Blackberry 10 Alpha Device Hands-on

Who said that Blackberry is gone? Did you know that Blackberry will revamp their OS and replace those Blackberry 7 devices very very soon. Unfortunately, all of the current Blackberry 7 devices won’t be updated to the latest OS but don’t fret because your BBMs would still work. FYI the Blackberry 10 OS would be launched on January 30 2013 and I just got a chance to play with it thanks to Mr. Rafael Oca who has a Blackberry 10 Alpha device. Mr. Rafael Oca is one of the editors of your favorite show every Saturday night, Big Time Show. Chef Raf loves to show Blackberry’s features and a lot of NFC stuffs. Check out the hands-on video of the Blackberry 10 Alpha with the Chef himself

The Blackberry 10 OS Alpha Lockscreen

Remember! The Blackberry 10 OS Alpha that you saw in the video above will be different from the retail one that will be sold next year. So expect a lot of changes and added features from the retail version. You can also notice that the device isn’t responsive. That’s expected on an Alpha device.

Live tiles

I really like the gestures and a lot of stuffs on the Blackberry 10 OS. It kinda reminds me of the Nokia N9 but this one is much better. Mr. Oca also showed some of the notable features of the Blackberry like the camera, which was demoed in the video. That feature that reverts back to the time that you didn’t took the photo was impressive. I really like that feature.

Some other features that was demoed was the Blackberry Hub which is quite similar to the notifications system that can be found on the Android and the keyboard which has a better prediction and much easier to use and type on. The keyboard is very similar to the design of the original Blackberry Bold.

That’s the keyboard

It’s too early to tell if the Blackberry 10 will succeed. We really need to wait for the retail version. This Alpha device is not yet final and is subjected to changes. I was quite impressed with some of its features but I think the Blackberry 10 is really late in the OS market. There are only a handful of apps that are available on the Blackberry 10 while Android and iOS already have more than 500,000 apps on their market. I hope that Blackberry 10 can help bring RIM back to its glory days because if they fail, they might follow the trail of Palm.

Thanks Raf!