The January 30 launch date for the BlackBerry 10 is rapidly approaching. RIM’s only exhibitor presence at CES 2013 was the QNX booth with a Bentley concept car demonstrating the future of automotive electronics and information. More on that in another post. However, RIM personnel were in Las Vegas during the week.
While attending CES 2013 I had the opportunity to watch and capture a demonstration of RIM’s forthcoming BlackBerry 10 given by Jeff Gadway, Senior Product Marketing Manager at RIM. Comments will come after the video.
The demonstration is fairly self-explanatory; however, a few comments:
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Notice that Jeff did the entire demonstration using only his right hand. Makes it easy to deal with your communications and smartphone activity while carrying on other activities (other than driving an automobile).
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All activity is launched via gestures; there is no “Home” or “Start” button.
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As pointed out BlackBerry 10 has no Messaging application. BlackBerry Hub takes advantage of QNX’s robust multi-tasking features to allow email, social networking and calendar activity to run continuously in the background, readily available via a single “up and right” gesture. This includes dealing with time sensitive information, such as schedules and weather applications.
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It’s also QNX’s multi-tasking and multi-threading support that allows the smooth flow between applications, updates of the home screen and BlackBerry Hub.
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As for the soft keyboard, I can only say that I built up a 100 character sentence in fewer than 20 keystrokes.
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Most impressive is the ability to easily switch between Work and Personal modes. Work mode has the constraints of employer policy with respect to both applications and security issues but with a single gesture you can switch over to personal mode where you have total control over the applications you want on a smartphone, including Facebook and Twitter.
There are sections where non-relevant images are covered up; I am not the world’s most experienced video producer. RIM’s PR person in attendance may occasionally be seen.
Not shown in the demonstration, largely because it is still coming together, was the BlackBerry 10 App World; however, RIM’s goal is to launch with over 70,000 applications. With over 20,000 applications added via two port-a-thons last week, they certainly are getting closer to this goal.
For the past year I have been using a Playbook from which one can get a feel for the flow and speed. In fact, due to its speed and multi-tasking, it has become my default device for checking email and tablet web browsing. BlackBerry 10 in many ways is an upgrade and extension of the Playbook experience; however, I look forward to the Playbook’s transition from the Playbook operating system to the BlackBerry 10 operating system shortly after the BlackBerry 10’s launch.
In a future post I’ll discuss why I feel the BlackBerry 10 has significant potential for success, including some other information picked up at CES. The BlackBerry 10 application pictured on the right is just one reason.
Full disclosure: the author has a small holding of RIM shares. But he also has iOS and Android devices in order to experience a cross section of the smartphone market. His main interest is in seeing several thousand jobs maintained in not only the Canadian economy but also in RIM organizations around the world.
Related articles
- RIM launches final BlackBerry 10 ‘Portathon’ event (news.cnet.com)
- You’re Already Using BlackBerry 10: Living QNX (blogs.blackberry.com)
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