Blackberry 10 Revealed!!

Blackberry 10 Unveiled

Last month, RIM unveiled the BlackBerry 10 beta 3 running on the company's new test device, the Dev Alpha B. The UI look and feel of this latest BlackBerry 10 build is what RIM will be putting on its final BB10 devices in early 2013. The most fundamental difference of BB10 from previous builds is not just the presence of touch navigation, but a complete focus on it. RIM is clearly aiming to take Android’s crown for best multitasking and the entire interface is based around the premise of being able to get to any app-based information you want at any point.

Active Frames

To wake the device, you simply swipe from the bottom of the screen. Then, you are welcomed with the traditional batch of home screen panels.
However, it is not really a home screen in the sense that it holds widgets and app shortcuts. Rather, it houses what RIM calls "Active Frames". These are functionally similar to Windows Phone's Live Tiles or Android home screen widgets, but rather than being separate entities they are actually minimized versions of currently running applications. The frames can show either a thumbnail view of the entire app, or a special view of the application designed for the home screen. Because these apps are all currently loaded into memory, switching back to them is quick and seamless. Swiping right of the Acitve Frames, reveals the classic list of App icons. They can be manually moved around and sorted to your liking

As RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins put it: ‘Nobody should have to worry about opening apps’.
Heins made plenty of emphasis about the fact that, on other platforms there’s typically a lot of what he described as ‘in and out’ of various applications. RIM wants to avoid that with BB10 and this is achieved through two key components.

Hub

First is the BlackBerry Hub, a notifications and communication centre where feeds from Email accounts, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and others all appear aggregated in one place.
In a sense it’s rather a lot like Windows Phone’s People Hub, a feature we enjoyed immensely.

From here you can search, filter and compose messages from all the apps you have feeding the hub with message notifications. It’s also worth noting that you have complete control over exactly which apps and accounts contribute to the feed. It's accessible by a new gesture - swipe up and to the right. Once you access it, you can see your notifications alongside the aforementioned emails and messages.
The second component is BlackBerry Flow, which is essentially the touch-based control mechanics you use to access various parts of the interface, including the ever-present BlackBerry Hub.
RIM has implemented a control gesture which, from any part of the phone, allows you to swipe up to minimize your currently active app, home screen, or whatever, and see a list of how many notifications you have along the left-hand side of the screen.
The navigation in BlackBerry 10 is heavily gesture-based, beginning with the lock screen: unlocking the phone is done by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, but you don't have to press a button to bring up the lock screen first. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen also switches from the app you're currently using back to the home screen. Swiping up and then dragging your finger to the right exposes the so-called BlackBerry Hub, a messaging app that corrals all of your mail, texts, tweets, calls, and other messages into one place.
In-app navigation is also gesture-heavy: if, for example, you're in an e-mail app and you open an attachment, you can swipe to the right to hide the attachment and see the original e-mail, then swipe again to see your inbox. Swiping up slightly, holding your finger where it is, and then swiping back down will allow you to take a peek at notifications and then go back to using your app. RIM calls this the ‘BlackBerry Peek’.
RIM has integrated an interesting feature allowing you to switch the device into personal or work mode when you swipe down from top of the screen when viewing the App icons screens. Choosing Work mode allows you to launch an app in a secure mode. You can seamlessly switch between the two modes, but you’ll have access to completely separate apps, App Worlds storefronts, email accounts, connectivity settings and so on.
Another intriguing feature is in the camera app, meant to compensate for people who aren't good at timing photos. If users time a photo incorrectly, they are able to page backward in time on the camera to an earlier version of the photo, as if the camera was taking shots continuously before the shutter button was actually pressed.

Judging from the what we’ve seen, the latest build of BlackBerry 10 looks very promising. It's very fast and fluid, and packs a lot of interesting UI features that its competitors currently lack.
As for the new device, it features a 4.2-inch display with RIM's standardized resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels.

 What do you think about what you’ve seen so far?



Listing image by The Verge

WHY YOU SHOULD OR NOT USE A BLACKBERRY PHONE

With all the innovative trends going on in the phone market and with most of the headlines surrounding Blackberry less than positive these days, one can’t help wondering if sticking to or buying a Blackberry phone is a good idea. This article will hopefully help answer just that.

The Blackberry phone traditionally was targeted at business professionals only, they were not initially priced or developed for the everyday mobile phone user, but with the phone market competition becoming stiff, the Blackberry had to evolve to accommodate a wider market especially the young and social group. However, today the market is getting even tighter and recently the average Blackberry lover is having a hard time with android and iOS users for sticking to or even buying a Blackberry.

In my opinion, I still believe the Blackberry is still a good phone to buy or use, but it all depends on your needs and expectation as a consumer. I am going to give my reviews based on the following consumer markets

Social and Curious Consumers
If you love to chat and keep in touch with loved ones, organize events and outings, and stay connected to the social media 24hrs a day, the Blackberry is a very good choice to make when buying a Smartphone, it has a whole range of social apps for you to choose from. It comes preinstalled with the BBM messenger, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Yahoo. The Blackberry can keep you busy all day. Its QWERTY keypad and button design will make chatting experience quick and fun.
The most important thing for me when it comes to using a Smartphone is communication and that is where I strongly believe you can't beat the Blackberry. Knocking out a tweet or Facebook message on the Blackberry takes seconds and I haven't found another OS that can offer me that ease of use and simplistic management and the phone also comes preinstalled with cool smiley faces and additional smiley packs are available free at the app world. If you are much of a chat person, be sure to take a charger with you, just in case you need to recharge your battery.

ication

Busy and Productive Consumers
If you are a business oriented person, who loves to be up to date with mails, you should consider buying a Blackberry phone, this is because of the ease with which you can reply emails with a Blackberry. And yes you get your emails delivered almost instantly whenever a mail hits your mail box.

In terms of productivity applications, the Blackberry has a wonderful selection to choose from and with many now being BBM connected sharing information (advertising) with fellow Blackberry users is just a click away. From using a Blackberry as a business tool you are bound to get a lot compliments from customers that cannot believe how quickly you respond to email queries. in terms of customer service this goes down well and people appreciate a quick and reliable response.

Up-to-Date
if you love to be the first to get information and stay current with the news, weather and events all the time, the Blackberry is still a phone worth buying, with RSS feed support recent Blackberry phones will certainly allow you receive real-time updates on your favorite blogs and web sites. You can add RSS feeds directly from a web page or by using the Social Feeds application. With the Social Feeds application, you can stay up-to-date with your social networks and view your RSS feeds in one location

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App Junkies/Game Lovers
If you love to experiment and toy with a lot of mobile apps or you just love to play cool games on your mobile phone, buying a Blackberry phone might not be a very good idea. This is because the blackberry OS has limited apps and games (For some reason, there are not many app developers out there that are interested in developing apps for the Blackberry OS). Besides that, a typical Blackberry phone does not have the necessary hardware to support or process HD games. I would recommend an iPhone for that or a high-end Nokia product for app variety.

Just the Basics
You know you belong to this category if the only thing you do with your phone is make/receive calls and receive/reply text messages. Users in this category can still fit in with a Blackberry, its threaded SMS view makes reading and replying text messages easy and simple, and the call log is easily accessible from anywhere in phone interface by just pressing the dial call button. With the universal search feature, you just need to type in any item you wish to access (from a contact, to text messages, to settings) and the phone brings it to view. The downside a lot of users in this category might find the phone a little complicated and confusing, but if you give it attention, in a short while, you would have mastered the basics of the phone.

I hope this article has been very helpful. As for me, I remain a Blackberry lover and I don’t think we would see the blackberry fading out of the phone market anytime soon, especially with the release of Blackberry 10, scheduled to be launched early 2013