BlackBerry 10's New Features Shown Off; Jury Still Out
As Apple and Google are debating how divide the smartphone market among the two of them, and as Microsoft tries to figure out how to rain on their parade with Windows Phone 8, RIM is reminding us that they are not dead yet.
At the company's BlackBerry Jam developers conference, RIM gave developers an update about BB10, which carries the hope that RIM can return to old glory. The short news is that the OS is still very much in development and the key features are met with doubt and, in some instances, with the conclusion that RIM is building functionality no one needs.
BB10 will be presumably advertised on its new interface as well as anchor features such as BlackBerry Hub and BlackBerry Balance. The former is a new approach to integrate core BlackBerry applications such as Messenger (BBM) and Calendar. Balance is aimed squarely at the business world with the ability to support two user profiles - one for your private life and one for your business life.
The profiles are completely separate and even use separate ways to access RIM's application store. The big news for Calendar is that it now interfaces with social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. BBM gets an interface described as "one-thumb navigation", which plays into the successful history of BlackBerry phones when they were especially useful when used with just one hand. BBM also got a dedicated emoticon key, if that is important for you.
Much of BB10 seems to be revealing how RIM is trying how to create a consumer/business devices from the perspective of a business user, while its competition has consumer devices that are moving into the business world. RIM believes that BB10 will be key for RIM to establish itself as the third-largest smartphone platform. BB10 needs to be much more disruptive and revolutionary than what the company offers today.
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Wolfgang Gruener is an experienced professional in digital strategy and content, specializing in web strategy, content architecture, user experience, and applying AI in content operations within the insurtech industry. His previous roles include Director, Digital Strategy and Content Experience at American Eagle, Managing Editor at TG Daily, and contributing to publications like Tom's Guide and Tom's Hardware.
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hero1 Bring this thing out and do a major PR for it. The marketing branch better do their best and I might swtich to this phone. It's either this, SGSII or Lumia 920. Apple just screwed with me with the maps and rogue apps about lock screen that resemble Android grid system that turn out to be fake and wasting people's money (never bought one of those but it pisses me off how so many of those pass their so called reviews). Anyways, do us Canadians a favour and unleash this thing asap, we can't afford to lose another Canadian company.Reply -
kinggremlin I don't make a habit of complaining about grammar on the internet, but what the hell? Was this article run through a late 90's version of babelfish before it was posted? When there are so many errors that the article is difficult to read and understand, it's clear that no one on this site gives a crap about the quality of writing here. Why is it so difficult for this site to publish articles that don't look like they were written by C student in the 5th grade? Does anyone here ever proofread their work before publishing it? The other major sites don't seem to have this problem.Reply -
schnitter The only blackberry jam people are interested now are the one they put, together with peanut butter, on their sandwitches.Reply -
ashinms This has to be the most pointless news story I have ever read... Worse than half the shit Yahoo puts out.Reply -
innocent bystander Nice opinion piece. But it's just that, nothing more.Reply
I think there is a fair bit of pent up demand in the business world for BB10 and companies will be upgrading in droves to the new platform when it comes out.
RIM should have no problem wiping the floor with Microsoft to become the third largest platform. If that even matters.
You don't have to be #1 to carve out a sustainable niche and put food on the table.
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mcd023 With how long it's taking, my guess is that they don't have the money to pay as many devs as they need to get it done.Reply -
southernshark I guess some people might buy these..... Makes more sense for business than an Android device, due to security concerns. But with MS 8 coming out on phones, I feel like it has a hard road to hoe (with MS8 and iOS of course).Reply -
bunz_of_steel kinggremlin 4th grade english teacher I had np reading it. Oh wait np is short for "no problem". Did you interpret that correctly?Reply -
bunz_of_steel I have BB btw and I hate it, never met any folks I work with who have anything good to say about BB's. BYOD is next upgrade for company I'm with. The company is dumping BB before they go down. Vmware and Goodsoftware create a virtual phone environment similar to the profiles mentioned in the article. I appreciated the article Wolfgang as this affects alot of us folks who work in I.T everyday!Reply -
monsta Good on BB for trying and releasing a new phone, hopefully it will be somewhat impressive for business users to keep themselves in the market.Reply