The elusive BlackBerry (10) Dev Alpha Colt

RIM made an unprecedented move earlier this week when it gave away pre-production BlackBerry 10 hardware to developers, but it was a smart one. In order to develop for a brand new operating system and help grow develop support for a new platform, you need to be able to test on real hardware. Since this isn’t the phone that RIM will launch in the fall, there’s no issue letting the public see the hardware, right? Well, there’s more to the story.The BlackBerry 10 Alpha unit is a device RIM has been testing internally for quite some time. In fact, our sources have confirmed that it’s the BlackBerry Colt handset that RIM originally planned to ship as its first BlackBerry 10 smartphone, which was later cancelled.

This is just another insight into how disorganized RIM is — looking at the phone, you can clearly see how much time, effort and money RIM put into it. It’s pre-production, but this is a phone that is set up for the company to ship. It’s manufactured very well, feels good, and has way too many details for this to just be something RIM made to give away to its developer base.

The display is beautiful, and the unit is literally a smaller Play-book. I have also been told that Mike Lazaridis and other RIM executives have been showing BlackBerry 10 off to partners using this exact device over the past few months — another sign that this was indeed in the running to be RIM’s first real touch-screen device. 


We’ve just heard from a trusted source that the dummy device The Verge posted an image of earlier today is indeed a real BlackBerry, and it should in fact launch as the company’s first BBX-based smartphone. Our source told us that the BlackBerry Colt, the first QNX-based handset RIM had been working on that looked just like a smaller PlayBook, was scrapped in favor of the BlackBerry London. In terms of release timing, it’s looking like the London is slated to launch some time in the third...
We already reported that the BlackBerry Colt — the handset that was originally intended to be the Research In Motion’s first BlackBerry 10 smartphone — had been cancelled. Now, we have heard from multiple sources that the BlackBerry Milan that leaked last month was in fact was never a QNX smartphone, but a BlackBerry 7 device with a slightly different design identity. Regardless, the Milan has been cancelled as well. We’re told carriers balked at the idea of carrying a BlackBerry 7 phone so similar to the BlackBerry Torch at this point in time. The only phone RIM is working on bringing to market right now is the BlackBerry London. We have been told that RIM is currently shopping the London with carriers, and while it still looks very much like the image published by The Verge in November, there have been some slight design changes made. Lastly, we got word that when representatives from Porsche Design showed up to RIM’s headquarters to check out the progress the company was making on the designed by Porsche BlackBerry 9900-series phone for the first time, “it was a complete disaster.”


Speaking with PCMag recently, RIM’s vice president of developer relations and ecosystem development Alec Saunders said that the company’s early BBX-powered smartphones will not resemble the popular BlackBerry Bold form factor. The first BBX devices will instead look like smaller versions of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and will come equipped with screens sporting a 16:9 aspect ratio and a 1024 x 600-pixel resolution. Saunders also said the first BBX phones will support BlackBerry Enterprise.





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