BlackBerry 10.2 - Find Out What's New

While the recently released BlackBerry Z30 brings some interesting hardware enhancements like stereo speakers and new antenna tech, most BB 10 fans are interested in the BlackBerry 10.2 update which comes on the new device. The newest version of the BlackBerry platform will be headed to devices like the BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry Q10 and the BlackBerry Q5 later this month, so lets take a detailed look at the new features which you will be receiving with this update.

Lock screen notification previews

The lockscreen notification previews are one of the most visible updates in BlackBerry 10.2. Lock screen notification previews are a really sensible way to see what’s happening at a glance without having to unlock your device. In BlackBerry 10.1, you could see the notification count on a per-app basis, but now you can tap each of those icons for a sneak peek at what exactly those notifications are. While this is mostly useful for e-mail, you will also get previews from other Hub-enabled apps, like Twitter and Google Talk.

You should also note that if you’re on a corporate server and using Balance to separate personal and work info, your work correspondence won’t show up here unless the work side is unlocked.


Priority Hub

Priority Hub is another big addition to BlackBerry 10.2. It is a new section of the Hub, which adds visibility to other notifications throughout the Hub with a little red stripe. (You can get another little stripe on the left side to color code your different e-mail accounts, too.)

By default, conversations you start, messages sent from people with the same last name as you, and e-mails flagged as high importance show up in the Priority Hub, but you can also manually designate contacts and conversations to show up. If there are messages being marked as priority that aren't, you can also unflag them to set future filtering. This is a quick and easy to way to see what's important without having to dig through a long list of unread messages.


Attachment View

The Attachment View is an updated section of the Hub which lets you view all of the files you recently received, filtered and organized by sender, date, name or type. You can toggle views between a large finger friendly view or a compact list view.

You also have a search bar which can be used to find exactly what you’re looking for and download it without having to open any individual messages. This feature will be mostly useful to those you send a lot of documents back and forth over e-mail.


Instant Preview and Reply

Instant Previews and Replies are a welcome addition to BlackBerry 10. These notifications appear on the top of the screen as banners, even when you are running apps. You can either tap the banner to launch into the notification, or the little X to dismiss them. These can be toggled on a per-app basis, including e-mail accounts, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

SMS and BBM notifications have the added option of being able to reply directly from the notification without having to open the apps.


'I Will Be Late' option in Calendar

The native calendar application has a new option for upcoming meetings.  When your appointment reminder pops up, you’ll have the option to send out an 'I Will be Late' message to all meeting attendees - just tap the icon, move the slider depending on how late you’re going to be, and hit send. Everyone will get an e-mail letting them know what time you will arrive. Its a really useful feature, but it would have been even better if you could include your location to know your colleagues where you are.

Aside from that, the calendar now lets you subscribe to web iCal calendars, and the UI for creating new meetings has been simplified dramatically. That new UI include a great new time picker which shows a short view of your schedule’s timeline.


Reply Now

There are times you may have to ignore a call from your family or friends, but you would likely want to give them a reasons for ignoring their calls. With the 'Reply Now' feature you can send an automated SMS or BBM message when you decline or ignore a call.

There are three messages already filled out for you to use, but you can change them to whatever you like. You will find these options tucked away in the Settings.


New Copy/Paste buttons

The Copy and Paste functionality has been greatly improved with BlackBerry 10.2. Now instead of having to double-tap selected text and chose your action from a side menu, buttons now appear in-line with text so you've got cut, copy, and paste actions ready to go immediately. You can also share selected text to any app that plugs into the system-wide menu, and in the browser, you can launch directly into web searches for a selected term thanks to a dedicated in-line icon. Tack this on top of the refined cursor selector in 10.1, and handling text in any way has become a lot easier.


New typing audio feedback

The typing experience on BlackBerry 10.2 has added fresh audio feedback. Though this amounts to little more than a couple of new sound effects when you use shift, symbols, or backspace (which has a new animation for the swipe gesture, by the way), it adds a significant amount of confidence when typing on a touchscreen.


Stand-alone Evernote

Evernote has been built into the native Remember app since launch, but a new stand-alone Evernote app has been pre-loaded with BlackBerry 10.2. It includes a lot of important features for those that rely on the web note-taking service regularly.

For example, there’s rich text editing, complete with interactive check-boxes now. There’s also tag support, so you don’t have to rely exclusively on notebooks to organize your notes. You can even include due dates to items which will appear on your device Calendar.


Adaptive Sharing

Adaptive Sharing is an update on the native sharing menu so that it doesn't just show a list of outgoing sources to use. BlackBerry 10.2 monitors your sharing habits and suggests the most common destinations (either which channels or which contacts) you share to most regularly at the top.

This can save two or three taps, and is very useful for getting files and articles out to people you share to all the time.


Natural Sound

According to BlackBerry, Natural Sound is a higher-quality audio experience which includes an extremely broad range of the audio spectrum. This new experience is said to be better than HD voice calls and even voice over LTE. This high-quality calls are only available through BBM calls for now. Though this is facilitated on the BlackBerry Z30 by way of additional microphones and speakers, many of these audio improvements will find their way to older devices by way of the update to 10.2, as additional codecs help the hardware handle audio a little bit better.


Miracast and Wi-Fi Direct

BlackBerry 10.2 includes Miracast support, which allows wirelessly shunting the image on your device to another, bigger screen. This is done over Wi-Fi Direct, which basically connects two devices by one starting up its own little hotspot and the other connecting to it. Wi-Fi Direct support has a wide range of uses, including file transfers and syncing. Though mirroring is going to be the main use case, Wi-Fi Direct shows up in the Share menu alongside Bluetooth and everything else. Combined with DLNA support, BB10 now has a strong arsenal of wireless media sharing capabilities. The Miracast feature and Wi-Fi Direct support wont be available for the BlackBerry Z10.


USB Host

USB host introduces a whole new range of accessories to BlackBerry 10, though even out of the box there are a lot of useful things you can do with it. For example, with the help of a micro USB to USB adapter, you can plug flash drives into your BlackBerry device. USB host will even work with your mouse and keyboards.

Unfortunately the USB host feature will not be making its way to previous BlackBerry 10 devices, but it should be a standard feature on future ones.


Android Jelly Bean Runtime

BlackBerry 10.2 includes a new runtime for Android 4.2.2 apps. Though there aren’t any major feature additions here, it does enable hardware acceleration, which significantly improves the performance of Android ports.


Headless apps

Headless apps are another way of referring to background apps - software that runs in the background without you having to purposefully turn it on. Technically, these won’t be available until 10.2.1, but they’re worth highlighting here. Third-party developers will be able to plug right into the Hub so their background notifications will bubble up - but this is something we’ve already seen here and there with select partners. This is a big step in the OS maturing, and once developers start getting involved in the Hub and running in the background, I think we’re going to see some awesome stuff in BlackBerry World.


Bluetooth 4.0

Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy is included in BlackBerry 10.2, which opens a whole host of new connections. Consistent, low-demand connections are a big part of this iteration of Bluetooth and this is even perfect for biometric devices like heart rate monitors. One nice inclusion on the Bluetooth front is automotive integration, which optimizes audio settings and set-up for your particular make of car, shows the vehicle logo when the device is locked and car is in motion, and provides a dedicated BlackBerry World section for apps approved by the auto maker. Part of that integration includes the rSAP profile, which allows other devices (like cars) to use your SIM credentials to connect to the cellular network.


Camera updates

Though the Z10 and Z30 use the same camera module, you 10.2 does introduce grid line options, so you can line up your shots with the rule of thirds and keep your pictures level. We were also told that the autofocus logic was changed so that the shot would happen only once a focus lock was made. In the old version, it opted for a faster shot-to-shot time, which would inevitably lead to fuzzier pictures. A particularly nice addition is that now when you peek at the thumbnail of the picture you just took by dragging the image, there are options right away to share or delete - no needing to launch into the pictures app, or even tap anything. Just drag and release. There’s also apparently new face detection in there so you can set the focus on one or multiple faces that are in the frame, but I haven’t been able to get it to work just yet.

For those working in video, Story Maker now includes a Share button in the menu, and you can shut down the app more quickly, without having to wait for your final creation to be processed - it’ll handle that in the background, and leave a notification in the Hub when it's done. Oh, and the camera shutter is muted if your profile is set to silent now.


More Smart Tag options

The native NFC tag app has been expanded a whole bunch in 10.2. In addition to the old triggers you could write to a tag, like opening a web page, sending a text message, or starting a phone call, now you’ve got several new categories: Smart Triggers, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Contact, Event, and Geo Location. Smart Triggers is the really fun one.

You can toggle network options, change notification modes, switch alarms, launch apps, or even change your wallpaper. This is pretty awesome overall, and might actually get me using NFC tags more often around the house.


Browser improvements

There are a few small tweaks to browser in BlackBerry 10.2. One that I found out by sheer fluke the other night was by holding down the back button, you actually get a condensed view of your web history, so you can quickly hop back to a page that was a couple of visits ago.

Reader mode also has the option to invert colors, which is great. I always found I read better with light text on a dark background anyway.


New Device Monitor

BlackBerry 10.2 now lets you dig into a Device Monitor utility to see which apps are eating up CPU cycles and memory.


Multiple Alarms

BlackBerry 10.2 now lets you set more than one alarm! Simple, but a deal-breaker for many. Just tap the big plus icon in the top-right of the clock app.


Group SMS

A new checkbox that pops up when adding multiple people to a new SMS that enables group conversations. A pop up warns you that the messages will count as MMS and you'll be billed accordingly.


These should cover most of the features available on BlackBerry 10.2. If we have missed any other smaller features which you may come across, please share them with us in the comment section below


source - CrackBerry