Research in Motion will launch a brand new user interface, along with the ability to back-up and restore a handheld's contents to MicroSD card, when it brings its BlackBerry 9000 series to market in Q4.

So claims handset rumoursite BoyGeniusReport, which adds that the device will be a 3G unit and contain a new processor.

There a no details about what the chip might be. In 2005, RIM made a big deal out of its decision to adopt Intel's ARM-based XScale processor. Last year, Intel sold the range to Marvell, which in November 2006 began shipping what would have been Intel's next-generation part, 'Monahans' aka the PXA300 series.

Is this what the report has in mind, or is RIM looking at alternatives for a brand as strong as Intel's?

Whatever, in the meantime, the report claims, RIM will next month ship the 8800, essentially a stretched BlackBerry Pearl, widened to take a full QWERTY keypad. Due mid-February on the US Cingular network, the handset will lack Wi-Fi and a digicam, even though past reports said the device would sport a 1.3 megapixel image grabber and 802.11b/g. If the report's correct, it suggests Cingular, for one, has nixed these features. The 8800 is also expected to support quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE cellular links and Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. The screen's a 320 x 240 job. The 8800 has 64MB of Flash memory. ®