Blackberry 10 OS

BlackBerry 10 is finally here and BlackBerry’s new mobile platform can finally take its first breath as it steps out into the mobile market.
The BlackBerry smartphone range has been in desperate need of a reboot for a while as the likes of iOS 6, Android Jelly Bean and Windows Phone 8 have outstripped the now extremely outdated BB OS7 platform.
Where as the other platforms have witnessed incremental upgrades BlackBerry 10 is a completely new offering – BlackBerry has scrapped the BB OS7 base and rebuilt from the ground up.
BlackBerry 10 has merged homescreens, widgets, app lists and a unified inbox into one slick interface, offering up an easy-to-navigate user experience.

Lockscreen

The first thing you’re greeted with on BlackBerry 10 is the lock screen, which not only shows the time and date, but also notifications, unread messages and upcoming calendar events.
There’s a button to launch the camera straight from the lock screen to grab a quick snap, just hold down on the icon for a couple of seconds.

To unlock a touchscreen BB 10 handset you need to slide your finger up the screen and as you do the homescreen below will begin to appear, giving you a sneak peek of what’s underneath.

Homescreen

BB10 will display up to eight of these active frames, displaying your most recently used apps with the latest app appearing in the top left position.

Only four active frames can fit on the screen at a time, so you’ll need to scroll down to see the rest – which all seems a little pointless, as you can just as quickly swipe sideways to access the app list and launch the app you want from there.When you’re in an app there’s no back button, instead with BB10 you use a gesture to exit applications by running your finger up from the bottom of the screen.

Interface

At the bottom of both the homescreen and app list you’ll notice a shortcut bar, with quick links to the phone, search and camera applications – allowing you to quickly jump to these regularly used features.

There’s a pleasant fading animation as you flick between pages, and you’ll see the previous page of apps fade away to the side of the screen, to be replaced by the new page.

Peek and Flow

Peek and Flow are two core aspects which come heavily baked into BlackBerry 10 and they dictate the way you use the system.
Flow refers to the way the whole of BB 10 operates, as you glide between applications and screens with no hard navigation tools such as the back or home buttons with are found on rival handsets.
It’s very different to any system we’ve experience before so it took us a few days to get our heads around the various gestures required to effectively use BB10.

If it’s just a boring news letter you can return to the app or video your were viewing without having to go back to the app list and navigate to it.
The whole BlackBerry 10 interface does appear to be very smooth with no sign of lag which makes for a pleasing user experience – once you’ve worked out the various gestures required to get around that is.