Couple of years ago in the business world the main choice of Smartphone was BlackBerry. The main reason behind this was its typing experience. Most of the popular BlackBerry phones were having physical QWERTY keyboard.
Due this innovative feature it made BlackBerry a good device to handle email, To Dos and notes. Of course this attracted lots of business community and professionals rather than general public. With the time having a BlackBerry became an exponential fashion trend.
However with the introduction of iPhone and Android Phones, BlackBerry could not stand tall in the market anymore. The main reason was its operating system and its limited capabilities. iOS and Android was having way more advanced capabilities and was delivering a great on-screen typing experience which burnt the BlackBerry fortress to ground.
Couple of weeks ago, in BlackBerry World 2012 event, they demonstrated new BlackBerry OS 10. There I could notice some promising features which might be able to give a solid competition to Android and iOS as well.
Features Spotlight
Flow UI
The application support is the major success factor in any mobile OS. In the early time iOS didn’t support multitasking and even today, it doesn’t have true multitasking capabilities. If you take a look at Android, it’s true multi tasking platform.
In BalckBerry OS 10 they have came up with even better multitasking platform and well streamlined interface to support that as well. They call it the “Flow” UI.
The BlackBerry OS 10 is capable of running many applications at the same time. Most interesting part here is they are not just paused there in back ground, they are actually running.
If you want to switch to other applications running, there is a special gesture. You can swipe the current application to the side and you can see all the other running application behind that. If there is any process going on in application behind the current one, you will be able to see the real time updates. Notification also could access in the right panel while you are running any application.
Keyboard
Keyboard was always special for BlackBerry Phones. Previously they mater the physical QWERTY keyboard and now they war trying to compete in on screen keyboard as well.
The keyboard they layout they demonstrated is pretty much standard and looks almost alike to Anroid keyboard. You can swipe it down to get the number pad easily.
The most unique feature here is predictions. You can find the same feature in Android keyboard as well. There it displays suggested word in a row on top the keyboard. Here the magic is the suggestions are coming on top the relevant key. All you have to do is fly them up to the text editor.
This is my favorite feature in BlackBerry OS 10. This keyboard layout is advanced application we never witnessed and as it appears on the demo it’s way better than android keyboard and iOS keyboard. I sense a solid competition here.
Time Shifting Camera
Another interesting feature which was there in demo is the “Time shifting camera”. Of course camera is playing an important role in success of any Smartphone and seems BlackBerry has understood it. Time shifting camera is taking series of images once to click the button. Then you can rewind a specific part of the image frame by frame till you get the optimum out come.
Here is a video demonstration how it’s going to happen.
Wrapping Up
I identify this new BlackBerry OS 10 as a great come back of a dying trend. Most of the features they have demonstrated here are very unique and not be able find the same thing in any other mobile OS. Mainly engineers have put extra effort to deliver a great typing experience to the user following previous BlackBerry philosophy.
Even when you take a look at the camera features, they are very unique, never seen and never thought of. The main objective seems to save time of the users, probably to attract previous business community went away from BlackBerry for Android and iOS.
It’s too early and not enough data to jump in to any conclusion. However what I could see was promising and good enough fuel for solid competition for Android and iOS.
Tags: #BlackBerry #OS