Thanks to my attendance of the BlackBerry DevCon in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, I'm increasingly interested in what the company will come up with next in terms of gaming.

Of course, as the only announced and available BBX device, much of the current talk concerns the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, which has just received its native SDK.

However, news from multiple sources suggests it won't be long before the first generation of BlackBerry smartphones running the OS are available to consumers.

The early phone

As broken last week by n4bb, these will be pure touchscreen devices.

We can't confirm details such as the rumoured Colt name (seems a little weak), although the 4-inch screen, dual-core processor, all-swipe controls etc all make sense.

However, we do know that several game developers already have devices in-house for porting and testing purposes, which suggests the oft-mooted mid-2012 release date - potentially as much as eight months away - is way too pessimistic.

Much more likely, from what we're hearing, is a calendar Q1 window, including games - lots of games.