Research InMotion CEO Thorsten Heins showed off the new OS at the BlackBerry World with some new features including flow, camera rewinding, and a new touch keyboard. BlackBerry 10, as it is being called, might just save the day for RIM. Why you ask ? Keep reading.
If you have been following the drama at RIM, three months ago, RIM ousted its co-CEOs, promoted Thorsten to the top spot. This move was considered both ill-timed and risky by almost everyone, so it was high time that RIM brought forth a strategy to conquer the smartphone world in some degree. So here’s the pitch from RIM: BlackBerry 10.
The new BlackBerry
A “Dev Alpha” device was unveiled at the conference, which had a stunning 4.2-inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 768. And everyone present there was given a device to take home and test. The device as you can see is pretty identical to the Playbook in almost all respects.
“Timeline Lens” Camera
If you have seen the video embedded above you understand what this is. This simply is the most exciting feature seen at the conference. The camera interface allows you to zoom in on someone’s face in a picture and rewind it, allowing you to fix things like closed eyes or a bad smile. Nifty feature we would say.
“Flow” and a new Touch Keyboard
Blackberry 10 has “Flow”. No, its not a thing. Its more a way you interact with your applications. Heins and head of software portfolio at RIM, Vivek Bhardwaj, showed off BlackBerry 10′s ability to “flow.” Its a new way to multitask in which, it does not matter on which app you currently are, with a simple hold and slide of your finger to the right, you can take a peak at the last few apps you were using. They said that this feature enabled for more potent multitasking.
This is the new Touch keyboard in BlackBerry, which can supposedly customize itself to use. While you’re typing, words will appear on the keys, similarly to how the PlayBook recommends words to you. You can use the word by dragging the key onto the editing window. If you want to delete what you’ve typed, you can hit the backspace key or swipe to the left on the keyboard to instantly delete the entire last word.
Conclusion
Its a beginning. RIM has been struggling to keep its place in the market. Its not the only one, Nokia tied hands with Microsoft and is still ailing and Motorola Mobility was acquired by Google. It seems only Samsung and Apple are the ones fighting it out in this space.
What was shown at the Blackberry World was conclusive evidence that RIM is working on it. Atleast we can expect a fightback and BlackBerry 10 might just be the way. But is it too little, too late ? Only you can be the judge of that, the consumer.
