And so, today, RIM announced its Hail Mary – a brand new mobile operating system (well, sort-of new), as well as two new devices. In addition, the Canadian company also officially changed its name from Research In Motion to Blackberry. The first few reviews of Blackberry 10 are already out, and it’s not bad. The problem, however, is that in the case of Blackberry, ‘not bad’ could easily mean ‘not good enough’.
Virtually everything about Blackberry 10 has already been uncovered and detailed before – from its split personality functionality (a work and personal mode) to its gesture-based user interface, all the guts have been spilled across the web the past 12 months. The hardware, too, had been thoroughly leaked and documented online. Blackberry’s official unveiling, then, didn’t tell us a whole lot of new things.
I still think Blackberry 10’s user interface looks cobbled together, unfocused, confusing, uninspiring and outdated – those are harsh words, but luckily, they just cover the looks. In order to judge a user interface properly, it has to be used, and I’ll be trying my best to get my hands on a Blackberry 10 device to do just that. The reviews state that it works, and that’s about it. It’s nothing revolutionary or earth-shattering, so I’m guessing none of us will have any issues finding our way when we pick one up.
Now, there are a number of interesting features I’m honestly looking forward to, most important of which is true multitasking. Blackberry 10 runs on QNX – my QNX – and comes with honest-to-god, big boy, grownup multitasking. None of that wishy-washy My First Multitasking that many other platforms employ because they’re all server-class operating systems shoved into a mobile device, but the real deal, made possible because of QNX’ embedded origins and focus. Of course, experiences with true multitasking on recent mobile operating systems is so-so due to battery life concerns mostly, but QNX’ embedded nature ought to pose no problems here – unless Blackberry messed up everything above QNX.
And yes, it’s sad that in this day and age, multitasking is considered something special. I was multitasking like a boss ten years ago on Windows Mobile PocketPC Embedded 2003 Compact Standard SP2 Ultimate Special Edition Plus, so I always feel like we regressed a little bit over the years – bouncy scrolling and mobile Facebook or no.
I’m also looking forward to the hardware. I think Blackberry has done a fantastic job designing the Z10 full-touch device, despite initial concerns that it was a bit bland. Seeing it being handled during the unveiling changed my mind, and once they pulled out the beautiful white model, I was sold. Let’s hope this white model won’t become Blackberry’s white N9 – the unicorn phone. True to Blackberry’s history, there’s also a full QWERTY version, the Q10. Availability and pricing will depend on your carrier, and I’ve seen nothing yet about off-contract, unlocked pricing (which is what I would want).
On the whole though, I’m skeptical this will be enough to save Blackberry. It all seems ‘not bad’, but I doubt ‘not bad’ will be good enough. Reviews so far have acknowledged that it does what it is supposed to do, but that it doesn’t really do anything better than any other platform currently out there. And that’s Blackberry’s big problem: in order to gain a foothold, it needs to attract new smartphone buyers as well as iPhone and iOS converts, and without any killer feature over those platforms that’s going to be a very tough sell.
Still, that white Z10… I need more disposable income.
So much wasted space … and the white top/bottom just make it more apparent. The extra bezel space around the screen makes sense due to the “start offscreen” gestures that are so rampant in BB10. But is the extra cm or so on top and below (which really stands out on the white model) really needed?
Really? I don’t think the “wasted space” on the Z10 is much different from many other smartphones so at least it’s not worse than what’s already on the market.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2012/09/lumia920heade…
http://blogg.metro.se/prylbloggen/files/2012/09/Iphone5blo.jpg
Besides, the space at the bottom has a purpose: to make it easy to reach icons and buttons at the bottom of the screen with your thumb (but I guess they could remove some space at the top).
Compared to an Optimus G, it’s a lot.
The OG screen goes all the way to the bottom of the phone, and only has enough space above the screen for the LG logo, speaker grill, front camera, and proximity sensor. The entire front is basically screen.
The Z10 is like the iPhone: large body, “tiny” screen in the middle. It’s not too obvious on the black model as the screen, extra touchscreen, bezel, and extra space is all black. On the white model, though, it’s very obvious just how small (in relation to the body) the screen is.
Hrm, after watching a commercial for the Z10, I can kind of understand the extra space on top and bottom: makes for easy holding in landscape.
Still looks ‘off’ in portraits, though.
Both Q10 and Z10 is too expensive and look remarkably similar to the Jiayu G3 Android phone.
They need to launch cheaper phones if they want to get a piece of the market.
The Z10 is a premium device. Official UAE price is AED 2599 which is in line with SGS3 and iPhone 5. Unofficial unsubidized price in UK is reported to be GBP 480. That is three times the ASP (average sales price) of smartphones.
I predict that BlackBerry won’t sell many and will have to cut the price substantially within 2 months of launch.
Where did you find pricing information about the Q10?
These are and will stay the premium products.
As they have done for years, they release the bold @^Alb400+ then a few months later release a budget version or two (curve)
The G3 is one handsome phone, wasn’t aware of it.
I agree with Thom though, the Z10 is lovely in white.
Hey, Thom, were you using Windows Mobile PocketPC Embedded 2003 Compact Standard SP2 Ultimate Special Edition Plus, or Windows Mobile PocketPC Embedded 2003 Compact Standard SP2 Ultimate Special Edition Plus Professional?
I’ve also been annoyed by Microsoft’s plethora of name changes, when PocketPC was a perfectly good, well-known name.
In all seriousness, I agree with your basic point that it’s hard to imagine anything saving Blackberry at this point. I’m just hoping it doesn’t take QNX down with it.
If Blackberry goes down some vulture would buy QNX and keep it alive. Lots of money to be made on licensing and support contracts.
I hope so.
Together with Symbian, it is one of the few commercial micro-kernel operating systems.
Personally I think this is the only way to improve overall OS security, but we can only get there if mainstream OS adapt such architecture.
QNX has proven it is possible to have micro-kernel OS with enough performance.
FYI: Symbian is formally dead. EoL.
FYI: I used to work for that company
How come you always get to do the cool stuff, work for Symbian, mess around with NeXT code.
I still have my Psion 3a, it’s a great machine. Didn’t like the Revo and Psion 5 though.
I used to work for Nokia, not the original Symbian.
As for NeXT, I was lucky our University had a few lying around.
This was the project I ported to Windows.
http://www.heldermann-verlag.de/jgg/jgg01_05/jgg0304.pdf
So? You think you’re the only one?
Nokia Karaportti campus, Espoo, Finland. TL-2B and then TEK.(Love the rooftop sauna in TEK building.)
Guess where did half of my Finnish friends used to work until recently?
Any other credentials you wish to provide?
Edited 2013-02-01 23:28 UTC
RIM, err Blackberry, is already very much down. An advantage for that new devices since the expectations are not very high. They just need to sell better then the old Blackberry devices and stop the downfall. Since RIM, err Blackberry, is profitable that’s all they need for now to stay alive and improve there offering to grow again significant. I see that a bit like Android 1.6 or the first iPhone. They have 1-2 iterations time left, 2 years I say, to improve the product and then its time to judge if Blackberry 10 can compete against Android and Apple.
Edited 2013-01-31 08:33 UTC
Maybe Google could buy QNX in that case and use it as Android’s foundation?
I’m very familiar with Linux, but not so much with QNX. Why would QNX be a better choice for hosting Dalvik than Linux, in your opinion? From both technical and business perspectives, if possible. Honest question.
QNX is a hard realtime operating system
Yes. I’ve dealt with hard real-time systems for 30 years, but I see no advantage whatsoever for hosting a non-real time Java VM on one. Do you?
It also better reflects the capabilities of smartphones, pamltops, and other mobile devices. They really are “pocket-sized PCs”.
Of course, that would fly in the face of the whole “post-PC” crapola, if we all carried “pocket PCs”.
It’s really nice, but as Thom says, the UI is kind of a mess. I’m surprised they didn’t keep going in the same direction as the playbook, which made a lot of sense. Instead they have taken several elements (even icons) from ICS and ended up with a strange mashup.
Still, just like the playbook, the gestures are very nice and once you get a hang of them it feels comfortable. Still though, I think overall in usability, my Nexus 7 with Jelly Bean beats the crap out of anything else.
BlackBerry did something interesting today, they showed a great deal of finesse in their execution with BB10. Let’s remember, this is a product which is late to market, in a crowded environment, from a vendor which has had a pretty dramatic fall from grace and suffered from chronic mismanagement for quite some time.
The fact that BlackBerry is seemingly firing on all pistons is encouraging from a management point of view, and speaks volumes to their ability as a company to deliver in the future.
Is BB10 perfect? Will it achieve a meaningful uptake the first time around? No and probably not. But it doesn’t have to be.
It has to be good enough to buy BlackBerry time to iterate on their product. I think they have a few unique selling points and I’m more optimistic after today than I was before.
The app number count is impressive, at the least. The real question is how they can over time turn these “port-a-thons” into organic interest in the platform. Is BlackBerry in the conversation when it comes to developers writing new apps? Do they differentiate on BlackBerry by integrating with the platform?
Microsoft has found that its very easy to strong arm yourself 100,000 apps, but its not so easy to change minds and hearts of developers when it comes to considering Windows Phone along with iOS and Android during initial product planning.
I’m bullish because BlackBerry has strong loyalty and strong carrier relations so they can get a decent retail push.
Areas where I’m negative are the actual devices themselves, they don’t really have a unique selling point. That, and the Android app compatibility is (as I predicted it would be) a fucking mess. Reviews say that its slow, foreign, and undesirable. Sure it help inflate app numbers and it brings apps to the platform much quicker, but the cost is user experience.
I’m not sure that users will penalize BlackBerry less because they have a slow, glitchy, unusable port of Instagram vs how much they penalize Microsoft for not having Instagram on WP. We’ll see though.
Overall I’m extremely impressed and when stepping back to see the larger picture, pretty excited for BB10s prospects. I’m usually bullish on emerging OSes though.
2013 is going to be interesting.
Agreed except on…
As you wrote its the first iteration and going to improve. It already improved a lot according to those I know who had access to that before and gave it tries (like on the Playbook).
To try to get the Android ecosystem aboard is a very good strategy. The execution seems to be not finished yet but if it is it will pay out.
For the platform-integration: That is a vital point in many cases but in some its not that important. Games for example. If they are stable and reasonable fast its enough reason for that bridge to exist and to be supported and delivered on the devices.
With Android, HTML5, Qt, native and AIR they seem to offer a rather bright set of very different ways to get apps on there platform. This I see as very unique selling point. It decreases the investment needed to bring apps to there platform and maintain them in many cases. Taken the small market share it may still not be enough to convince everybody to bring there apps over but I think it still decreases the burden significant and so ROI can be reached faster.
If the dev-story is improved future, like better Android integration, then I think its a huge advantage and the fruits become a selling point. My hope is many more platforms start similar projects to easier developers work. Its the way to go.
Edited 2013-01-31 08:22 UTC
I don’t know how good of a strategy it is. It is supposed to be a short-term fix. Android ports of popular apps while they convince people to write native BB10 apps.
However if it wont be ready in the short term, then its pointless.
What the hell kind of experience is it to have an app store filled with a bunch of foreign feeling apps, which do everything from text selection to navigation using a different UI paradigm than the host platform. That’s nonsensical.
Games are a small exception, but again, if performance isn’t up to snuff, its a moot point. There is no advantage at this point in time.
I disagree with the direction, but I can understand why they chose to do what they did. It isn’t easy to bootstrap an OS.
I just wonder how many AIR apps exist to matter, or how many meaningful HTML5 apps (I’m still waiting for someone to point me to one good HTML5 app) are ported.
I’d be interested in the breakdown between Native, HTML5 and Android ports on BlackBerry World.
This Android compatibility everywhere needs to die. This is such a terrible idea from a UX POV that its not even funny. It is almost beyond words that a developer is able to sleep at night knowing that they did some half-assed port of their Android app.
BlackBerry’s QML based native platform is very good. They just need to convince people to use it, and not port their Android garbage over.
I’m worried about how BlackBerry World will look a year from now. Potentially a bigger wasteland than the Android app store.
+1000!!
I’m willing to give BB a shot maybe 6 – 12 months down the road, but only if the majority of applications are native. I already have an Android device for Android apps, and tbh, I’m not that satisfied with the quality (it’s a Nexus 7 btw, so don’t give me bull about having an obscure unsupported device). Hope to see devs taking BB10 seriously.
Similar worries on my end. The Play Store is just a couple of steps away from being a full-on warez cesspool, imho. It’ll be interesting to see how BB World goes about its QC process.
Edited 2013-01-31 14:29 UTC
You never used Windows or?
Serious, from WinAmp over Java Swing to iTunes. From classic Win95, over Ribbon to Metro. Its all there.
What I hear is that for example playing Jetpack Joyride is fine. A game in the appWorld using the Android runtime. That game is btw still missing in the WP market place despite multiple past announcements and years passed.
HTML5 is rather new. Chromebook, FirefoxOS, Tizen, WebOS and now Blackberry 10 joins that. Where is the problem?
Give it some time to improve future. Meanwhile its already useful enough. SailfishOS and Ubuntu Phone plan something similar as far as I remember.
Wouldn’t wonder if Microsoft does that too. There Phone app story certainly failed and they really need to do something to address the shortcomings. Compatibility would be a good starter.
Yeah, we known by now you think only WP has the real alive app store. *roll eyes*
Edited 2013-01-31 14:35 UTC
And this is exactly the situation that BlackBerry should seek to avoid. A situation that’s being actively remedied with Windows 8/Windows RT.
I think most people (except you, of course) recognize that user experience is a real thing, and as such, requires real investment.
Since when was mediocrity sufficient?
I sure hope it runs fine, it would be great if it does. I think you’re confused, I’m not trying to dig at BlackBerry, but at this entire idea in general.
If games are able to perform acceptably, then fine. I’m just interested in what pain this eases, given that a majority of games are written in platform agnotic C++ with middleware that abstracts away a lot of the details.
Jetpack Joyride is on Windows 8, and I imagine that tuning a game for the delicate constraint of a mobile phone is warranting more investment. That’s my guess, again, I’m not a developer on their team, but this seems like a Red herring.
So, you can’t provide one? Gotcha. This obsession (because that’s what it is) with using a sub-par, terribly performing, primitively tooled, and incomplete platform as a world class application framework is a little sickening to me. The thing is half backed. It takes an extraordinary amount of effort to get anything running well, and it doesn’t really pay off.
About 5% of Windows Store apps are actually HTML5 based, another 5% C++, and 80% C#.
Time is something BlackBerry has precious little of, especially when the resources would be better put elsewhere. They bought themselves time with BB10, but not unlimited time. They’re not Microsoft.
I think Microsoft has shown the right way to do HTML5 already with WinJS which outperforms any HTML stack on any platform (Install timed JITd JavaScript, H/W accelerated rendering, JS promises, integration into WinRT, etc.)
It should be coming to Windows Phone in due time.
Well, to burn your little strawman down, I think the iOS App Store has much more quality in it than the Android App Store.
And yet you seem to like the WP7 Silverlight alien (and EOLed stack) in WP8 app market idea since by far most of the Windows Phone app market apps are WP7 apps.
Its actually even more worse in Win8 where you have all that old stuff and the metro stuff.
Win8 has TWO desktops, not one. The classic one and Metro. Both not connect, from the ground up different, in look, feel, handling, concepts, design and any aspect you can think of.
If there is a name for inconsistency and failed user experience its Windows 8.
And crashes for half its users on startup
http://win8review.com/apps/reviews/Jetpack-Joyride-Halfbrick-Studio…
Do I need to add that I am not aware of such problems with the Android version running on Blackberry?
Looks as your stable argument works against you in this case.
Yes, a typical Ballmer. Whenever he pushes something, like HTML5 in WP7 http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/microsoft/282461-ballmer-pushes-ht… – it fails
They make profit ever since unlike Nokia, the last remaining WP reseller. If they are gone Microsoft is on its own and it doesn’t look as they are going to make it (see Surface RT failure and the now halfed Surface Pro production).
Everybody touching Microsoft products, from Phone to Tablet to Desktop, is in problems currently. Compare that to Android, Apple and now Chromebook.
Edited 2013-01-31 18:25 UTC
The WP7 stack on WP8 is just the WP8 stack running in quirks mode. You’d know this if you weren’t speaking out of your ass.
They are no different from a UX POV and in fact indistinguishable if you have a 768p screen which can do direct 1.5x scaling.
It is a work in progress, but all apps moving forward are Windows Store apps. Windows RT is exclusively Windows Store apps.
The difference being that Microsoft doesn’t actively facilitate the careless porting of an app runtime to Windows 8.
Uh, you do know that Jetpack Joyride has 56 PAGES of reviews. It certainly does not crash for half of the users.
As a Windows Store dev I can tell you that a lot of crashes are erratic and have to do with faulty GPU or other hardware combinations. You can usually tell this is the case when you’re given a nonsensical stack trace in the crash report.
If you look at my own apps there are a percentage of users with crash rates. When I look into the statistics a great deal of them are running Desktops (presumably old Win7 desktops upgraded to Win8).
BB10 was literally announced yesterday man. There have not been an influx of users to be able to draw that conclusion. You’re not making sense.
Again, you make no sense. It is a modern marvel how your confused little mind works.
Nokia isn’t the last remaining OEM. Again, do you just make shit up?
Surface is a device with limited distribution, in limited markets, with a limited marketing push. Its a science project. A tip toe in the hardware manufacturing water.
While I’d love to see more Surface investment, it is a balancing act with OEMs.
WP7 is silverlight which is an incompatible subset of C# on Win8. Silverlight is dead now but got ported and integrated into WP8 to keep WP7 apps running.
Yes, rather visible.
Win32 is still core of Win8 and going to stay beyond. The same cannot be sayed about Metro yet. WP7 Silverlight aborted and according to Microsoft Win9 Blue will be incompatible to Metro means not run Win8 apps.
Then only 45%. Who cares? Look at the reviews its near every second review reporting the same crash on startup. Up to today. And we only looked at one app, at one of the most demanded games. This I name a bad user experience.
Yeah, blame Nokia Lumia hardware. Whatever. Does it matter why it crashes? It crashes ON STARTUP already!
All dev alpha devices already got the BB10 update OTA and have access to the app world. In UK BB10 devices are already sold. No crash report so far.
Anyhow, its nit representative with one game only but its a nice example to punk your argument
HTC went all-in with Android doing WP on sideline as long as Microsoft pays them. Same for Samsung. How much WP did they sold? More then 100.000 both combined?
… customers, sells, demand, satisfaction. Lesser then 1 million sold disappointing even Microsofts own limited expectations by more then half.
Or how Ballmer named it: The future (of Microsoft).
What OEM’s? They all ditched RT and WP already. Granted except Nokia who plans to bring a RT tablet to market now where its clear RT failed. LOL, gotta love that Elop mate who jumps on every failed opportunity thrown at him.
Edited 2013-02-01 13:17 UTC
This is what’s infuriating about you, you speak about “incompatible subset” but have never done the work porting an app from WP7 to Window 8. Window 8 is closer to Silverlight than any other XAML stack.
Porting a WP7 app to Window 8 is a retention of like 80-85% of your code, especially the back end code is almost a 100% port job.
I’ve ported WP7 apps to Windows 8 in a day, with the rest of the week spent on properly integrating with the platform (Charms, Sensors, etc.)
I don’t think you get to decide what’s incompatible and what is not.
Did you just throw as many buzzwords into that paragraph as you could? It did not make sense. I don’t understand how you quote what I say and then respond with something completely irrelevant and incoherent.
So you replace one inaccurate statistic with another one? Hint: You’re still wrong.
You’d almost be right if everyone that downloaded the app left a review. I have 150,000 downloads on one of my app with only 104 reviews. On top of that, your 45% claim is provably false. There are 54 pages of reviews, I went through a couple of them, your narrative doesn’t hold true.
Do you not read? I’m not talking about Windows Phone. I’m starting to seriously believe you have some clinical comprehension disorder, otherwise known as chronic stupidity.
It is beyond the pale that you have the gall to not only reply to my posts, but that you’re terribly wrong in the process. You’re grasping at straws.
So? That’s a paragraph of useless information. Do you know how many downloads it has had? No? Okay.
HTC went all in with Android and almost DIED as a company. I’m sure you know how to read a financial report. They are not making any kind of serious money on Android.
HTC has gone all-in on Windows Phone with their new lines of Windows Phone. Nokia is all-in. Samsung just signed a deal with Microsoft pushing WP8 to the enterprise.
I’m sure you can cite official sales figures of the Surface, and not the 20 (different, by the way) analyst GUESSES at what the Surface sold.
Maybe one day. Not right now. In the meantime Microsoft still has OEMs to contend with.
Windows RT is licensed by Samsung, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, and the Surface themselves.
Windows 8 is licensed by … well everyone, lol. You see how silly your argument is?
Window Phone is licensed by Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Huawei, ZTE, Fujitsu, Acer, and Alcatel.
You’re wrong.
Except for Office, which is a desktop app, and available for Windows RT. In fact, every single Surface RT has it installed by default.
No, but I can see why you’d be confused.
Canonical offers Ubuntu for Android, which runs Android in phone mode and Ubuntu (with Android VM) in desktop mode.
But Ubuntu for Smartphones is pure Ubuntu, running Qt and HTML5 apps only. Mark Shuttleworth was asked why they won’t also support Android apps, but he stated that would discourage native developers.
And I agree, although I also expect to side-load a Dalvik VM anyway, exactly as I side-loaded a Garnet (PalmOS) VM onto my N900.
You need to factor in the metro differences in UI design.
Metro is the only kid that stands out from other (IOSesque) guis so much that complete rethinking in the design team is required. It’s GUI designers that are are the bottleneck, not code monkeys. That works to MS disadvantage more (and would work for them if they had dominance) than in case of other alsorans.
Yup, I’ve spoken to this in other threads, but UI design for Windows Phone requires more consideration which can scare away some vendors from investing in the platform. Ultimately there needs to be a tipping point where the benefits outweigh the costs.
Window 8 greatly alleviates this with enhancements to the XAML stack to make writing apps that “feel” like 1st party apps much simpler. Unfortunately WP8 didn’t receive the same treatment.
“Windows Mobile PocketPC Embedded 2003 Compact Standard SP2 Ultimate Special Edition Plus”
That was an actual product name? Seriously?!
I’m really glad we have gotten to the point where even Microsoft have been forced by the market to be at least a *little* less cryptic than they used to be at naming. Windows RT vs Windows 8 vs Windows 8 Pro is not ideal, but imagine what it could have been… “Windows 8 Standard for Tablets (Home & Student Bundle Edition)” rather than just “Windows RT” comes to mind.
Edited 2013-01-31 06:00 UTC
Indeed.
“Standard Ultimate Plus”
Missing “Mega Professional” lol.
Edited 2013-01-31 08:38 UTC
That was a joke.
I knew it, because there was no “Plus” edition of Windows Mobile PocketPC Embedded 2003 Compact Standard SP2 Ultimate Special Edition.
“The first few reviews of Blackberry 10” are already saying that the “server-class operating systems shoved into a mobile device” is doing better than the embedded and focused QNX when it comes to battery life.
Yeah, they messed up something above QNX – letting apps do what they want.
Because, you know, the real power usage happens in apps, not in the OS, and that is the very reason why all mobile OSes restrict or cull running apps. This is not dumbing down multitasking; why would Android’s multitasking be not “real”?
Surprise, battery life is a precious resource in mobile environments, just like CPU usage and GPU horsepower is.
Letting every app have free reign over the system is a recipe for disaster and leads to increased costs. Notice BB10 devices ship with 2GB of RAM, necessitated by the fact that more apps are resident in memory at a time.
Multitasking on mobile has been a “solved thing” for a while now, I’m not sure why BlackBerry chose to allow unrestricted multitasking on their OS.
We’ve come to a point where this “freedom” is more of a handicap when end users start to see significant battery life issues because of it.
I know as WP fanboy you will be unaware of that but outside of WP there are platforms indeed doing clever memory management like freezing apps that are invisible in the background. You will also be shocked to read now that there is no difference in battery usage if you have empty RAM or RAM filled with data.
Brave fanboy even taking over the most stupid argument that freedom is a handicap.
If you have more average RAM usage, you need to include more RAM, which draws more power. This is common sense.
BlackBerry only does this if you elect not to run in the Background, but given that it is an option, it is an uncontrolled situation.
You *have* downloaded the SDK, right? I mean, you’re not talking bullshit? You have tried it?
It takes real effort to be as stupid as you, I commend you.
And there are your errors. You assume all of the RAM is always on use (read/write opposed to keep-state/refresh) and assume a single 1GB RAM unit takes significant more power then a single 2GB RAM unit so it has huge effects on daily battery-life. All three wrong.
Edited 2013-01-31 18:42 UTC
I really don’t think you’re qualified to definitely speak to that, given that you’ve never handled a BB10 device.
On the other hand, reviewers have noted that the Z10 has had troublesome battery life. There’s an issue somewhere.
Thats your technical contra-argument as developer? Boy, you got just punked again
This is how the battery conversation should have started. Then I could reply: Yes, there is. The LTE-integration seems to be not good yet compared to iOS/Android. But then both needed longer time to optimize too and I have no doubt updates for that will address over time.
Edited 2013-02-01 13:26 UTC
Sorry, when you’ve proven over and over again that you are immune to logic, I fail to see the need in fact-checking everything that you say. I’d be here all day trying to correct the glaring technical misrepresentations in your comments.
Besides, it is much simpler for me to point out that you haven’t had the time to independently verify your claim yourself, so it is irrelevant to this discussion.
Battery life is seldom decided by one feature, and more likely than not, it is a combination of poor OS optimizations, a less elegant multitasking solution, power hungry LTE chips, and anything else in between. I don’t think I ever said that multitasking was the singular reason for poor battery life, just a contributing factor.
The Z10 has rounded corners!!! Apple is going to sue the pants off them!
None of that wishy-washy My First Multitasking that many other platforms employ because they’re all server-class operating systems shoved into a mobile device, but the real deal, made possible because of QNX’ embedded origins and focus
Are you serious? In what way is Android’s multitasking wishy-washy (whatever wishy-washy means)? In what way is QNX going to make it any better? What could you do with PocketPC that you cannot do with Android? Just why Server Class Operating Systems are going to multitask worse than an Embedded OS?
If you leave an application running, it will consume power be it with PocketPC, Android, QNX or with no OS at all. RAM will fill up as users launch more apps. So huge numbers of man hours have been put in teaching these OS’s when to freeze apps to save battery, and when to evict apps from RAM, without pissing of the user. Of course, some have been more successful than others, in different metrics (some multitask better, or save more power, or need less resources, or piss off the users less). How QNX/BBOS10 will fare remains to be seen, but it does not need to be any better or worse than the others.
If I can speak for myself… The fact that Android and iOS can randomly close background apps at any moment, without having their state swapped out to mass storage first, is a major design mistake. If QNX can manage to avoid this outcome in some way, it will already have done mobile multitasking a favor.
And it is also true that anything Linux, NT or BSD-based tends to be quite bad at task prioritization, with things easily getting sluggish as soon as some combination of heavy processing and disk IO is going on in the background. The very reason why RTOSes like QNX exist is so as to avoid this kind of issues, because car brakes cannot afford to respond more slowly when the onboard GPS is busy updating the onscreen map…
Edited 2013-01-31 18:23 UTC
I am sure that is by design. If the OS makes no guarantees that it won’t forcibly close your app if it needs the resources for apps and tasks in the foreground, or indeed guarantees that it will forcibly do so, then developers will not be tempted to code apps that need to be run in the background. At least those paying attention won’t be.
It’s not even about running in the background, but about conserving the state of apps that stay resident there, running or not.
On Android and iOS, it regularly happens to me that I am doing something in app A, when an SMS or mail kicks in, requesting me to take some action in apps B, C, and D. Then, when I try to get back to my previous activity, I have the displeasure of finding app A restarting, all data about my previous activity being lost.
This should not happen. The minimum when an OS destroys useful app state is to display an apology informing the user about it, rather than childishly try to hide the fact under the carpet. And when the resources that are needed to do otherwise are available, killing should probably be avoided altogether.
(@Alfman: If you’re passing by, doesn’t this discussion remind you of something ?
)
Edited 2013-02-01 06:40 UTC
I sure hope they do.
Windows 8 handles this by putting apps into a suspended state and expecting state saving to go on during that transition.
From there apps are either returned to “Running” state at some point in the future, or killed.
If your app was killed when it next resumes, you load state, if your app was suspended, then there’s no need to reload state as it is still resident in memory.
I hope BB does something similar.
That’s the idea indeed, though from what I’ve heard Windows 8 is falling in the iOS trap of stating that “apps can do nothing in the background, save for arbitrary tasks X, Y and Z which we have received hundreds of support requests about”. This, in turn, leads to significant UX problems as soon as a user does something unusual, such as VPN services periodically disconnecting themselves unless managed by OS services that are not subjected to arbitrary restrictions. Can you confirm or infirm this?
In place of such draconian restrictions, I would prefer mobile OSs to use better task prioritization and power management algorithms, so that tasks can be left running in the background as long as possible without significant sluggishness and power draw occurring. Technologies such as soft real-time scheduling have been invented for a reason, after all…
Another potential issue which I see in your post is that apps apparently must explicitly implement state saving (as also done on iOS and Android), rather than having it done automatically by the OS (as done when simply committing the RAM of unused processes and libraries to some form of swapfile). From experience, such mechanisms also lead to UX problems in practice : apps do not display the same part of their UI as when they were left, only part of the state is saved, some apps cache all expensive IO data and resume quickly while others take a lot of time to restart after being killed… To sum it up, user-space developers should never be trusted to perform the job of an OS properly, but OSs which ask them to save their state themselves are doing just that.
TL;DR : Unless I’m misunderstood about the way Windows 8 does things, mobile multitasking still needs more work.
Edited 2013-02-01 07:24 UTC
I can confirm this, but the amount of things they are allowed to do is much more robust.
There are various types of background tasks that fire when a predefined trigger condition is met. Things like “User logs on”, “User obtains internet”, “AC power is plugged in” And other things like periodic updates as often as 15 minutes.
You can also do background audio and background file upload/downloading and executing a background task when receiving a push notification.
If you need to keep an underlying socket connection awake in the background, you can have up to 7 apps which do this in the background and provide real time communication.
I don’t disagree that there is much to do here. I think its a significant step forward for Windows 8, but it’s far from ideal for a variety of scenarios.
Looking forward, I’m sure WinRT will be improved to support a wider range of situations in which background processing is useful.
I’m sure there will always be corner cases that are missed, but I think this addresses a decent number of use cases.
Microsoft cedes control to the developer because they know best what they’d like to save. Sometimes it isn’t necessary to save the entire state of an app if you just need to save a few select values within your UI.
Maybe I just need to save the current page, and the value of a single scrollbar.
Also, it is at the discretion of the developer to determine when the state is stale so to speak. What if the state is saved, and the user doesn’t run the app again for a week? That data isn’t really relevant anymore.
Microsoft takes very seriously the speed to suspend and resume. I think if it takes more than a few seconds on a low power PC you fail certification.
Developers are forced to be mindful of what they save, when they save it.
Personally in my own apps I do a progressive save in which I take advantage of idle CPU time to periodically save non volatile state to the disk. It reduces the amount I need to save at a later time.
Its always a balancing game, and especially when you’re dealing with finicky ARM processors which aren’t really that fast, you need to be very careful to not make your state saving code a slow path.
I think you have it about right.
Is there also support for “pure” background processing tasks, such as computing a 3D render or encoding a video ? OSs that go the whitelisting route often have issues with this basic scenario, and it is certainly annoying to have to keep staring at a progress bar out of fear that if you hide a productivity application, it will stop doing its job.
That is true, but it is to be expected that not every developer will bother to go through his whole codebase, looking for every bit of state which he can find, deciding what to save and what not to save, and then centralizing pointers to everything in one place and serializing everything.
In the event when someone would not do that, the OS should provide a reasonably graceful fallback, such as swapping the application’s address space out when RAM gets full, and waiting until both RAM and swap space are full before starting to kill off stuff to free up space.
It seems strange to put strong constraints on suspend times, since it is not something which users actually experience. Sometimes, saving more data right now allows one to resume more quickly later, especially when that data is very expensive to regenerate (typical example being a heavy webpage loaded over an EDGE network connection).
Then again, if there were no restrictions on suspend times, you could achieve a similar effect in a simpler way by having the “suspending” thread run at a low priority, both from a CPU and I/O scheduling point of view.
The way you do it reminds me of how I’m basically reinventing pre-emptive multitasking on a work project, because the programming environment that we use has a mostly synchronous API coupled with a totally brain-dead multithreading implementation.
Android is designed from day One to keep the state of applications frozen when they are kicked out, so they can be revived later with their memories intact.
The application has to cooperate in selecting what it absolutely needs to remember before being frozen (like, the browser might get by with something like the current URL and a position in it, rather than the many megs taken up by the rendered page). I am sure BBOS10 will do much the same, with much the same limitations.
Huge applications like comples games might have a hard time being minimized, and might be thrown away completely when their resources are needed. Or not, that depends on their design. That might be what you experience as “bad multitasking”, but there is no easy way around it.
Other than that, the OS can shove the entire address space of a frozen app to mass storage, but that will fill up mass storage very fast, will be very slow, and will probably eat up a lot of battery, and still the app must be designed to be stopped and restarted at any time.
When free resources are gone, used resources must be freed. If the user does not do it himself, the OS has to choose. Once it has disposed of the dispensable (by letting the app choose what to keep), it will have to dispose of the indispensable (by killing old apps in the background).
So, I don’t expect much advancement in BBOS10 multitasking. What’s done in Android (and possibly in Winphone) is close to the best you can do when you have little or no virtual memory and you don’t want to force users to close their applications manually whenever they finish working with them.
1. I still remember downloading the QNX floppy disk. You booted the floppy and got a desktop with an internet-connected web browser. I really hope BB 10 does well.
2. I also am happy to see a higher-end phone with a real keyboard. I loved my Palm Centro. I still prefer a keyboard. Currently, keyboards have been relegated to low-end phones.
I have a question about the history of mobile operating systems, since I have very little exprience with them.
Most mobile operating systems today feature a main screen with a grid of application icons. Windows Phone features tiles. As far as I understand, these are both very application centric.
Has there ever been a document centric mobile operating system? How would it even work?
Ooh, imagine a screen full contacts (each contact being a “document”), and by placing your thumb on one, all other contacts disappear, and icons slide in from the edges of the screen encircling the contact, each icon being labeled things like Call, SMS, Play Chess…
Or a screen full of PDF files, videos, and pictures, and selecting one of those surrounds it with icons for things like Edit, Email as Attachment…
Has anything like that been done? What is there besides “a grid of application icons” and hiding files from the user?
Edited 2013-01-31 14:59 UTC
I guess nobody does it because there are far more files than apps, leading to poor discoverability.
Actually, I think they’re striving more for “task-centric” here…
Each “app” represents some task you want to accomplish: Play Music, Watch Video, Make a Phone Call, Play a Game, View Calendar, Read Email, Send a Message
When using a mobile device, “documents” are not what you’re interested in – tasks are.
Blackberry gave it their best try, but fell short. I really like the hardware and the OS, though the OS will need a few refinements over the next few months. The biggest problem is the same one dogging the Playbook…apps. The number they keep throwing around is 70,000 apps. The dirty secret is 40% of them are Android ports. While they work, they are not as smooth as native Blackberry apps and do not have the standard look and feel. Anyone can point their browser to Appworld and see what is there. Make a list of the apps you use on your current phone. Search for them in Appworld. How many did you find?
Keep in mind that they are expected to improve their Android runtime as well, affecting all the apps.
BB10 UI paradigms are not any different from Android ones, and there’s no consistency within Android world altogether.
I mean, how do you know that the any “sucky” app wouldn’t suck on Android proper, and that any half assed (hard to expect anything else atm) port to QT wouldn’t suck as much?
Edited 2013-01-31 20:36 UTC
On Tomi Ahonen’s blog. This is a quick look at all the up and comers in the smartphone OS world in 2013. Well worth a read:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/01/early-thoughts…
tl;dr?
Ubuntu? Fahgeddaboudit. No carrier and no major manufacturer. Yet.
Firefox? VERY dark horse.
Sailfish? Pretender. Looks like they’re aimed at the high end for now.
Tizen? Contender.
BB10? Small player now with only limited potential.
Windows 8? Dead and doesn’t know it.
Edited 2013-01-31 18:10 UTC
The first thing Blackberry wants- is their own, rather large base of blackberry users to upgrade to the new Blackberries.
I think they’ve scored well on that front – this is the blackberry to want, if you are still on the blackberry platform. The second thing they want – is those people who want ‘none of the above’ – i.e. don’t like iOS and don’t like Android. Also – bangup job, they should split that with MS.
I think it’s easy to predict their failure because OS markets tend to coalesce around a winner – which is not just true of the OS market, but of any network, in nature or man-made (as explained to me in Barabasi’s book – The New Science of Networks) – supernodes get bigger, winners emerge.
It’s not hard to figure out that the market is mature enough, the size is there – Android gravity is now pulling in new users by the sheer mass of the Android universe.
So yeah, predict Blackberry’s failure – but not in the short term.
In the short term, hitting a homerun with a beatiful OS and phone, should give them a boost.
The way the media works, the initial boost of sales will ‘unexpectedly’ give Blackberry a boost – and the media will report their re-emergence, which will in turn give people confidence to buy. The first impressions people have made here from pictures will be replaced with real (and much better) second impressions, but that’ll all wane sometime later in 2013, and we’ll go back to the Blackberry death watch.
Edited 2013-01-31 19:09 UTC
imo it will be almost impossible to really push out a revolutionary mobile interface.
Why? Because you can invent the wheel just so many times.
Does it have to be revolutionary? Does it have to be so much better then Android and iOS?
I think it just have to be on par or marginally better.
Maybe i am just daft but i cannot see how the latest iterations of Android and iOS can be left suddenly antiquated by a new mobile OS. Especially a version 1.
Think about it. You use you phone to dial, do messaging, launch apps, do photos and a few other things. How many variations to launch this tasks can we get? And how much will this new task methodology really improve on other modern phone OS’s that the others feel well, antique?
IMO Blackberry did a good job.
They build it and now we hope the people and the app developers will come.
They have a good basis for the future and if this does not turn things around, rumor is Lenovo or others will take the torch and run with Blackberry.
Edited 2013-01-31 23:31 UTC
There’s something irritating about OSAlert lately. It’s just talking about mobile devices and the related ecosystem. At one point one would have to call the site MobileNews. We’re not getting anything desktop based OS that frequently.
And what new products have launched in the desktop world? Windows 8? Months old, already covered. Few Linux distros have had a new release, and really what new is there to talk about other then bumping version numbers? A new installer UI in fedora 19? New UIs like Gnome3 and Unity are old news. No new Mac OSX releases either.
What new Oses and products are launching in the desktop space that osnews should be covering?
I love the desktop and don’t like this trend towards mobile but the desktop has very little growth. The “PC is dead” thing is nonsense but there isn’t any growth in that area either, and the margins are razor thin.
Mobile is were the growth is, were all the new stuff is happening.
I totally agree with your sentiment. Right now, commercial OS developers mostly have their eyes focused on phones and tablets, and the hobby projects that remain do not have the amount of resources it takes to provide daily desktop-related news…
Edited 2013-02-01 06:54 UTC
They have *NEVER* been BlackBerry friendly much, least you could do is mention CrackBerry’s reviews for any sort of balance.
If you want people to respect your posts as balanced, be balanced.
This isn’t, again.
Windows Mobile PocketPC Embedded 2003 Compact Standard SP2 Ultimate Special Edition Plus
Seriously? That was the name???
Considering they changed the name with every release, it may as well have been. lol
Blackberry went from 70% of enterprises, to 4%.
Most all enterprises have REMOVED their Blackberry Enterprise Server(BES) and they will never install it again. Without BES, the phone is useless.
Too little, too late. Should have come out with this back BEFORE all the companies got rid of their BES servers.
Edited 2013-02-02 19:39 UTC
Will be getting this soon.
Edited 2013-02-03 03:12 UTC
I’m still trying to understand how someone can love WP8 so much while hating BB10. Especially having not even used it and trashing it’s interface while acting like the clumsy fisher-price UI of WP8 that employs text cutting off the screen is so great. Are you blind? The video below just shows how off-base this is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJxFu2GzW1w
It just seems to kill the credibility of this site along with only linking Verge and BGR reviews. Here’s another review by a less biased individual.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/more-things-to-love-about…