RIM Delivers QWERTY BlackBerry 10 Smartphone to Devs

RIM is preparing for the imminent launch of its BlackBerry 10 operating system and smartphones powered by the platform by offering dedicated developers the first Dev Alpha C handset.

During the Canadian company's BlackBerry Jam event in Asia, it confirmed that developers who had submitted two or more apps would be ranked by a series of criteria; the top 1,500 received priority on the Dev Alpha C unit.

The Alpha C will be the first developer handset to feature the trademark BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard. Research in Motion has ultimately given over 7,500 handset to developers to encourage app submissions.

Following BlackBerry 10's launch on January 30, 2013, it's said that the platform's first two smartphones will launch a month later. RIM's CEO later stressed that the company is aiming to release the devices as soon as the OS launches.

For the first time in several months, RIM shares increased due to a Goldman Sachs analyst raising her rating of the firm to a "Buy" due to optimism surrounding BlackBerry 10. Still, the company was dealt a blow when a judge ruled it must pay Nokia royalty fees after the latter won a court case against its rival.

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  • felix666
    Within a month most of the news have changed from negative to positive about RIM. But RIM hasn't changed its schedule since a while. The power of the rumors from the business analysts is quite scary!

    The Playbook tablet was an investment, as a test bed for BB10. The RIM phones and tablets will now sing a nice song, together. Look at what the competitors will do next to harm RIM. Microsoft and Google will probably do their best to prevent their popular apps to run properly, if at all, on the BB10 products.
    Reply
  • anononon
    Considering there will be an GS4 and an upcoming ifail 5s, being announced at the same time as BB10... I think they are a little nervous as to what BB10 could actually deliver.. Lets face it, you know what to expect with the next android revision, same with iOS. Both have been around for a few years now, and new added features aside... Its the same operation and user experience. WP8 is growing, why not BB10- they are both only offer a different user experience than what the other two have been feeding us for sometime now...

    I hope for best on RIM's behalf, more competition- just means more gain for you as the consumer. Like or hate RIM, Droid, etc.. Whomever, you should always be in favor of competition, it just works out for you.
    Reply
  • belardo
    Wow! I completely feel the synergy of BB10 devices...

    Anononon: Yes, more competition is better. But because of how standards work and such... there can only be a few systems for a market to support. Go back to the 1980s, there were about 100+ different computer platforms. The C=128 didn't play C=64 games, it just ran in C=64 mode to play such games.
    The Ti/99, Trash80s, Apple, Atari 8 & 16bit as well as those made in Europe and Asia were incompatible with each other. The TOWNSfm computers (Japan) had an intel CPU yet had some Amiga like specs. There used to be a European version of the Trash80 (Radio Shack's TRS-80) that was 99% the same thing other than video spec and software tweaks to make them incompatible to share software.

    Today: Windows, MacOS and a bit of LINUX is what's left for desktops.

    As an Amiga lover... with Amiga computers that have NOT been powered up for years, being the BEST doesn't mean success. When the Amiga computers & OS first came out in 1986, it blew everything else out of the water. Not a single IBM PC could touch it. Macs were still black and white - unless you spent $6000~8000 on the Mac II! Yet it was a $1000 computer in 86 before the $600/$1400 models came out in 87. For that money, all you got was a 7Mhz CPU with .5/1MB of RAM and a floppy.

    It would take MS 10 years to come up with a half-ass OS that was usable, but still substandard to AmigaOS... not until XP did they finally make something for consumers that was proper... and yet, it still has the MS-DOS screen for installing the OS! AmigaOS would boot into a full functional GUI system, click on "HD TOOLS" to format and install the OS, pop-out the floppy and reboot to HD. Even MacOS didn't have multi-tasking until 2000/1 with OS-X, which was a completely different OS than previous versions.

    Yet.. Amiga is a failure because of the dumb-assess who ran the company into the ground. Not because it was badly made hardware. I see the same stupidity with RIM... that is what many people in the industry ALSO sees in RIM. I also see HP and MS doing very stupid things as well... but they have far more money and patents to keep them alive for decades.

    BB10 is most likely powerful... but really, other than the multi-tasking... I see nothing that grabs me. My Android phone does pretty much everything I need.

    Also Anononon... yes Android 4.x functions very much like Android 2.x. But in actual use, 4.0 smokes 2.x. Its very stable, its smooth, its UI is much improved over 2.x. Until I got my new AtrixHD phone, I had a Galaxy S1 model... and I never cared much for Android 2.x. I wanted a WP7 Lumia 800 phone badly... I love how METRO (WP7 UI) looked and worked on the small screen... and with ANDROID, I was able to use Launcher7 to get much of the look and feel of WP7 and then some. Even WP8 doesn't do what Launcher7 does. (rotate the tiles to correct orientation of the phone).

    I needed a new phone, couldn't wait for WP8.. and I already hated Windows8 and I knew I could run Launcher7/8 on my new phone... so I got another Android. After an hour or so of using Android 4.0... I decided I didn't need the WP7/8 UI... its not useful for me. Android does what I want now.

    RIM being 2+ years late with their phone has sunk the company. Many people have moved on... many of those will never return. That is the problem. There is NO good reason to take 2 years to make BB10.
    Reply
  • belardo
    felix666The Playbook tablet was an investment, as a test bed for BB10. The RIM phones and tablets will now sing a nice song, together. What investment? The Playbook is substandard to any iPad2+ and modern Android tablet. What, has playbook value gone up? Guess what, it has not.

    A public test bed? Right? Not needed, if that was true - they would have had the QNX phones out 2 years ago. The Playbook is a failed device because it wasn't ready... they spent a year on it, kind of rushed... and it costs more than an iPad2 while being sub-standard in almost evey-way.

    They lost their creditability with the Playbook. Now, Android 3.x was a TEST BED OS. Only a few devices came out with it, everyone in the industry KNEW it was a tablet-only OS and it was used to get things working right for 4.0 for the entire platform.
    Reply
  • invlem
    Apple went to near bankruptcy and came back from the dead, there's no reason RIM can't do the same
    Reply
  • Darkk
    Yep, count me in as Amiga 500 user back in the early days. Wish I still have the hardware as I've made alot of modifications such as faster processor and hard drive. The Amiga OS is still around and can be used on any Power PC platform.

    You're right about the execs at Commodore who drove the entire company into the ground. They had great software and hardware just they didn't promote it hard enough.

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  • Playbooks are good tablets and will be great when the new OS is ported over for it.
    Reply