CrackBerry has published a number of images purporting to show off the new look of the upcoming BlackBerry 10 smartphone OS. The images were taken from a 14-page RIM briefing document that was sent out to advertisers just recently.
RIM is putting a lot of its eggs into one basket with BlackBerry 10 in terms of trying to reignite its lineup and present some fresh products of interest alongside its two dominant competitors, Apple and Google. The oddity in these images however is that they show BlackBerry 10 running on the canadian manufacturer's current generation of products, which does cast a bit of doubt on their authenticity. Then again, despite previously indicating they wouldn't, perhaps RIM is in fact planning to release the OS as an update for some of its older models as well – specifically on the Torch 9860s and 9810s as we see used in these particular shots.
Nonetheless, there are some interesting and notable characteristics to attain when focusing on screenshots of the OS itself. The refreshed user interface that looks to be heavily inspired by iOS and Android shows the OS displaying a series of widgets which give off the impression that they have a similar functionality to that of Windows Phone 7's Live Tiles.
You can also note from the shots seen that there's a new icon tray positioned at the bottom which gives quick access to Calls, Searching and Camera functions. The OS will also support BlackBerry cloud services along with a variety of new applications including native SDK, WebWorks/HTML5 and Adobe AIR and Flash.
From what we've been lead to believe, the first (new) device BB10 will ship with is the BlackBerry London. We still don't have an official release date but a previously leaked roadmap gives suggestion to sometime in September for both London and its accompanying BlackBerry 10 OS.
More images and details of the supposed BlackBerry 10 OS up and running can be found here.
KitGuru says: While this OS sure does look like a real breath of fresh air for RIM, it's still hard to see this being enough to keep them afloat unless there's something exceptional we don't yet know about. Here's hoping London from a hardware perspective knocks our socks off.
Cut the Rope? I’m expecting ‘Droid Market accessibility…
Android Market access? I never heard Cut the Rope was in BB!