RIM confirms 3G HSDPA BlackBerry is on the way

Frustrated with the 50Kbps speed of your GSM GPRS BlackBerry, or 100Kbps if you're on Telstra's EDGE-enhanced network?

Sure, it's adequate for RIM's highly efficient email, but accessing Web sites and online services takes more time then you'd like to spend staring at the screen. And it'd indeed be a fine thing if you could temporarily tether your BlackBerry to your laptop for use a wireless modem at true mobile broadband speeds.

Happily, a forthcoming BlackBerry is set to bring HSDPA to the table. Our source? None other than RIM's co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie (yes, we agree that the ‘co-CEO' bit is rather odd).

At this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Balsillie confirmed that HSDPA was not only on the roadmap but just around the bend. "Certainly going to HSDPA is something that's very important to us in the near term," Balsillie said.

This may be emerge as a high-speed member of the forthcoming BlackBerry 9000 family, the specs of which have already been touted to include Wi-Fi, a 624MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor and 1GB of onboard memory.

There have also been reports of a 480 x 320 screen, which is not only substantially larger than the 320 x 240 of current BlackBerry QWERTY devices (such as the 8300 Curve) but equals the resolution of the iPhone.

However, Balsillie was playing his cards close to his chest on the prospects of a touchscreen BlackBerry, which has been widely rumoured since late last year.

"For sure we're looking at all kinds of different device packaging and presentation," Balsillie told a reporter from news agency Reuters. But he cautioned that "I think getting religious on packaging is not the way to go... it's really user preference-oriented." (For ‘packaging' read ‘touchscreen UI' rather than ‘the cardboard box which the smartphone comes in').

Of course, while there's been no shortage of praise for the iPhone's pace-setting touchscreen and innovative UI, BlackBerry fans can't push their preference unless RIM provides them with a choice in the first place.

Which ties in nicely to the appearance earlier this month of patent applications filed by RIM for not only a touchscreen LCD panel but a unique dual-input device with both a keyboard and a tilting touchscreen.

The first is rather a dry read, and the only thing that stops it from being totally snoozeworthy is that it comes from RIM. The second is more of an eye-opener, as it outlines a concept device in which the screen can cover the keypad entirely, or slide upwards to provide access to the keypad (similar to a slider mobile phone) while also resting the screen at roughly a 40 degree angle.

Tilting touchscreen: RIM's patent shows a device that combines a silding screen (which the smart money says will be a touchscreen) with both QWERTY and SureType keypads

While the patent application makes no specific reference to the display being a touchscreen, it'd be daft to completely cover the keypad with a display if the display itself was a read-only device offering no means of user interaction.

On the other hand, if it was a touchscreen with a fingertip-friendly UI, such an arrangement would make perfect sense - as would the inclusion of the keypad for tapping out emails, which remains both the Blackberry's raison d'etre and the iPhone's Achilles Heel. The patent shows both a conventional QWERTY keyboard and a combo ‘SureType' keypad as used in the BlackBerry Pearl line.

The larger screen and its angled orientation are also a neat fit into some of the features of the forthcoming BlackBerry 4.5 operating system (the OS update was previously tagged as 4.3.1, but RIM has decided to jump straight to 4.5 in recognition of the many new tricks added to the mix).

Office on the move: RIM will license the new BlackBerry edition of Documents To Go, which supports high-fidelity viewing and editing of Microsoft Office documents, to bundle into the forthcoming BlackBerry OS 4.5

Headliners include support for YouTube video, enhanced BlackBerry Maps with Points of Interest, and the ability to view and edit Microsoft Office documents using a bespoke BlackBerry version of Documents To Go.

The revamped email client will also support HTML and download and save any type of message attachment in its original format. On the multimedia side will sit a retooled media player with richer playlist features and streaming Bluetooth stereo.