Blackberry 10 phone due out October: report

What will perhaps be Blackberry’s last chance to stay alive will launch in about six months.

Even though the first Blackberry device to be powered by Research in Motion’s ambitious new operating system was supposed to already be out, due to various delays and an unprecedented restructuring within the company, the start of Blackberry 10 had become shrouded in mystery.

Now, though, it’s being reported that a phone running the brand new platform will be sitting on store shelves by October.

According to a report on N4BB, Research in Motion will officially introduce the groundbreaking device in August.

Among the rumored hardware specs is that it will have a full, physical Qwerty keyboard. Of course, RIM is going to have to do something that dazzles everyone.

And that’s an understatement. The delay of Blackberry 10-powered phones into the second half of 2012 has been criticized as a potential company-killing misstep.

Blackberry 10 is what RIM needed to do years ago – a brand new mobile operating system built from the ground up. It is completely independent of any of the architecture of the Blackberry platform of today, which still has remnants of the operating system from more than a decade ago.

All signs point to Blackberry 10 being too little, too late. But it is nice to see RIM finally coming to terms with reality.