RIM’s potential saviour and CEO Thorsten Heins took to the stage this morning at the BlackBerry World conference in Florida to give the first sneak peek of the struggling mobile giant’s highly anticipated BB10 operating system.
He invited Vivek Bhardwaj, head of RIM’s software portfolio, to join him in front of 5000 eager audience members and show off the new system’s key features and spark excitement in what could be the Waterloo-based company’s make or break release this coming fall as it battles Apple and Android for market supremacy. So what’s new, you ask? Despite recently launching a commercial featuring an attractive female customer sending 1000 e-mails a day and announcing “try that on a touch screen,” Blackberry has ditched the buttons and urged users to do just that. In addition to a touch screen-only phone, other key features include:
Adaptive text function that accommodates users’ typing tendencies.
Swiping across letters to delete words.
The ability to zoom on a subject’s face in a photo and play around with frames on either side of it being taken (perfect for rolling back a second before a subject’s eyes are closed).
Multitask functions and swiping between apps.
What do you think about the new features? Will BB10 be enough to save the company in the ever-tightening smartphone market?