Over the past few days we’ve had the privilege of being able to preview a select few of the many devices we can expect to see debut this year. We’ve seen future devices from Sony, Huawei, and ZTE; some really neat accessories that can make our phones even more versatile; we’ve even seen some interesting announcements come from some of the major carriers here. With this surplus amount of news we have now, will the hype stemming from the BlackBerry 10 announcement lessen?
When RIM announced last November that they will be holding their launch even at the end of January this year, they picked a good time to announce it. News was slow at the time, and without a lot of other important news to cover at the time media outlets were sure to give BlackBerry 10 the attention it needed in order to have any hope of being noticed. For BlackBerry, perhaps a month and a half of debate whether it will see success or further failure was all it needed, because the talk of BlackBerry 10 has surely been pushed aside in favor of discussing topics revolving around CES.
BlackBerry 10 has a lot to compete with, not only in terms of iPhone or Android but also in terms of specs. You’ve got phones like the HTC One X+ which runs on a 1.7GHz quad-core processor and phones that will be released like the Sony Xperia Z and ZL which showcases a 13-megapixel camera. With the BlackBerry Z10 rumored to only come equipped with an 8-megapixel camera and a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, you’ve already got phones with specs that overshadow a device that hasn’t even been released – if the rumors are true, of course. My fear is that while BlackBerry 10 might have been considered somewhat innovative and refreshing to see a year ago, it has become exactly that – a year too late.
There are some features of BlackBerry 10 that are enticing, however. I’ve always seen BlackBerry as a phone for people with heavy workloads or business people, but as we all know our phones are used both for work and play. BlackBerry 10 has made it easy by combining “work phone” with “personal phone” and made a profile for each. So when you’re at work and can’t use certain apps (i.e. Facebook) you can make sure to leave out certain apps on your business profile, but have them accessible on your personal profile for play time off of the clock.
BlackBerry 10 also makes multitasking easy and simple with BlackBerry Flow. The premise of this function is to basically make it so you can seamlessly switch through apps without having to think about it; you just kind of flow through your phone. This is something that our major platforms seem to be lacking as a stock function.
It would seem that BlackBerry 10 has some innovative ideas to start off with, but they certainly have a long road ahead of them before they can claim success once again.
Oh RIM, why didn’t you just come out with BlackBerry 10 around this time last year?
Now that CES is over, I imagine talks of BlackBerry 10 will soon resurface the closer the launch date approaches. I just hope that RIM has a strategy to pull people in with this new platform; they’ve got a lot to compete with at the moment.
