RIM’s current woes with its BlackBerry offering are well publicized as the company continues to lose market share from the likes of Android and the iPhone, but the company is looking to fight back with the release of its BlackBerry 10 operating system next year. BlackBerry 10 is being pushed to restore RIM to its former glories and allow for the controlling of the OS.
The guys over on CrackBerry have been getting to know the flowing nature of the BlackBerry 10 operating system via the Dev Alpha B hardware. The easy flowing experience is apparent as you go into and out of apps and this continues once the apps are entered as they allow you to swipe back layers of the application without needing to use the back button.
It seems the upcoming operating system can easily be manipulated to user’s wishes, which can be seen in the video below. Using the calendar application users will be able to swipe between their upcoming appointments in the day view, and also pull down on the meetings for two days at a time.
The photo app allows you to zoom in an out of two images at the same time while switching between them, and while it may not be such a big deal, at least you can do it. Compared to the iOS platform though where it seems that Apple has decided which way for users to do everything, but with BlackBerry 10 this is not the case as the user controls the OS and not the other way around.
This starts from the unlock screen as the display will respond to a users command as they swipe in any upward motion to wake up the handset, which compares to the iPhone that needs a fixed left to right motion.
Meanwhile in an interview with the BBC Research in Motion chief executive, Thorsten Hein, explains why he feels that BlackBerry 10 will help the company regain market share next year, and briefly shows how the handset flows when switching between applications. He says that despite the operating system not being made available until next year, it won’t damage its chances from winning back customers from rival platforms.
It’s not hard to see why the BlackBerry market has lost users, as my daughter recently persuaded me to get her a BlackBerry handset after months of nagging. Once I managed to get the device out of her hands for a short time it quickly became apparent that away from BBM the platform doesn’t really have much going for it, unless you like your physical QWERTY keyboards or the messaging service.
BlackBerry 10 does look like it will provide a worthy alternative to Android or the iPhone next year though, but this won’t be known for sure until the software and handsets are available. Will you be going back to BlackBerry next year?