The good: The BlackBerry 10 OS
looks terrific, and comes with many of the world-class features you'd
demand from a modern OS. It also adds a few of its own signature tools
for security and business users.
The bad: Despite
the grown-up look, RIM's new OS is riddled with perplexing omissions
and behavioral inefficiencies that wear on you over time.
The bottom line: BlackBerry
lovers who can get past the rookie mistakes will find a
polished-looking OS that's packed with interesting and useful features,
but happy Android and iOS users won't find a reason to switch.
New BlackBerry is entirely gesture-driven, its layout sort of
resembling a handful of playing cards spread out in an overlapping row.
To the far left you've got BlackBerry Hub, the universal inbox where you
can see all your messages and notification alerts. To the right of that
is the "Active Frame" area, a nerdy name to represent the multitasking
screen that stores up to eight thumbnails of your open apps. Move right
again to see your pages of app icons, which you can rearrange, delete,
and plop on top of each other to create folders. You can access the
dialer, universal search, and camera from every screen.
For the
most part, you'll use the usual swipes up, down, left, and right, though
there are two special moves to know. First, you can swipe up from
bottom of the screen to wake the phone (you can use the lock screen
buttons as well). Second, there's the "Peek" gesture, where you quickly
pull your finger up and to the right, as if tracing a perfect right
angle. This temporarily suspends your app so you can glance at your
notifications in the Hub. Lift up and you close the app and jump to the
Hub. Keep your finger pressed to the screen, and you can return to the
app without losing your place. I like Peek.
Basic smartphone features
As with all of today's mobile
operating systems, BlackBerry 10 supports multiple e-mail addresses,
calendars, and social-networking accounts.
There's support for
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, mobile hot spot, VPN, and Internet tethering.
You'll find airplane mode, DLNA sharing, and accessibility features,
including a magnification gesture, hearing aid support, and settings for
TTY for teletypewriters.
Voice Control
To say that voice assistants have caught on is
an understatement. BlackBerry 10's new Voice Control app places its
usual commands within the context of a voice assistant that talks back
to you. Sure, it looks like a 'Berry-ized version of
Apple's Siri,
but like most Siri knockoffs it responds to precise commands, rather
than to Siri's conversational language. For instance, you can command
Voice Control to open the weather app or search the Internet for weather
information, but you can't ask it what the weather will be like, or if
you'll need an umbrella.
BlackBerry Messenger
Another of RIM's longtime strong suits, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) sends
peer-to-peer messages, photos, voice notes, contact information, and
files between BlackBerry users for free. In BlackBerry 10, the app
blossoms, adding voice chat, video chat, and screen sharing to its
beloved emoticons and group messaging.
Camera and video
A camera lens can lead to poor or stellar
photos, but the software plays a role, too. In BlackBerry 10, you have a
few modes and scenes. There are the usual camera and video modes, and
there's also TimeShift, which takes multiple shots along a timeline.
Right after the photo snaps, you can rewind along the timeline to save
the best "moment." This is best for photos of groups, dogs, and subjects
that aren't adept at staying still.
I like the idea of
TimeShift, but the fact that you can't activate it from the regular
camera mode means you have to plan ahead when you want to use it.
So
what are the camera's other scenes? You've got burst mode and
stabilization (which automatically launches when you turn on the video
camera,) but there's no built-in HDR or panorama. You will, however,
find scenes tuned for capturing action, night scenes, the beach, and
whiteboards. You can turn on flash, and choose a 4:3 or 16:9 aspect
ratio.
WRF
