“With BlackBerry 10’s official launch just around the corner, we happened upon a few photos of the final gold master version of the operating system running on a BlackBerry Z10 handset. Well, thanks to a close source at BlackBerry, we actually can show you about 100 photos of the phone’s operating system in full detail. Every screen, every option menu, every app – let’s take a ride together.” Eh. Let’s hope using it is a better experience than looking at it.
bore your audience in fitfty billion easy steps. That’s the approximate amount of wizard/setup/what-the-hell-ever screenshots you have to see before something even remotely interesting happen: you get to see an analog clock. Wow.
BB10 may be great, it may be utter crap or it may be ok. There’s absolutely no way to tell which from that slideshow.
Half of the time I couldnt even be sure if I saw a screenshot of the phone or a page from the user guide.
Well, I agree that the screenshots are taken in pretty boring places, but there is also quite a lot of interesting things that can be learned from them. As an example, you can see user-controlled application sandboxing, NFC-based device automation, an extensive collection of security and privacy settings, what looks like user access to the directory hierarchy…
I do prefer a detailed review, with written explanations, to such a picture dump, but I also see how people could be interested in this. Myself, I’m waiting for full hands-on hardware reviews before I can get a serious opinion on the new Blackberry ecosystem.
Edited 2013-01-21 19:33 UTC
I don’t know, I’m excited by this stuff. I’m the kind of person that takes every menu and option in a device and checks it out.
BTW, BB10 looks pretty good. For the sake of competition and variety, go Blackberry!
I couldn’t have said it better. I’m excited to try one out when they come to my Sprint store this summer. I have a feeling I may just end up with one too, if I like what I see then.
Just based on these screenshots I already know I like the interface better than Android 4.1. Of course, I went from a Treo 650 to an original iPhone to a BlackBerry, where I stayed for several years before getting my first Android phone in late 2010, so I’m partial to the platform anyway. It’s rock-solid and reliable as a communication platform, unlike most other smartphones I’ve had.
I just hope the full touchscreen and consumer-friendly focus doesn’t detract from that reliability.
I’m kinda bummed that you’ll probably need a special Blackberry plan.
I guess you didn’t have amodel with the “pearl”. Having a trackball might sound like a great idea but only until you used one. We had a load of BB’s with the pearl and on almost all of them the trackball stopped working properly sooner rather than later. The BB forums where filled with questions on how to clean the trackball something that was unfortunately not easily done without damaging the phone to some degree.
And of course, there are the infamously overpriced dataplans. The word from upon high soon became “don’t download large emails, don’t open large attachments, don’t surf the net”. Soft of defeated the purpose of having a BB.
Actually my first BlackBerry was the original Pearl, with the trackball and “SureType” keyboard. I did have a few times where the ball didn’t cooperate but it was a simple fix. Since then I’ve had a couple of Curves, a Storm, and my most recent acquisition is a Style, which I’m excited to try out for the next few weeks once I’ve received the battery I ordered (the phone was given to me by a friend who lost the battery when he moved recently).
Despite hardware issues like the trackball on the cheaper models, I’ve always found the platform itself to be solid and dependable, something I need given how much I work from my phone. Who knows, I may give up my Nexus S for the Style if I like it enough! I do miss a hardware keyboard and I’ve always been partial to flip phones.
And as for data plans, well I’m on Sprint so I already have unlimited data which covers all their smartphones. Even when I had T-Mobile and AT&T before that, I never had issues with data on the BlackBerry or any other phone. Of course, I’m not one to stream video 24/7 on the phone either; it’s a tool to get work done.
Edited 2013-01-22 13:34 UTC
Hmm, can’t really form much of an opinion, despite the 100 scrots.
Agree with Neolander about the application settings/sandboxing/security options being interesting, but it’s also worrying in some sense. If you’re giving users that much control, does it mean you’re giving applications a lot of rights out of the box as well? Kind of risky from a security standpoint, but I suppose it’s more proactive than walling up everything by default.
I do like the font rendering, or at least how they look in the scrots on a low ppi (non-retina) display. Nice and crisp, unlike Android’s Roboto which looks rather ‘scrunchy’ when viewed at standard pixel density on my desktop monitor.
I don’t think that one necessarily goes with the other.
The point of sandboxing, as implemented on Android or BB10 at least, is to define a fine-grained set of security permissions that applications can either possess or not possess. At install time, users get to see which system resources applications want to access and decide whether they want to take the risk or not. In BB10 it also looks like users can deny apps access to specific resources, which is difficult on Android.
So I don’t see how this can give applications excessive power. If anything, that’s more secure than the “root access” concept of current-gen desktop operating systems, where applications either run with fairly limited rights (while still being conceptually able to wipe user data) or acquire total control over the operating system, with no way of knowing what’s happening when a UAC/gksudo dialog appears.
Edited 2013-01-22 09:54 UTC
Image that .. the benefits of BB10 (enterprise manageability, well implemented security) … and a sandboxed Android application player so you can benefit from the Android app store… that would be a combination worth paying for!