
  • RIM is still in the “early stages” of OS 7 with a target of 2012

I am really loving the Highlander references and think RIM should actually give their OS builds a name. For example, OS 6.0 could be Phoenix… 🙂 So what do you think of the info passed along? It is second hand so its hard to analyze properly but still I am really excited to see RIM has a plan for 2011 and 2012. Here is to hoping they execute it correctly!

20 total comments on this postSubmit your comment!