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This is the new BlackBerry 10, two weeks from its official release. And while visually it looks like a cross between Android and iOS — without any of the spiffiness of Windows Phone — RIM’s make-or-break operating system is surprisingly nice. Fast, with clever user interface touches, a centralised hub for all user activity and a good browser.
It may be too late, but after spending some time with BB10 I can’t shake the feeling that it may make former BlackBerry users to fall in love again with RIM — and perhaps even make some disenchanted iOS or Android junkies jump ship. Or maybe BB10 will just be to RIM what WebOS was to HP: a nice phone operating system that faced too many ifs, and two formidable enemies who own the market. And, unlike Microsoft and Windows Phone 8, RIM doesn’t have really deep pockets to keep this alive during the long battle against all odds that lies ahead.
Still, though, what RIM has done here is admirable. BB10 won’t be the prettiest mobile platform on the block, and lord knows it’s still an app desert. But it’s thoughtful, functional, and fast in ways that BlackBerry hasn’t been in years.
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I would have expected a “make-or-break” OS to show something a bit more special and desirable to get folks away from iOS and Android? I have never loved BB per se, only used it as it was mandated by most businesses but I see nothing here to excite me. Too little too late methinks.
Agree, and that is someone who used to love the old blackberrys back in their day because… well, they just worked unlike many of their competitors. Now, as you say, this is too late and perhaps too little. We’ll see when the hands-on reviews land.
iOS
Android
Windows mobile
BB10
Tizen
Firefox OS
Ubuntu for mobile
How many more mobile OS do we need?
The more the merrier, provides consumers with a choice.
and the more the fragmented and diluted the market becomes…
True but in this fragmented mobile OS market all will try to take the lead and win for customers for this competition!
I’m actually pretty shocked. This looks good. And unique. It’s more different to other OSs than I was expecting, and in a good way. There’s a lot of smart stuff there.
Still, as sharky says, could be too little too late. I think this would have been a serious contender a year ago. But now, RIM may have lost too much market already.
Poor old RIM. They come up with something that, in functional terms at least, looks just as good as any of their competitors are doing but because it’s not thought controlled or has a 3D holographic screen, people are going “Ho-hum”…
You just hit the nail on the head when you said it looks “as good”. Not better, not unique like WP8, but just “as good”. This is do or die stuff. They needed to knock our socks off. God knows they have had long enough to work on this. They took far too long to merely produce something comparable. Unless you are a BB diehard, people won’t abandon the app rich environments of Android and iOS.
Problem is it’s all to naught because tech commentators and journalists have spent the last few months assuring everybody that it was going to be utter crap. You know, before any of you had actually see it, let alone used it.
Good job.
Thanks Vedder. You were a real sir and saved me from being the only one to remember how hypocrite this post is!