Operating system
BlackBerry claims to have re-written a major part of the code in the BlackBerry 10 OS to make it look more modern and deliver a new user experience. The fresh looking user interface now looks totally different from the first build shown, which resembled the PlayBook OS. The company has introduced a gesture supported user experience feature dubbed Flow. As literal as it sounds, Flow means shuffling or jumping between windows/apps to access information. The BlackBerry Z10 aims to redefine navigation for BlackBerry users.
There are a few basic gestures that basically replace the physical/capacitive buttons offered on BlackBerry smartphones. A simple swipe gesture from right to left takes the user to the homescreen, which is actually a grid full of app icons. Keeping a tab on new messages, emails and social network updates with the new Peek function works by a simple swipe and hold gesture from the left of the screen till the centre. At any point of time you can check the notifications bar by a simple slide gesture from the bottom and just hold it after a few millimeters. Flicking from bottom to top will minimize the app you are using and turn it into an Active Frame. Now the Active Frames menu can have several apps open and a thumbnail showing basic details about the respective app. The screen can cover at the most four active frames in one view and the user will have to scroll if more Active Frames exist.
The notifications tray covers less than half of the screen to offer different single-tap options to activate or de-active running services. BlackBerry has always offered support for a variety of audio and video formats for enjoyable multimedia playback. The stereo speakers are loud too.
The on-screen keyboard has been redesign to include a silver strip between rows of letters. As one starts typing there will be words showing up in tiny fonts on the top of the letters to predict the word that the user intends to input. If the word is correct, simply flick from down to up on the letter and the word will automatically get completed. With the new prediction based input method, BlackBerry aims to tone down the user's struggle with touchscreen typing to simple thumb/finger flicks. We did struggle with the new keyboard a bit but the word prediction gets smarter over time. Hopefully we will get to see a full Hindi keyboard so that one can reply with Indic fonts for specific messages.
Overall, the operating system looks fresh and worth checking out, but avid BlackBerry users will have to dedicate a couple of days to get familiar with this major shift.
