BlackBerry Development Unit Alpha

When I wrote a guide to best phones in the Philippine market yesterday, I did not recommend any RIM BlackBerry devices. Actually, I haven't been recommending high end BlackBerry's for some time in favor of lower end units. The reason is that the BlackBerry 7 operating system is the last of the old generation of BlackBerry devices and a new series of BlackBerry's should be released sometime this year. The divide between BlackBerry 7 and BlackBerry 10 will be similar to the situation that occurred between Windows Phone 6.5 and Windows Phone 7. The BlackBerry PlayBook is the only current BlackBerry device that might see the BlackBerry 10 operating system.

In other words, it does not seem like the time to make a big or long term investment in a BlackBerry.

So what will the future BlackBerrys look like? At BlackBerry World, RIM showed off a alpha unit which should be the basis for the next generation of BlackBerry's. The specifications confirmed so far are:

• BlackBerry 10 operating system
• 4.2-inch 768 x 1280 display
• 1 GB of RAM
• 16 GB of internal storage

Given that the BlackBerry Playbook of 2012 already has a dual core processor, we do expect the higher end BlackBerry 10 phones to come with at least dual core processors. The image above also hints at a front camera.

BlackBerry has also uploaded a preview of BlackBerry 10 on YouTube.

Don't imagine that this is some kind of concept phone that will never see the light of day. Two thousand of these units have been handed out to BlackBerry developers so that they can start preparing to develop apps for BlackBerry 10.

There is no word when the first BlackBerry 10 devices are set to be released, but we do expect them before the end of the year. Is this enough to convince you to wait for the new BlackBerry's rather than jump ship and go with an Android, Apple iPhone or Windows Phone device? RIM certainly hopes so, but it is starting to like a case of too little to late.