BlackBerry May be Working on Octa-Core 64-bit Phone
Back in December, BlackBerry CEO John Chen indicated that the company will design high-end phones for the enterprise sector only, and low end consumer devices for the emerging markets. Eventually, the company will address the high-end consumer market again, but not until the company can secure a steady flow of revenue.
That said, unnamed sources have confirmed that BlackBerry is working on a very high-end phone in addition to the rumored "Ontario" device. The phone will be based on the 20 nm Snapdragon MSM8994 eight-core 64-bit processor clocked up to 2.5 GHz. Other chip features will include 4 GB of LPDDR3-1600 PoP RAM, Adreno 430 graphics at 500 MHz, a pixel fill rate of 6 Gpix/s, support for DirectX 11.1 and more.
Meanwhile, a Geekbench Browser test revealed "Ontario" running BlackBerry 10.3, a quad-core Snapdragon 800 clocked at 2.15 GHz, and 2 GB of RAM. The previous BlackBerry flagship, the Z10, only had a dual-core processor. The Ontario phone is part of the company's "O" series while the QWERTY devices fall into the "W" series and the all-touch fall into the "B" series.
However, there's a question of whether the new CEO, John Chen, will nuke these two phones or not; employees have stated that both projects have yet to be cancelled, so there's still some hope. If they do make it to the market, the 64-bit phone likely won't appear until sometime next summer (2015).
Last month Terry Gou, chairman of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., indicated that the low end BlackBerry devices will make an appearance at World Mobile Congress 2014 later this month. The phones were assembled by Foxconn's mobile unit, FIH Mobile Limited. This subsidiary has agreed to help develop and make BlackBerry devices over the next five years.
"We are working with them to design a new device, and we will showcase multiple devices at the trade show in Barcelona in February," he said.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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Damon Palovaara It would be hard on my ego if there was a cellphone with a faster CPU than my computerReply -
MaxTesla If they were to sell those phones TODAY, then BB could be back in the game and be the nr 1 contender, but since they are earliest coming out next year it might be the Z10 all over again, with a phone that would have been great 12-18 months before the launch date, but because of the 12-18months have passed it hardly makes a blip on the radar.Reply -
wemakeourfuture BBRY is a long decaying and dying company. They should have just focused on services to other companies and enterprise. Even if this was released tomorrow it would get zero traction and BBRY would lose billion(s).Their eco-system is dead, their retail consumer base is far gone. It's a bunch of old people using out-dated hardware, that still won't trade their old blackberry even for a newer model because it works "just fine".Reply -
andystanley ReplyIf they were to sell those phones TODAY, then BB could be back in the game and be the nr 1 contender, but since they are earliest coming out next year it might be the Z10 all over again, with a phone that would have been great 12-18 months before the launch date, but because of the 12-18months have passed it hardly makes a blip on the radar.
I don't think those specs are going to help them sell cell phones. Blackberry are out of the game unless they get rid of that operating system. We've got alot of operating systems out there and we don't need another one. -
someguynamedmatt ReplyIt would be hard on my ego if there was a cellphone with a faster CPU than my computer
Try running a Pentium-MMX at 200Mhz... then it's hard on the ego to realize that the average toaster oven has more processing power than your desktop computer.In all seriousness, they need to work on this NOW if they want to actually have a worthwhile release, rather than the typical faffing around for two years doing nothing and making vague statements about what's under construction. Either get the cutting-edge tech out while it's still cutting-edge, or get rid of it NOW and move on before you release a product two years late into a market that's already passed it. -
JOSHSKORN Cue the, "But can it run Crysis" replies on octa-core phone-related articles. I'm sure it'll happen sooner than later, a phone being powerful enough to run some of today's GPU-hungriest games.Reply -
navas22 after the ipad air, iphone 5s it's the turn of blackberry to propose a 64bits processorReply -
antilycus On phones the whole core thing is just a marketing hype and if you can't get your app (on a phone) to run in 32bit you shouldn't be a developer. the only difference in speed is how much / what registers are access per clock cycle. That's it.Reply -
stevelord Sorry to disappoint the internet basement crowd, but the majority of the consumer and business markets do not care about phone specs.Reply