Balsillie: BlackBerry 6.1 now BlackBerry 7, still not QNX-based

Research In Motion’s co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, confirmed a rumor that has been circulating the Internet over the past several days: BlackBerry 6.1 will come to market as BlackBerry 7. We gave you a quick look at the operating system running on the Bold Touch, Touch and Torch 2, and, as you can see, the cosmetic changes are minor. During the company’s shipment warning issuance yesterday, Balsillie quipped that 6.1 was “such a big update” that they felt obliged to knight the software BlackBerry 7. It was rumored that the company’s seventh major operating system revision would be based on QNX’s code base, however it now looks like the BlackBerry faithful will have to wait for BlackBerry 8 for handsets running the high-test OS.