BB10 stands a good chance of helping RIM turn itself around

Rating: Latest OS just smells of handset knowledge

Whilst other cellular industry observers are quietly writing off RIM – the BlackBerry maker, here at GoMobile News we believe the company can turn itself around thanks to its latest OS – BB10. Having seen the new UI in action, it just smells of being designed by an organisation which has a long history of providing handsets which people want and can use. This is in stark contrast with Nokia whose move to Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) was just a disaster. GoMobile News‘ current obsession is with mobile support for Adobe Flash and we can tell you right here and now that BB10 very definitely supports it. One of the facilities for which Nokia was famed – Profiles, is simply missing from the latest Lumias.

And as for the fact that the phones won’t auto-answer when paired with a Bluetooth headset, you have to ask yourself, where did Nokia’s thorough testers disappear to?

So, how does RIM’s depth of handset knowledge manifest itself in BB10?

Well, a very good example is with the onscreen keyboard. For starters, it has great support for predictive texting.

Instead of putting the word it thinks you are aiming for along the top, it places it above the next key you would normally hit. Clever.

Better still, it can predict in three different languages simultaneously. In our case (and you might be able to spot it from our photo), it was set to predict in English, French and Spanish simultaneously.

But there’s more. Firstly, the keyboard has frets to stop you accidentally hitting the wrong key.

Secondly, it learns as you start typing and automatically adjusts itself to recognise just where you hit each key. So it has an even better chance of getting it right.

We also had RIM prove to us BB10′s full support for mobile Adobe Flash and it passed the GoMobile News Flash litmus test. But that’s another of our stories here.

One feature which RIM didn’t demonstrate is support for Android apps.

We know that BB10 can do it because RIM’s tablet – the Playbook, can do so and it is basically running an early version of BB10.

So RIM won’t be making the same mistake as Nokia and ignoring what is  probably the second most important source of mobile apps (although Android apps will need to be modified to run).

Incidentally, there’s a brand new app store created specifically for handsets running BB10 which RIM showed us.

Sadly, we can’t find its URL but if you search for the game Perico Pirata (developed initially for the PlayBook), you might just find it.