The BlackBerry Jam Americas event is underway and the company showed developers what they can expect from RIM in the year ahead. First up was the latest version of BlackBerry 10 which is currently in Beta 3. The other was a new developer phone, the BlackBerry Dev Alpha B.
The Dev Alpha B features a 4.2 inch display with a 1280x768 pixel resolution, 16GB of internal storage and 1GB of RAM. The device doesn't have a microSD card slot unlike the BlackBerry Dev A device.
The BB10 OS can hold up to 8 panes on its homescreen. These panes are called "Active Frames" and they show the actively running apps. You can close each of these panes using the 'x' in the lower right corner of the pane. Once you bypass the Active Frame you will be presented with a grid of apps similar to iOS or Android. You can organize these apps into folders to suite your personality.
BB10 also offers some gestures which will help you get into the key features of the system. Swiping from the right will reveal the BlackBerry Hub, which is the system's unified messaging center. Here you will have access to your email, BBMs, Facebook, Twitter and more. The Hub also serves as a notification center for your apps. BB10 allows you to peek at notifications with a partial gesture and get back to what you were doing unless you want to deal with the incoming notification.
BB10 also features the BlackBerry Balance feature which allows you to switch your device between personal and work modes. When the work mode is activated a small briefcase icon will appear on your homescreen and you are locked down with the security that BlackBerry is known for.
RIM has a few more months before BB10 is ready for the masses. They can use this time to work out any kinks in the system, but first impressions show a very sleek and refined experience. Whats important to RIM is developer support and they can assure they will have a successful platform in their hands.
source - The Verge