Mobile Phones Platforms

Will BlackBerry 10 OS be enough to revive the BlackBerry brand

BlackBerry 10 LaunchAs you probably know BlackBerry officially released two new phones this week along their new operating system, called BlackBerry 10 OS. It’s a major step forward for RIM, but it comes 6 years later after the first important event that lead to the smartphone revolution – iPhone launch.

Right now BlackBerry wants to somehow wipe the past and focus to the future. The company will no longer be known as Research in Motion(RIM) and as of this week it will be re-branded into BlackBerry. So, this marks a fresh new start.

I’ve followed closely what analysts said about BlackBerry this week and as usual some were skeptics about their future, while others were happy. One thing is for sure, users won’t have to listen to what analysts predict, because almost every time at least one of them are wrong.

The core of BlackBerry 10 platform are apps. Unlike any other competitors(Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft) they launched their new platform together with 70,000 apps, which is quite impressing. Major apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, Whatsapp, etc. and also some games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja HD, Batman: The Dark Knight Rises + others show that BlackBerry platform is starting to become a platform developers might consider using it.

If apps were the core of this new platform, Z10 and Q10 are their first children. BlackBerry Z10 is the first ever full-touch smartphone built by them and it looks on par with today’s standards. It comes with a beautiful design and is also powerfull. The 4.2-inch smartphone features a dual-core 1.5 Ghz Krait processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage(which could be expanded through microSD card slot).  On the back of the device there’s an 8 megapixel camera, capable of shooting 1080p videos, while at the front there’s 2 megapixel camera capable of 720p video.

BlackBerry Q10 is a full QWERTY smartphone designed for those who still love to use a QWERTY keyboard, but it also has a display that is touch based. This combination makes it one of the killer phone in this category – full QWERTY and touch smartphones. An interesting fact is that Q10 display has 3.1-inch and has a 720 x 720 resolution. Inside the specs are pretty much similar with Z10 except the processor which is a Cortex-A9 here.

After seeing the official videos, I have to say I’m impressed of how Z10 and Q10 look and work. It appears that BlackBerry spend a lot of time revamping their OS and finally getting where we all wanted them years ago. The gestures this new platform have remind me of the first getures I’ve seen on iOS or later on Android, so the path is always the same. The challenge for BlackBerry, will be to come up with more features and apps soon because tech adicts are like little kids – once you give them a finger, they’ll want the whole hand.

So, to wrap it up, the biggest news 2013 brought, is that the smartphone market has a new competitor – BlackBerry and this should be considered serious. I hope they’ll not dissapoint us anytime soon.

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