The company formerly known as RIM has officially launched BlackBerry 10 alongside two new smartphones, the full-touch Z10 and the QWERTY-keyboard toting Q10.
With so many leaks and revealed information surfacing over the past couple of months there was little new at the show, but we were still impressed with a number of features and hidden tricks that the new operating system contains.
At the global launch the key focus was on the BlackBerry Hub, which is an easily accessible inbox that gives you access to email, text messages, BBM, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and more. From here you can use clever touch gestures to manage your content without the need to leave the Hub – Facebook invites can be accepted, Tweets can be sent and more, without the need to open separate apps.
Although famed for the classic physical BlackBerry keyboard, the company’s new Z10 smartphone is all-touch and with no buttons. The on screen keyboard looks pretty clever, with the ability to easily type predictively with one hand by swiping upwards on the keyboard, to swipe downwards to access numbers and symbols or to swipe left to delete words.
The company proudly confirmed that it had the largest catalogue of apps on offer for any first generation mobile device launch ever, with the likes of Kindle, Skype, Whatsapp and Angry Birds ready and available to download amongst some 70,000 other apps.
The Phones
We knew that two BlackBerry 10 phones would launch alongside the new operating system, but today we’ve learnt plenty new about them. We’ve got the full-touch Z10, which we saw in white earlier in the week, and the QWERTY-based Q10, which we previously thought would be called the X10.
The Z10 is a phone with a 4.2-inch HD touchscreen, a powerful dual-core processor and both front and rear cameras. It runs a micro SIM with WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and NFC connectivity, with 16GB of internal storage and room for expansion using the micro SD card slot.
The Q10 is a more traditional BlackBerry with a physical QWERTY keyboard and a very sharp and clear 3.1-inch touchscreen that sports a pixel density that’s close to the iPhone 5’s Retina Display – 339ppi. Check it out in the video below.
The BlackBerry Z10 will be available in the UK as of tomorrow, before anywhere else. It will launch in Canada and various other countries next week and the US mid-March.