Images said to be leaked slides of BlackBerry Messenger on BlackBerry 10 explain how color choices can better take advantage of an OLED display and extend battery life. It's a bit of good news for a suffering RIM.
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has said
that it has spectacular things planned for BlackBerry 10. If images posted June
26 by tech site
N4BB,
said to be leaked slides of BlackBerry Messenger on BlackBerry 10, are the real
deal, then those things include smart design changes for improving battery
life.
The slides show darker-colored BBM themesone
in gray and blue and another a mustardy-lime on a black backgroundsaid to help
keep the battery going strong.
By a slight adaptation to a black theme,
battery consumption can be decreased [by approximately 25 percent], says the
caption under one image.
The blue-and-gray theme takes this further.
The caption notes, Revisiting the screen and further optimizing for the
OLED-display, decreases battery consumption [by approximately 75 percent]
compared to the direct translation.
At RIMs BlackBerry World 2012 event May 1,
RIM CEO Thorsten Heins was effusive in his descriptions of the long-coming
BlackBerry 10 platform.
Everything flows ¦ he told the audience
during his keynote, after calling Vivek Bhardwaj, head of software at RIM, onto
the stage to
show
off what hed been working on. The platform featured a sort of accordion
design in which all the open apps could be shifted through and seen at once.
We are making you really agile and nimble
with BlackBerry. That is the design paradigm, said Heins.
Bhardwaj also showed off improvements to the
BlackBerry keyboard. As he typed, words hovered over his fingertips. With a
gentle, upward swipe of a finger, he could send the correct word up into his
correspondence. With time, the keyboard comes to know the user, so word
suggestions become more accurate.
Were increasing responsiveness, reducing
latency, making sure you can type fast and accurately, said Bhardwaj.
The audience also seemed impressed by the
ability to slightly pull aside, say, an email applicationas though pushing a
curtain halfwayto take a peek at the app behind it, perhaps a Twitter
page.
No app stops. They layer, and you can slide
back and forth. That is the power of BlackBerry 10no one else can do this,
said Heins.
Whether BlackBerry 10and the Alpha Dev
smartphone that will run itwill impress when it finally arrives during the
fourth quarter of this year is less contested than whether itll simply be too
late. Samsung is enjoying strong sales growth, particularly with its newly
released Galaxy S III, and the Alpha Dev introduction may coincide with the
release of a new Apple iPhone.
In an attempt to cut costs and streamline,
RIM has been laying off workers, and it recently hired financial advisors. In
the last days, it has also fielded rumors that
its
considering splitting its handset business from its services business. RIM
denies those rumorsor, perhaps more accurately, has skirted them.
During RIMs fourth-quarter earnings call,
Heins said the company was examining ways to leverage its assets through
partnerships, licensing opportunities and
strategic business model
alternativesthe latter of which could support a number of interpretations.
When asked for clarity, a RIM spokesperson
said on June 25 that Heins statement remains true.
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