After frustrating delays and vague timeframes for the BlackBerry 10 release, Research in Motion (RIM) CEO Thorsten Heins finally narrowed the smartphone's arrival from "Q1" to "January," in an interview with The Telegraph.

The long-awaited BlackBerry 10 platform and smartphones have been pinned to a rather vague timeframe in "the first quarter of calendar 2013," as Heins told analysts during the company's June 28 earnings call. This timeframe announced during the earnings call came as the latest delay to the BlackBerry 10 launch, and also confirmed massive layoffs - 5,000 employees. The two worrisome pieces of news sparked aggressive predictions about RIM's "death spiral," and how the company is going down for good.

In the interview with The Telegraph, published on Aug. 2, Heins again denied the "death spiral" allegations and dismissed any comparisons to Nokia and its struggles. "Our platform isn't burning," Heins said, pointing to an internal memo that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop sent to employees before announcing the company's shift from Symbian to Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system.

Nokia has recently doubled sales of its Lumia series of smartphones running on Windows Phone, selling 4 million units during its last quarter. Meanwhile, Heins also noted that RIM has a single phone, and that phone alone has sold 45 million units. Seemingly annoyed by all the comparisons to Nokia, Heins told the publication that he finds surprising that Windows Phone has already received a lot of credit. "What are the proof points for its 'success'?" said Heins.

The CEO did acknowledge, however, that RIM has also considered an OS change and was seriously looking at Android for the shift. The company decided not to trade its OS for Android, because it would have left RIM with little room to distinguish itself and would be too far from what RIM is, Heins explained.

"We took the conscious decision not to go with Android," he told The Telegraph. "If you look at other suppliers' ability to differentiate, there's very little wiggle room. We looked at it seriously - but if you understand what the promise of BlackBerry is to its user base, it's all about getting stuff done," he said. "Games, media, we have to be at it, but we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game [and have] very little time to consume and enjoy content. If you stay to that purpose, you have to build on that basis. And if we want to serve that segment we can't do it on a me-too approach"

Back in May, at RIM's BlackBerry World 2012 event, Heins similarly told the audience that BlackBerry users are not like other smartphone users, and explained the difference in numbers. According to him, 87 percent of BlackBerry users access social networks on a daily basis from their phone, while only 63 percent of overall smartphone users do so. Also, 65 percent of overall smartphone users use organizational tools daily, compared with 91 percent of BlackBerry users.

"You tell us that we help you get things done. You're more productive and competitive with a BlackBerry. You can respond faster, you're agile, you're nimble and you can stay ahead with a BlackBerry," added the CEO, highlighting that "this is the purpose of the company."

Shifting to Android would have also meant losing control of all parts of its ecosystem, and RIM was not willing to give that up just yet. "I think there's a huge difference between somebody who just provides the phone and the hardware and someone who provides services," Heins explained, as cited by The Telegraph.

On the other hand, the CEO also added that RIM is open to the idea of licensing out its platform. "We're investigating this, and it's way too early to get into any details," he said. "We will not abandon the subscriber base."