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BlackBerry announces BBX operating system for phones, tablets

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Research In Motion announced BBX, the next operating system for BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, at its BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 convention.

BBX will be based on QNX, the current operating system found on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. But, like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating systems, BBX will be one operating system across devices.

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RIM said on its developer blog Tuesday that BBX will combine ‘the best of the BlackBerry platform and the best of the QNX platform to to connect people, devices, content and services.’

Current BlackBerry smartphones are running BlackBerry OS 7, which has brought increased touchscreen-based controls to new RIM handsets. Although touch input for most current BlackBerrys is a feature, BBX will make touch input the focus.

BBX will also usher in the long-promised ability to run Android apps on BlackBerry devices. It will also run native BBX apps, apps developed using Adobe’s AIR software and HTML5 apps, RIM said in a statement. Anything developed for QNX will run on BBX, RIM said.

But while RIM made the next BlackBerry operating system official, the company offered up few details on the new software outside of how developers will be able to build for it. RIM hasn’t yet said when the first BBX smartphones will arrive.

However, the first BBX tablet is already here -- that’d be the PlayBook tablet that launched in March and has yet to catch on with consumers.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Twitter.com/nateog

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