BlackBerry Should Have Made This Phone

The rumor mill is percolating with reports of a new superphone.

One insider at Australian telco Telstra calls it a "real breakthrough, a game changer that will put pressure on Samsung and Apple ." Other insiders slather icing on the cake: "It has software features and capabilities that are not available on a Samsung Galaxy smartphone or Apple iPhone. The software is really powerful and it pulls together Google services like no other manufacturer has done in the past."

Hold it right there. Google services? Yep. This supposed game changer is the Motorola X, the first Motorola smartphone to hit the market since Big G bought the company. Set to debut in July, this would be the next top-shelf Android to duke it out with Apple's brand new iPhone, currently expected to appear in June.

Why am I acting so surprised? Because this sounds like exactly the thing that BlackBerryshould have released last month, but didn't.

BlackBerry not only needs a totally amazing product that could turn raving Apple fans into CrackBerry addicts again. The company also had the perfect opportunity to deliver phones that break all the rules. Everybody knows that the BlackBerry 10 platform is based on an entirely new batch of code, and nobody wants a warmed-up version of BB7 or 8. This is where you go big, pull out all the stops, and play Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor at 110 decibels for the world to hear.

It can be done -- even if you're protecting a large and growing Android market and can't afford to make the changes too drastic. The Motorola X is exactly what the BlackBerry Z10 should have been.

Instead, the Z10 has the innards of a Samsung Galaxy S III with a bit of software polish we hadn't seen before. The S III is still a fine phone, mind you, but it was released almost a year ago and is about to be made obsolete by Samsung's next generation.

Google is about to show us what the new BlackBerry could and should have been. BlackBerry has been missing boats regularly since 2007, and just waved goodbye to another potential life raft.

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The article BlackBerry Should Have Made This Phone originally appeared on Fool.com.

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