With its rival Apple gearing up to release the iPhone 5, BlackBerry developers Research in Motion is now in the process of building a new smartphone with the QNX operating system.

According to a report from N4BB, RIM has scrapped its plans of building a 10-inche BlackBerry Playbook tablet to concentrate on the QNX powered BlackBerry "superphone". The new smartphone is rumored to have a single core 1.2 Ghz processor with the company still open to the possibility of a dual core processor despite the fact that the dual core processor in the Playbook just saps the battery. Other features might include a 900+ screen resolution and a 4.3 inches touchscreen.

In place of the 10" playbook RIM will instead focus on advertising the LTE 4G PlayBook variant which is due for release this October. There is no known release date for the rumored "Superphone" or even a known codename.

If the rumors are true then this is exciting news indeed. BlackBerry has lagged behind the iPhone and Android phones. Just two weeks ago RIM announced that it had failed to meet sales expectations. This is partly because the BlackBerry OS has become a clunky dinosaur in comparison with Apple and Google, with QNX RIM has the opportunity to get back its chunk of the market. QNX has exciting features like using finger swipes in navigation and a capable multitasking system. A BlackBerry with this OS could make RIM relevant again.