[sahil123]

Will BlackBerry 10 phones, which are expected to arrive early next year, be worth the wait? For months, that question had no good answer.
While Apple�s wildly successful ads calmly wrap themselves around a single have-to-have feature (see SIRI) we haven�t yet had the benefit of a full rundown on BlackBerry 10 specs. So we have been left with what we are normally left with in the space before any anticipated consumer device arrives: speculation, rumour, and the odd grainy photo. It�s right around this time in the launch cycle that an iPhone is �accidentally� found in a Palo Alto tavern and pictures show up on various gadget sites, sending fanboys into a predictable lather.
So far, there has been no Canadian equivalent. To date, not one has misplaced a BlackBerry 10 device at a Tim Hortons in Moose Jaw, or a canteen in a Kitchener rink. But a picture has begun to emerge. New RIM CEO Thorsten Heins has been equal parts helpful and feckless, revealing key details of BlackBerry 10 to select media, then reverting to more vague, big picture proclamations that have sometimes provoked ridicule, such as when he said that with BB10 �We�re here to win, we�re not here to fight for third or fourth place,� after the company had fallen to less than 5% of total smartphone sales in Q2.
If RIM is to regain some, if not all, of its lost market share, BlackBerry 10 devices will need to be great, not just good. The good news for RIM supporters is that early indications suggest devices loaded with the new operating system will give RIM every chance. We break down five reasons people will want a Blackberry 10 device.
1. Its contact manager will be great

Early last year, RIM acquired Seattle-based Gist, a company that focused on integrating social media elements into contact management. The startup was founded in 2008 by T.A. McCann, who formerly worked in Microsoft�s Exchange Server Group. Gist actually received its initial funding from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen�s Vulcan Capital.
Now McCann�s team is taking on a key role at RIM.
�BlackBerry has always had this heritage of productivity. We are just going to make it better yet again, when we launch BB10,� McCann told Reuters recently. He says that in addition to the BlackBerry contacts app, Gist has been tasked with the responsibility of everything social at RIM including BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), the Facebook and Twitter apps, instant messaging as well as much of the identity platform, BlackBerry ID.
A Gist user review hints at the possibilities:
�The main idea behind Gist is pretty similar to other social media aggregators like MyBlogLog, FriendFeed, Seesmic and Google Buzz� says Gist user Dustin Luther. �However, there�s one HUGE improvement they�ve made. Rather than forcing you to view updates based on a timeline (i.e. most recent updates first), they allow you to view updates in a �people� mode where you can view all the updates from that person (whether they are on Facebook, Twitter, their blog, foursquare, etc.) based on the importance that you�ve selected. (Facebook has tried to do this with their �top news� feature, but it�s crude at best and doesn�t do a great job finding updates that are important to me)�.

2. It will have a cool camera
When new RIM CEO Thorsten Heins offered a sneak peak at some of the features of its new BlackBerry 10 operating system, the things that got the biggest oohs and aahs from the crowd at BlackBerry World were the new camera features. A tidy demo that followed showed the new camera will allow the user to �go back in time� using a circular timeline slider to pick the perfect moment. While the phone looks to be a marked improvement over what is on the market today, it is unlikely that it will present a distinct business advantage, as the technology behind it is licensed from a Swedish company called Scalado that was acquired by Nokia in June.

3. It will have better battery life
The new BB10 devices will feature an OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) screen that, unlike its LED counterparts, doesn�t require a backlight. While some budget devices, such as the Toshiba T-02D and the Samsung Exhilarate, have employed OLED, RIM has the opportunity to bring it to the mainstream. Other details reveal that RIM is extremely battery focused with BB10. The new BBM, for instance, will feature a darker screen that will save battery life by as much as 25%. And for real road warriors, Thorsten Heins told the Wall Street Journal recently that BlackBerry 10 phones will include a removable battery, so heavy users can swap a fresh one in, rather than traipse around an airport for a power source.

4. It will be fast
RIM acquired QNX, which became BlackBerry 10 after a legal spat, in April 2010. The Ottawa-based company was founded in 1980 and acquired by Harman International in 2004. QNX developed an operating system called the QNX Neutrino, which is more familiar to those familiar with OS�s used in mission critical environments, such as high speed trains in Europe and Japan, nuclear power plants, even the Canadarm. Neutrino employs a micro-kernal structure in which each application runs in its own memory space on this operating system, allowing the device to multi-task like nothing that is currently on the market.

5. Lack of apps won�t be an issue
One could argue that many apps built for the iPhone were necessary because the device�s browser did not support Adobe Flash. But that�s a story for another day, especially now that that fence has been mended in the post Steve Jobs world. A persistent critique of BlackBerrys has been BlackBerry App World, which is dwarfed by Apple App Store. But Alec Saunders RIM�s VP of developer relations, says the image that BlackBerry is bleeding app developers is simply false. BlackBerry App World, he points out has grown its vendor base by 157% in the past year, and just passed the three billion download mark. The QNX Neutrino operating system, which provides support for Adobe Flash and Air, Java, HTML 5.0 and C++. makes it inherently developer friendly, insists Saunders.
�I have been receiving a lot of feedback from developers personally and I can tell you that I am hearing again and again that developers are amazed by how easy it is to work with the BlackBerry 10 tools, � he said recently, adding: �They appreciate the open nature of our platform, which allows developers to bring their work and their skills and find a toolset that will work for them.�
Among BlackBerry App World�s more than 90,000 apps, you�ll now find all the regular battery monitoring and texting ones, plus brands such as Pandora, Angry Birds, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook.

Five reasons people will want a BlackBerry 10 Phone

[mikeo007]

Well...there's a lot of assumptions and truth-bending going on in this "article". I can think of much better reasons why BB10 phones may be sought after by consumers.

[mrfreetruth]

Well...there's a lot of assumptions and truth-bending going on in this "article". I can think of much better reasons why BB10 phones may be sought after by consumers.

Since the article is truth-bending??? and you can think of much better reasons why BB10 phones may be sought after by consumers then maybe you could share some of them?

[mikeo007]

Well, let's take a simple look at the facts and what we do know about the first Bb10 device.
3 just off the top of my head. These may not be selling points to everyone, but they are valid.

- It will have one of the most complete web browsing experiences available on a phone
- it will be extremely stable (a "side-effect" of using QNX as the base for BB10)
- it will have a high-resolution, high DPI screen

Of the points listed in the article, only #4 is a given.
#1, 2 (to an extent) and #5 are only assumptions
And #3 about the OLED screen saving battery life is just plain wrong. OLED uses way less power than LED to display blacks and dark colours, but more power to display whites and light colours. It will likely average out for most users. In addition, BB10 hasn't shown that its very good on battery life yet, so that makes that item a large assumption as well.

[sahil123]

Actually, Now that we know for sure that BB10 Smartphones will feature removable battery, it does keep your phone going without charge for a longer period. I don't think battery life is the right term for this but BB10 phones will be able to last longer without charge provided you keep an extra battery

[randall2580]

One question since it's brought up here as a distinguishing feature - is there a difference between OLED and the Super AMOLED screens Samsung has had on phones for a couple of years now?

[mikeo007]

Actually, Now that we know for sure that BB10 Smartphones will feature removable battery, it does keep your phone going without charge for a longer period. I don't think battery life is the right term for this but BB10 phones will be able to last longer without charge provided you keep an extra battery

Definitely a plus for people who are away from wall sockets for a long time.

[mikeo007]

One question since it's brought up here as a distinguishing feature - is there a difference between OLED and the Super AMOLED screens Samsung has had on phones for a couple of years now?

AMOLED is basically OLED organized in an active matrix. It's a method for controlling individual pixels. Cheaper OLED (PMOLED) displays often use passive matrix to control the pixels. PMOLED pixels are controlled as an entire row rather than individually. SUper AMOLED is just Samsung's own advanced AMOLED technology. Supposedly brighter and higher contrast than normal OLED.

[timmy t]

I also think NFC applications might start taking off bit by bit in the next year or two. Banks are going to start offering electronic wallets which might be interesting to try out for some smaller priced goods if the service charges are not too high and you can use a preloaded card for your wallet instead of giving direct access to your bank account or normal credit card. I would save a lot more loonies that way.
Of course, security will be a big issue with this.

[GTiLeo]

Since the article is truth-bending??? and you can think of much better reasons why BB10 phones may be sought after by consumers then maybe you could share some of them?

I could tell you one thing too the UI is new and its fresh. Its never been done by blackberry before.

There's hype and old berry users may come back to see what its about.

[mikeo007]

I could tell you one thing too the UI is new and its fresh. Its never been done by blackberry before.

There's hype and old berry users may come back to see what its about.

The promised BB10 UI in my opinion is a hybrid of several other phone UIs out there. Just from the screenshots and descriptions I've seen so far, BB10 takes some of the best of WinPhone (live tiles) PBOS (multi-tasking) Android (multiple home screens) and iOS (app switching simplicity). If it can deliver on all of these fronts and still feel unique, then bravo to RIM and TAT for a great melding of designs. We will see...

[cognac_sipper]

I've been using Android for a while now but BlackBerry 10 does have me excited. It looks like RIM appointed the right man for the job to turn things around. Everything looks like it is coming together nicely.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Triplell]

Why not come up with a list of reasons why people currently don't want a BlackBerry and then try and fix those issues?

I recently started working for a company who runs a BlackBerry environment, but I have been an android user for the last year (had a 8330 before that). I love my android for the following reasons:

1. General search and navigation is very intuitive.
I often google things on my phone. Whether I'm looking for random, sometimes useless information, or I'm looking for a place to eat in town, or general directions. The integration of maps/search is something google does well. I can search the name of my dentist and it will bring up a google maps search with phone number, reviews, and driving directions. From there, it is very quick to bring up the navigation.

Doing the same task on my blackberry (9900 bold) requires me to actually know the address and the navigation is no where near as user friendly and often just doesn't work.

2. The menus/windows/pages
On my BlackBerry I'm stuck with All/Frequent/...etc. On my android device, I can completely customize where I want my applications and how they are manage. I really find this to be a much better implementation on android

3. Weather information. With my BlackBerry, I have to use a third party application and I have to open that application. On my android, every time I unlock my phone, the first thing I see is the current time and the current weather conditions. Again, I just feel like android does this better.

My work PROVIDES a BlackBerry for many of our employees. With that, many people often inquire about when we are going to switch over to company provided iPhones or would rather opt into the BYOD model and pay their own monthly bill.

There are things I love about the blackberry. I had to download swiftkey for my android in order to make the touch screen typing tolerable (which is a very good application). Nothing really beats the BB qwerty keyboard. I also enjoy how it handles company email.

What is really going to limit these companies, I feel, is the whole patent situation that goes down. I'm not a lawyer, but I really wonder how many features get scrapped because "so-so already does this...we have to find out a different way to do it"...

My $0.02...

[dtango]

You havent seen a bb10 phone. There is no available specs for a bb10 phone.

How can you say "5 reasons..." when you havent seen ANY evidence?

[Magnesus]

They say Java but I've yet to find a way to run Java apps on the Playbook. They say HTML5 but WebGL is so slow its unusable for games. They say developer friendly, yet they don't even provide a way to develop apps for Blackberry on Linux and over the top security makes developing for Blackberry frustrating.

[Wiki Cydia]

Why not come up with a list of reasons why people currently don't want a BlackBerry and then try and fix those issues?

I don't think that would be wise. For one, that's not necessarily the best way forward. For example, all-touch device now outperform phones with physical QWERTY keyboards by a wide margin. DOes that mean RIM shouldn't ship a physical-QWERTY device? Of course not. So, while I understand your point, you have to be careful, because the kind of approach you describe can lead to some erroneous results.

[ynomrah]

You havent seen a bb10 phone. There is no available specs for a bb10 phone.

How can you say "5 reasons..." when you havent seen ANY evidence?

Who are you talking to? No one in this thread wrote that article.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2

[phinsphan]

Why not come up with a list of reasons why people currently don't want a BlackBerry and then try and fix those issues?

I recently started working for a company who runs a BlackBerry environment, but I have been an android user for the last year (had a 8330 before that). I love my android for the following reasons:

1. General search and navigation is very intuitive.
I often google things on my phone. Whether I'm looking for random, sometimes useless information, or I'm looking for a place to eat in town, or general directions. The integration of maps/search is something google does well. I can search the name of my dentist and it will bring up a google maps search with phone number, reviews, and driving directions. From there, it is very quick to bring up the navigation.

Doing the same task on my blackberry (9900 bold) requires me to actually know the address and the navigation is no where near as user friendly and often just doesn't work.

2. The menus/windows/pages
On my BlackBerry I'm stuck with All/Frequent/...etc. On my android device, I can completely customize where I want my applications and how they are manage. I really find this to be a much better implementation on android

3. Weather information. With my BlackBerry, I have to use a third party application and I have to open that application. On my android, every time I unlock my phone, the first thing I see is the current time and the current weather conditions. Again, I just feel like android does this better.

My work PROVIDES a BlackBerry for many of our employees. With that, many people often inquire about when we are going to switch over to company provided iPhones or would rather opt into the BYOD model and pay their own monthly bill.

There are things I love about the blackberry. I had to download swiftkey for my android in order to make the touch screen typing tolerable (which is a very good application). Nothing really beats the BB qwerty keyboard. I also enjoy how it handles company email.

What is really going to limit these companies, I feel, is the whole patent situation that goes down. I'm not a lawyer, but I really wonder how many features get scrapped because "so-so already does this...we have to find out a different way to do it"...

My $0.02...

Point #1 - I like the Universal Search feature. There is always the option to map it or google it. Just start typing on the home screen.

Point #2 - You can change the panels by just pressing the Blackberry Key on the homescreen. I just use Media and Home and swipe back and forth between the two.

[Blackberry_boffin]

Why not come up with a list of reasons why people currently don't want a BlackBerry and then try and fix those issues?

I recently started working for a company who runs a BlackBerry environment, but I have been an android user for the last year (had a 8330 before that). I love my android for the following reasons:

1. General search and navigation is very intuitive.
I often google things on my phone. Whether I'm looking for random, sometimes useless information, or I'm looking for a place to eat in town, or general directions. The integration of maps/search is something google does well. I can search the name of my dentist and it will bring up a google maps search with phone number, reviews, and driving directions. From there, it is very quick to bring up the navigation.

Doing the same task on my blackberry (9900 bold) requires me to actually know the address and the navigation is no where near as user friendly and often just doesn't work.

2. The menus/windows/pages
On my BlackBerry I'm stuck with All/Frequent/...etc. On my android device, I can completely customize where I want my applications and how they are manage. I really find this to be a much better implementation on android

3. Weather information. With my BlackBerry, I have to use a third party application and I have to open that application. On my android, every time I unlock my phone, the first thing I see is the current time and the current weather conditions. Again, I just feel like android does this better.

My work PROVIDES a BlackBerry for many of our employees. With that, many people often inquire about when we are going to switch over to company provided iPhones or would rather opt into the BYOD model and pay their own monthly bill.

There are things I love about the blackberry. I had to download swiftkey for my android in order to make the touch screen typing tolerable (which is a very good application). Nothing really beats the BB qwerty keyboard. I also enjoy how it handles company email.

What is really going to limit these companies, I feel, is the whole patent situation that goes down. I'm not a lawyer, but I really wonder how many features get scrapped because "so-so already does this...we have to find out a different way to do it"...

My $0.02...

I don't know what BlackBerry you have but I have all those on my 9900.

[jechow]

I don't know what BlackBerry you have but I have all those on my 9900.

The OP went into great detail explainning what he finds lack on his 9900. Could you provide some additional info on how to address his short comings?

[bp3dots]

Actually, Now that we know for sure that BB10 Smartphones will feature removable battery, it does keep your phone going without charge for a longer period. I don't think battery life is the right term for this but BB10 phones will be able to last longer without charge provided you keep an extra battery

The problem with this is that most average consumers don't want to carry extra batteries around. They would prefer to have a built in one if it could have excellent battery life. Trying to spin a removable battery into less charges is not going to work for most of the population.

It's important to remember that RIM needs to be able to sell non die-hards on BB10, and if the battery life is less than the iPhone and Razr Maxx (both built in and long lasting) then a removable battery isn't necessarily an advantage.

[kfh227]

Last sentence said Angry Birds. Does that mean that a BB10 native version of Angry Birds is coming?

[Masahiro]

Last sentence said Angry Birds. Does that mean that a BB10 native version of Angry Birds is coming?

Seeing as how the PB has a native version of Angry Birds, along with RIM (I think) mentioning that PB apps will work with BB10 out of the box, the answer is yes.

[texazzpete]

LMAO at the article claiming BB10 will 'bring OLED to the mainstream'.

AMOLED screens were shipping with the original SGS in 2010. Lumia 900 has an OLED screen. Loads more phones out there use AMOLED.

[Plazmic Flame]

In the part of the article about "battery life", I was hoping to hear something along the lines of "bigger batteries". I've never been a swapper of batteries since 1) the OS boot times are too long and 2) when in the thick of message or email exchanges, who wants to have down time? Bigger batteries are the key and since the devices are getting bigger, it's totally possible. Please refer to Droid Razr Maxx for assistance, RIM!