BlackBerry Jam from Research In Motion (RIM) is underway and the Canadian firm is making sure that it is keeping app developers in the loop about its latest BlackBerry 10 operating system. RIM demonstrated some of the newest features and capabilities of BB10 that the Waterloo based company hopes will make it stand out from the Apple iOS and Google Android crowd. From the conference it was obvious that BlackBerry had added features that would appeal to users other than business executives and showed that BlackBerry devices could be functional as a personal smartphone.
RIM has worked hard to make their Hub, Flow and Peek features a central part of BB10 and made clicking on separate apps to check e-mail, calendars and social networks a thing of the past. BB10 has Hub built in to the OS so that it is always running and is a centralized location for BBM, email and social network updates.
The team working on BB10 also tried very hard to make usability the focus of all interactions within the system. For example, Hub can be accessed through the Peek. This allows users to swipe the screen upwards and get a look at messages. If something catches their eye they can continue the swipe to the right and go straight into the Hub. This also showcases another philosophy that RIM has been working with and that is the ability to do anything on BB10 devices with one hand.
RM calls this one hand interface Flow and the feature looked great during the demonstrations as RIM used the Dev Alpha to showcase the OS.
RIM has not forgotten its core audience and has given business users even more integration and features than ever before. The calendar has more features than the previous day, week, month and people views. It now has a timeline function for emails, meetings and social networks. Blackberry Balance is another cool feature that allows the creation of two separate accounts for one phone so that a user can use one for the office and the other for personal use. IT departments can remotely wipe this account in case of a stolen or lost phone while leaving the personal account alone.
Source: Wired
Photo: Wired
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