BlackBerry 9000 revealed, major disappointment?
It appears the rumored touchscreen BB is just a myth if you believe what first time poster Cooper over at BB Forums has to say. This photo was purportedly taken in Waterloo at the RIM campus. The 9xxx line won't see a touchscreen for a long …
Context & Ripple Effects
The BlackBerry 9000 has been circulating on rumor channels since The Boy Genius Report's October 2007 whisper about the device, and this latest leak keeps the drumbeat going: a first-time BB Forums poster named Cooper has published a photo purportedly taken at RIM's Waterloo campus. The story traveled fast for a forum post — TechCrunch and The Boy Genius Report both picked it up the same day under headlines speculating about an iPhone-black finish.
The substantive news in the leak is negative for touchscreen hopefuls: CrunchGear frames the rumored touchscreen BlackBerry as a myth, reporting that the 9xxx line won't get one 'for a long time.' That puts the 9000 squarely at odds with the post-iPhone assumption that every next-generation flagship must go touch-first.
First-order effects
- RIM's unannounced flagship is now being judged in public on hardware details it never chose to reveal, with the Waterloo photo giving enthusiasts their first purported look at the 9000's actual design.
- Expectations among BlackBerry watchers reset around a keyboard-centric 9000, since the touchscreen variant many assumed was coming is now being called a myth by the outlets covering the leak.
Second-order effects
- Every subsequent 9000 detail — specs, finish, launch timing — gets benchmarked against the iPhone's touchscreen by the same blogs driving the leak cycle, forcing RIM to defend a keyboard-first roadmap in a touch-hungry news environment.
- Forum leakers like Cooper are established as a parallel disclosure channel that reaches TechCrunch-scale audiences within hours, undercutting RIM's control over its own product narrative ahead of any official announcement.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, handset launches become two-stage events — a months-long leak phase on forums and blogs, then an official reveal that mostly confirms what the crowd already knows — shifting early narrative power from carrier and manufacturer PR to anonymous posters.
- RIM's reported reluctance to put a touchscreen on the 9xxx line is a structural bet that its enterprise and keyboard-loyalist base will hold against consumer touch-first demand, a bet whose outcome defines whether the company competes with the iPhone or around it.
The trend: Smartphone roadmaps now surface through forum leaks months before launch, with every leaked flagship measured against the touchscreen standard the iPhone set in 2007.