[Bonnie Bonzai]

This wasn't an official show for the public. It was aimed toward the sales crowd. But, it IS open for anyone to walk in and explore and ask questions.

Great! That's exactly what i wanted to know - thanks sunjammer

[sunjammer]

hey sunjammer any idea how much longer this blackberry experience is going on for? westin bayshore is a 15min walk from my building and i could trek over there on my lunch hour tomorrow but i dont want to waste my time if it isn't going to be there.

It was one day only... ended today at 6pm. It seems like it was a "private" invitation-only event (but nobody was preventing anyone from walking in).

[Andrew4life]

Nice. Thanks for sharing. The text editing feature is a great thing to hear about as I know both myself, and others, have wondered how acurate it would be without the track pad available.

Assuming they haven't changed it since the Dev Alpha OS versions, I would say it is in improvement over the Playbook's little blue tab, improvement over the blinking cursor on BBOS7 (on touchscreen), but still overall lacking and I would prefer using a trackpad.

Google maps is unbearable using the playbook browser..

But on the BB10 and the BB10 browser, it is useable. (I've tried it on the Dev Alpha A).
I can't say for sure if it is smooth or not since it was a while back when I was playing around with different websites, but it is definitely much better than the Playbook Browser.

[jagrlover]

A few more things I gleaned..

The Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer is basically the same as the PlayBook... view only. There are no annotations or any other features as found on other platforms.

The Music Player App opens showing thumbnails of album art. Touch the album, and you see a track listing/song length. Touch song, and it plays the song with all the usual pause/play/next/previous buttons and song playback slider. I didn't check if holding the Vol Up/Down changes tracks, but the Playbook does, so I would expect it to do the same. There is no cover-flow feature.

I just came from a test drive and yes, the Vol Up/Down does change tracks.

[sunjammer]

Assuming they haven't changed it since the Dev Alpha OS versions, I would say it is in improvement over the Playbook's little blue tab, improvement over the blinking cursor on BBOS7 (on touchscreen), but still overall lacking and I would prefer using a trackpad.

Same sentiment here. It's an improvement over Playbook's text selection, and even iOS text selection, and it worked well, but not a perfect replacement for a trackpad.

I can't say for sure if it is smooth or not since it was a while back when I was playing around with different websites, but it is definitely much better than the Playbook Browser.

The browser on these devices was very smooth and very usable, far better than the browser on the Playbook or iPhone. I have no doubt Google Maps and similar sites would perform fantastic (I didn't think about trying Google maps...)

I managed to take a snapshot of the About screen... I'd note that the Z10 the RIM people were carrying was not quite the same as this one. This phone did NOT have rounded edges, but theirs did.

[sleepngbear]

It was one day only... ended today at 6pm. It seems like it was a "private" invitation-only event (but nobody was preventing anyone from walking in).

Thanks for this. I've been kind of on the fence about going all touch-screen, because I really, really like my keyboard. But this kind of hands-on info has me increasingly itchy to get my hands on a Z 10 for myself.

[astraith]

Google maps is unbearable using the playbook browser..

BB10 is an improvement on PlayBook OS. PlayBook OS was kinda an Alpha product. See below for further proof.

But on the BB10 and the BB10 browser, it is useable. (I've tried it on the Dev Alpha A).
I can't say for sure if it is smooth or not since it was a while back when I was playing around with different websites, but it is definitely much better than the Playbook Browser.

[THBW]

Same sentiment here. It's an improvement over Playbook's text selection, and even iOS text selection, and it worked well, but not a perfect replacement for a trackpad.



The browser on these devices was very smooth and very usable, far better than the browser on the Playbook or iPhone. I have no doubt Google Maps and similar sites would perform fantastic (I didn't think about trying Google maps...)

I managed to take a snapshot of the About screen... I'd note that the Z10 the RIM people were carrying was not quite the same as this one. This phone did NOT have rounded edges, but theirs did.

So, did the RIM employees ever take the real Z10 from their pocket and show you the full meal deal.

[jafrul]

They aren't supporting WP because of politics. Google and Microsoft are having a war at the customers expense, and due to that I switched email providers and decided to but a Z10 instead of a Nokia Lumia 920.

With that said, I agree Google Maps (an app made by Google) is far fetched. But maybe Google Maps via a browser? Maybe that is what he meant? BB10 is a Webkit browser so it should work in theory.

i guess the saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, could well be taken in this context...
being mobile competitors, google could be happy to support blackberry and at the same time see blackberrys sales better than window mobile. so why not google supporting blackberry in the future....

Sent from my unsliding slider BlackBerry 9800 using Tapatalk

[Jonesy1966]

The blackberry experience shows aren't supposed to start until Feb 4th.. and Vancouver is not supposed to be until Feb 13th...

"BlackBerry Experience Forum" starts February 4th in Toronto | MobileSyrup.com

I'm attending the Toronto forum on the 4th. I'm under the impression it's more aimed at enterprise users, device decision makers, etc. The forums going on right now are aimed at sales people.

[aha]

i guess the saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, could well be taken in this context...
being mobile competitors, google could be happy to support blackberry and at the same time see blackberrys sales better than window mobile. so why not google supporting blackberry in the future....

Sent from my unsliding slider BlackBerry 9800 using Tapatalk

Don't do no evil Google.

[JAGWIRE]

I'm attending the Toronto forum on the 4th. I'm under the impression it's more aimed at enterprise users, device decision makers, etc. The forums going on right now are aimed at sales people.

Im flying over to TO for the forum as well. It is geared towards three groups: IT dept, Devs, and management. Personally im neither but im currently in school for software and information management so its always good to get a leg up on the current tech.

[crackcookie]

Hmm, there is a stand alone BB store here in Detroit...think they will have anything going on?

[Bobert_123]

This is awesome news, to bad they got rid of the model #'s though...

[Swaggernaut]

I'm from Vancouver and I had no idea this was going on haha

[Foreverup]

A few more things I gleaned..

The Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer is basically the same as the PlayBook... view only. There are no annotations or any other features as found on other platforms.

Really

God, I HATE Adobe

[lorax1284]

I also hate that T-Mobile hasn't given me a release date so I can plan to be there when the store opens. I'm just full of hate today

You may be aware that the Canadian regional carriers Wind and Mobilicity use the same frequencies as T-Mobile... which is to say, an unlocked Wind or Mobilicity device will work on T-Mobile, and vice-versa. If you weren't aware, well, now you are! Rumour has it that two big Canadian carriers (Bell & Rogers) will be launching the devices very early in February, and even Wind for one has their "registration" page up, so you might be able to get a Wind-compatible device soon after launch.

Small comfort I know... but comfort, none the less (?) :-)

[HyperM3]

One thing if someone can see while playing with one of these is how it selects applications if there is more than one that does the same thing. Like on Android, if you click a link in an email, you get asked if you want to use standard browser or the chrome browser. You can select just once or all the time and that becomes the future default. In iOS there is no option for this and one of the main things I dont like about it. Im wondering if BB10 will allow the use of non native apps to run as the main selection.

[sf49ers]

One thing if someone can see while playing with one of these is how it selects applications if there is more than one that does the same thing. Like on Android, if you click a link in an email, you get asked if you want to use standard browser or the chrome browser. You can select just once or all the time and that becomes the future default. In iOS there is no option for this and one of the main things I dont like about it. Im wondering if BB10 will allow the use of non native apps to run as the main selection.

BB10 uses a invocation framework similar to Android and the third party devs themselves can publish their services to others using the framework, but on UI i don't know how it looks like may be someone with a dev alpha can let us know.

[Kevstra]

i guess the saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, could well be taken in this context...
being mobile competitors, google could be happy to support blackberry and at the same time see blackberrys sales better than window mobile. so why not google supporting blackberry in the future....

Sent from my unsliding slider BlackBerry 9800 using Tapatalk

Google supports Apple with Google Maps there, so I don't see why supporting RIM would be any different with Google Maps for BB10.

[CopperTec]

any word on something like this going on in calgary prior to the launch date?

[sunjammer]

So, did the RIM employees ever take the real Z10 from their pocket and show you the full meal deal.

I had one show me their BES-connected Z10 and how BlackBerry Balance worked, which again may not be final consumer hardware... it had rounded edges like the photos circulating (the Z10's I was playing with had SQUARE edges on the bezels). The RIM employee's Z10 was in a felt-covered case and exactly like the Z10 shown in the "BlackBerry 10 Sneak Peek from BlackBerry World 2012" video.

[MrHomz]

Hmm, there is a stand alone BB store here in Detroit...think they will have anything going on?

That one (Farmington Hills if I'm correct) is now a repair shop...apparently the guy working there had no info whatsoever on the BB10 when he was called, so highly doubt it. Booo-urns.

[gtpointer]

This is awesome news, to bad they got rid of the model #'s though...

What?! The model numbers were awful. So consumer unfriendly. There's like a million 93xx and I couldn't tell you the difference between most of them.

[Bold_until_Hybrid_Comes]

The only reason I prefer google maps is for walking directions