BlackBerry 10: All The News As It Happened With Gizmodo Australia


BlackBerry — as it’s now known — just wrapped up its BlackBerry 10 launch event in New York. New phones, new apps, new operating systems and an appearance from new employee, Alicia Keys. Read all about it here.

All The News:

RIM Is Dead, Long Live BlackBerry
Australia Will Get The BlackBerry Z10 And BlackBerry Q10
BlackBerry Just Hired Alicia Keys
Here’s Why We Didn’t Get A New BlackBerry Tablet Today
Alicia Keys Is Still Tweeting From Her iPhone

As we understand it, BlackBerry 10 devices will be launching in the UK and Europe as soon as the keynote from Thorsten Heins ends. No word yet on Australian availability but we’ll keep you updated. Update: it’s coming as early as February!

You can tune into a live feed of the event here.

CEO Thorsten Heins is up, thanking developers, staff and carriers for continued support.

Thorsten told the crowd that BlackBerry isn’t just shooting for good mobile devices, it’s shooting for the future of mobile computing (is there a new tablet coming, Thorsten?).

RIM wants you to use its devices to connect you to the age-old idea of the internet of things by using the platform to push relevant information to devices in the home, car and elsewhere.

“We will soon give you more ways to connect your mobile experiences and yourself not just to other people but to the whole world around you. You’ll be living in an internet of things…at all times. We will be a leader in connecting you to your internet of things, and this is what being connected will mean in the future.

“We have a platform that can extend you and your information to your car, your home, your healthcare system or wherever you are. This is the promise of the BlackBerry 10 platform.”

New Phones

Here they are: the BlackBerry 10 devices we have been waiting for.

BlackBerry Z10

The Z10 is the flagship, all touch-screen model we’ve been waiting for. It’s identical to the BlackBerry London concept we saw a few years ago.

It has a 4.2-inch screen with 365ppi and, obviously, it runs BlackBerry 10. We’re not sure about the internal specs just yet, but we do know that it has a textured back cover and a curved back edge to make it fit in your hand perfectly.

The edges operate exactly like they do on the BlackBerry Playbook tablet: swipe up, down and all around to move between your apps, rather than focussing on home buttons and other physical annoyances.

We’re getting a demo of the device right now, and it looks pretty damn slick.

The Z10 comes with BlackBerry Balance which the company hopes to use to merge the folks with two devices into the one device. It uses the device’s in-built multi-tasking to wall off business and personal applications so that people can bring their own devices to work without security issues or provisioning dramas.

BlackBerry demonstrated the new BlackBerry Messenger, which will now support video calling and screen sharing over wireless networks. That’s pretty damn handy.

BlackBerry 10’s camera apps include TimeShift, which lets you move around your captured images over a second or so to get the right shot, a built-in photo editor that lets you add Instagram-style filters and other stuff, and what was most impressive was the video editor. It’s called BlackBerry Story Editor, and it lets you select photos video and music to be thrown together automatically into a sexy-looking video presentation.

Thorsten Heins just announced that all eight major movie studios have signed on to put their content into BlackBerry World, along with major music labels and TV studios. Australians will still probably be without a few things, but we’ll have to see what we miss out on soon. This new content offering is on top of BlackBerry World’s existing 70,000 apps.

Speaking of apps, BlackBerry today announced that Skype, Kindle, SAP, Angry Birds and WhatsApp are going to be on the store. Even home-grown favourite Jetpack Joyride is going to be on BlackBerry 10.

BlackBerry Q10

It wouldn’t be a BlackBerry launch without a physical keyboard. The Q10 is the BlackBerry experience that physical keyboard addicts are craving.

The 3.1-inch display goes edge-to-edge, as does the physical keyboard.

The back cover is actually built from what BlackBerry is calling a glass weave cover. It has been designed exclusively for the Q10 and BlackBerry claims it’s stronger, lighter and thinner than plastic. We shall see.

The Q10 has a backlit, always-on physical keyboard, and the edge-to-edge screen still supports the Playbook-style corners that let you swipe in and out of apps.

BlackBerry is giving users a new app with BlackBerry 10 called BlackBerry Reminder, which is like post-it notes on a pinboard with a dash of Evernote-style reminders.

Luke Hopewell travelled to New York City as a guest of Research In Motion.


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