RIM (Reasearch in Motion) and BlackBerry fans worldwide are waiting for 2013 already with baited breath not because of the excitement surrounding RIM’s new update to BlackBerry but also because 2012 has not been the greatest year for the once mighty phone manufacturer as the company lost over $500 million in the first quarter and BlackBerry sales were down 40 percent.
A more recent sign of BlackBerry’s fall from disgrace came in the form of a diss last month from Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer when in an interview with Fortune published Tuesday, Mayer repeatedly said that she wanted her employees to move “from BlackBerries to smartphones 
,” implying that she does not consider BlackBerries to be smartphones, even though they actually are.
Despite this blatant diss and the company’s struggles, things may just be looking up as RIM prepares to launch BB10 and if the images of the prototype leaked via a Vietnamese tech blog are anything to go by, BlackBerry may have taken Ms. Meyer’s words to heart by coming up with a design that reminds us of a certain smartphone which boasts a fruit as its logo.
While the full frontal images show a sleek display which shows RIM has finally seen the light and done away with a full keyboard opting to – finally! – go fully touchscreen, the images of the side panel shows the device boasts not only a micro-USB connector, but also a slot for a micro-HDMI cable, which could enable it to connect to high resolution external displays.
The images were first leaked by Vietnamese site Tinhte.vn, which says the phone feels ‘very comfortable’ to hold, but refuses to go into details of where they got hold of the device.
So could this be the make or break device for RIM in the face of reports that the BlackBerry 10 OS will be ‘dead on arrival’ when it finally launches in 2013? Guess we will have to wait till 30 January to find out.
