Can Blackberry 10 steal the competition?

[rahul247rocks]

It's no surprise that Blackberry entered the smartphone market a bit late. Do you still think that the Blackberry 10 can change the game. Will iOS be affected. I think their device looks really sleek. What are your thoughts?

[cuzo]

Not really they came out too late and they still don't have alot of apps people use, the verge review was pretty brutal and they still have work to do. No customizing, it will appeal to maybe the grown up crowd but it won't take over iOS or droid anytime soon.

[Roessnakhan]

I think Google and Apple shouldn't lose any sleep, but Microsoft should watch out.

[ugahairydawgs]

They are going to have to get some dev involvement in order to make a real game of this. Should Apple or Google be worried about Blackberry much right now? No.

Should Microsoft? Absolutely.

[charlieegan3]

Perhaps on the corporate front - RIM are still reasonably trusted in the business world.

[F123D]

The only competition is Microsoft. At this point, if I had to use one of the OS's, I'd probably choose Windows, barely though.

[Internaut]

BBB 10 is not much of a threat to iOS or Android at the moment, but it is solid enough. I expect it will shore up Blackberry's (still) sizeable consumer base and do very well in the corporate market.

Blackberry could do worse than push out an BB10 Playbook update asap as this too has a sizeable user base, most of whom picked up their devices on the cheap.

[mrsir2009]

Nah, but MS should

[Tarzanman]

Originally Posted by Internaut

BBB 10 is not much of a threat to iOS or Android at the moment, but it is solid enough. I expect it will shore up Blackberry's (still) sizeable consumer base and do very well in the corporate market.

There are many companies that still use Blackberry since corporate tech acceptance tends to have a lot of inertia.... but iOS has made some pretty significant inroads as well.

If Blackberry has the presence of mind to (heavily) discount administration software for BB10 then I think that they have a shot at retaining a foothold there.

Blackberry could do worse than push out an BB10 Playbook update asap as this too has a sizeable user base, most of whom picked up their devices on the cheap.

Unfortunately, the playbook only ever got down to ~$200. The HP Touchpad fire sale cost $100 and the Nexus 7 sells new (like hotcakes) at $200. Not a lot of people have playbooks... saying that the platform has be marginalized would be understating things.

[AutoUnion39]

nope. too little, too late.

[0dev]

An unintuitive interface on an OS with hardly any decent apps on a device with battery life that doesn't even last a day? Yeah right.

RIM is dead.

[matttye]

Originally Posted by 0dev

An unintuitive interface on an OS with hardly any decent apps on a device with battery life that doesn't even last a day? Yeah right.

RIM is dead.

Have you actually seen the videos of BB10? The UI looks really intuitive.

And I don't think you can comment on battery life when none of the devices have been released yet.

I'm guessing you're judging past versions of the Blackberry OS and devices.

[0dev]

Originally Posted by matttye

Have you actually seen the videos of BB10? The UI looks really intuitive.

And I don't think you can comment on battery life when none of the devices have been released yet.

I'm guessing you're judging past versions of the Blackberry OS.

No I'm judging based on The Verge's review. They've been using one for a week.

[matttye]

Originally Posted by 0dev

No I'm judging based on The Verge's review. They've been using one for a week.

I think intuitive may be the wrong word for BB10.

What I like is that things like menus and the action bar are not there permanently taking up real estate. They only appear when you need them. For example; press and hold an email and a bar comes up where you can drag the email onto certain actions to perform that action. That seems like a pretty good way of doing things, whereby the buttons only pop up when they're needed. Keeps the UI clean.

I think the UI actually looks fairly confusing until you realise which gestures you have to use, so yeah, definitely not intuitive.

The hub and notification system is pretty cool though, where you can get to everything and peek without exiting the current app.

[LIVEFRMNYC]

BB10 brings nothing new to the table. It actually looks like an older OS. They had a better chance focusing on tablets. I would rather see a Playbook 2 than this crap.

Blackberry is doomed!!

[Stuntman06]

Originally Posted by matttye

I think intuitive may be the wrong word for BB10.

What I like is that things like menus and the action bar are not there permanently taking up real estate. They only appear when you need them. For example; press and hold an email and a bar comes up where you can drag the email onto certain actions to perform that action. That seems like a pretty good way of doing things, whereby the buttons only pop up when they're needed. Keeps the UI clean.

I think the UI actually looks fairly confusing until you realise which gestures you have to use, so yeah, definitely not intuitive.

The hub and notification system is pretty cool though, where you can get to everything and peek without exiting the current app.

I'm going to give the UI the benefit of the doubt because it is simply new and different than anything else. The gestures do seem promising. I would have to actually try it out myself to see what it does well and what it doesn't do well. The Verge review does seem to talk about some issues with the UI a lot more than the positives. As someone who is familiar with Android, I had many issues with iOS because of the differences. I do understand the reason why iOS does certain things a certain way, but it was still a big adjustment for me that I found rather annoying.

Battery life is something my current BlackBerry Tour has that blows everything else out of the water. If the current ones are only on par with other smartphones, then I am sure many people will be extremely disappointed. I am used to getting days of use with my BB. Likewise, I am used to having to charge my Android every night. If I have to charge my new BB10 phone every night, I'd be annoyed and would feel a bit ripped off as I have grown accustomed to a long battery life out of my BB phone.

Right now, I think that BB is in the a similar position as Nokia was 2 years ago. It is really coming in late, but it still has a substantial user base that it can build upon in addition to trying to get users of other phones to switch. Nokia pretty much abandoned their Symbian users and MS abandoned WinMo users as Windows phone was entirey brand new with no upgrade path. Although BB10 is rather different than BB7, they still have BBM and there appears to be more of a natural upgrade path to BB10.

In any case, I will be watching how BB10 does against WP8. Both of these platforms are trying to make some head way in a market dominated by Android and iOS. If it can carve out enough of the market, it BB may be able to survive.

[0dev]

Originally Posted by matttye

What I like is that things like menus and the action bar are not there permanently taking up real estate. They only appear when you need them. For example; press and hold an email and a bar comes up where you can drag the email onto certain actions to perform that action. That seems like a pretty good way of doing things, whereby the buttons only pop up when they're needed. Keeps the UI clean.

The same can be said for Android or iOS, big deal.

I think the UI actually looks fairly confusing until you realise which gestures you have to use, so yeah, definitely not intuitive.

Yeah because gesture based OSes always work out so well, that's why webOS and the Playbook are big hits! Oh, wait.

The hub and notification system is pretty cool though, where you can get to everything and peek without exiting the current app.

That is cool, yes. RIM did something similar in the old BB OS called Social Feeds too. A central messaging app is quite a useful tool. But it's one which can easily be built into iOS or Android, and if that's all the OS has going for it it'll still be toast.

[irDigital0l]

They should have did this back in 2007.

[siiip5]

Won't sell in the US, specifically because the morons at RIM thought they could sell their phone for the same price as the iPhone 5 and flagship Android phones (subsidized price, mind you!), but give the owners of this phone last years hardware (and according to reviewers buggy software). AND yet another delay on when the phone is coming out. Z10 is "supposed" to be released in March (but I bet it gets delayed til at least April and the Q10 will get pushed to summer. RIM will cite manufacturing issues. If the Q10 is anything like the bold, it will fall apart in under 6 months. Maybe I will be wrong, but their track history won't give me much pause.

[Irishman]

Originally Posted by charlieegan3

Perhaps on the corporate front - RIM are still reasonably trusted in the business world.

Except they're not RIM anymore. They've changed their name to their most popular product - Blackberry. More appropriate, I think. Will it save them? No, but at least the RIM job jokes can stop.

[0dev]

Originally Posted by charlieegan3

Perhaps on the corporate front - RIM are still reasonably trusted in the business world.

Not anymore, a lot of companies are moving to Android and iOS. The security features on those two are the same as BlackBerries these days anyway but without the massive hassle of BES.

[onthecouchagain]

In my opinion, this will satiate only the remaining Blackberry devoted.

Otherwise, not really.

[aneftp]

Originally Posted by irDigital0l

They should have did this back in 2007.

Yep. They were really 3 years behind and it absolutely killed them. (They purchased QNX in. 2010 and previewed the playbook in late 2010).

Google saw the iPhone OS in Jan 2007 and blatantly copied some of iPhone os features (remember the very first android simulators looked like blackberry phones).

Copying people's ideas is the way to go in the tech world and you can improve on the product over time like Android did.

Microsoft tried to dilly dallying with its windows mobile OS trying to make it backwards compatible with real multitouch screens when they saw the iPhone in Jan 2007 also. They dilly dallied for 18 months or so and couldn't make it work so had to start over from scratch in mid 2008. That's why windows phone 7 took so long to come out in fall 2010. It takes 2 years to build the OS for a mobile platform.

Palm did the same thing. 2007-2009 getting the webos software.

Google spent 2-3 years prior to android 1.0 and android 1.0 was very unfinished (i owned first Android G1 phone so I should know).

So it's taken RIM 2 plus years since they acquird QNX to get to BB10. They basically used playbook users as guinea pigs (I was one of them also).

The playbook was a joke trying to sell an unfinished product the same price was the iPad. I got it 60% off in September 2011 and even at $200 it was the price. It was the software that held the playbook back

[chris2k5]

The software may be okay but they need more app support right out of the gate. Hardware wise, they are WAY outdated...

To be releasing a phone in 2013 WITHOUT 1080pi display and WITHOUT quad-core processor is ridiculous. Then there is the 8 megapixel camera when 13 should be the new standard.

The Blackberry Z10 is essentially 2011/2012 hardware.

[Awakener]

Originally Posted by 0dev

No I'm judging based on The Verge's review. They've been using one for a week.

I wouldn't take reviews seriously at this point. Too many fanboys out there.
Wait and see what the average users think.