BlackBerry 10 Launched with New Handsets Z10 and Q10

Research in Motion, unveiled three new products yesterday at the event where BlackBerry 10 was unveiled. But they first started off by renaming their company as BlackBerry from Research in Motion. So the company will no longer be known as RIM.

BlackBerry needed to showcase something fantastic that will mark a turnaround. In the past few years competition from iPhone and Android has more or less crippled BlackBerry’s dominance over smartphone markets.

BlackBerry started off by showcasing BlackBerry 10 the OS, Z10 a touch screen phone device and Q10 a device that supports a physical QWERTY keypad.

BlackBerry 10 Features

• The BB10 OS supports multi-tasking and sharing seamlessly. The design is such, that it encourages users from moving into an app and out of it with swiping.
• The Peek feature, which allows all apps to get integration with the notifications on the phone is very useful. The OS really leverages the notifications a lot better any phone like iPhone or Android.
• There are many small changes which make user experiance a lot better. For example the camera starts recording a video without being asked to. A tap anywhere on the screen takes a snap.
• The app market is where BB10 is looking weak. They have about 70,000 apps and lot of the popular ones on Android or iOS are not available. For example there is no Instagram on BB10.

BlackBerry Z10 Features

• The device features a 4.2 inch screen, 1280 X 768 display with pixel density of 356 dpi.
• The phone ships with a removable 1800mAH battery, 8MP rear camera and 2MP front camera.
• 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus processor with 2 GB RAM.
• The phone supports Bluetooth, NFC, LTE.

This phone is a the touch screen one and will probably end up as the showpiece phone for BlackBerry. The hardware is decent and it runs on a new shiny OS. But the apps (rather lack of apps) could hurt its prospects over the year.

BlackBerry Q10 Features

This phone is a lot different from the ones most phone makers showcase. The real reason being the a physical keyboard in QWERTY style.

The phone has 3-inch wide screen. The features of the Q10 are very similar to the Z10 device.

Road ahead for BlackBerry?

I am not too convinced that BlackBerry will survive in the long run. The BB10 OS has introduced some amazing features but those might easily get picked up Android and iOS as new updates roll out this year. BlackBerry best change of survival is at displacing the Nokia + Windows 8 phone combine. That will allow it to settle at third place.

At the end of the day, App ecosystem is what makes or breaks a mobile phone and in that regard BlackBerry’s troubles still exist. If it fixes its apps market, which is easier said than done, then we might see a revival of BlackBerry.

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