RIM Launches BlackBerry 10; Receives Positive Reviews from Early Developers

Earlier today, the Canadian company behind BlackBerry, Research in Motion (RIM) announced its vision for the BlackBerry 10 platform at the BlackBerry World Conference that is taking place in Orlando today. The company released what it calls the initial developer toolkit for native and HTML5 based software development along with the BlackBerry 10 Developer Alpha phone that was given out to all the developers present at the event. The toolkit includes two things with the first being The BlackBerry 10 Native SDK with Cascades, which would allow developers to create graphically rich and high performing native applications for the platform using C/C++ of QT.

Also included in the downloadable beta toolkit is BlackBerry 10’s WebWorks SDK which includes support for HTML5 application developers which allows developers to create native-like applications with the use of common web programming technologies. If you want to download the free beta developer toolkit, you can click here to access the download link.

In addition to that, several early developers that attended the event in Orlando have offered some positive reviews on the BlackBerry 10 platform. Firstly, Adam Linford who is the Head of Labs and Mobile Applications at Truphone said, “RIM has got it right the BlackBerry 10 platform. They have really streamlined the app-development process. The platform’s support for open-source components flattens the learning curve enabling us to build a new application quickly and cost-effectively and have it ready to go when the first BlackBerry 10 devices debut.”

Moreover, the CEO of Occipital Jeffrey Powers had words of praise for how his company’s ‘360 Panorama’ application performs on BlackBerry 10 saying, “With 360 Panorama, Occipital is pushing the boundaries of photography on mobile devices. When evaluating the technical viability of a platform, we consider three areas: camera, sensors, and processing and graphics capabilities. BlackBerry 10 met and often exceeded our expectations for each of these areas.”

With plaudits like the two mentioned above joining the ranks of many others who reportedly had nothing but good things to say about the newly launched platform, could BlackBerry be seeing a jump in the number of developers for its BlackBerry 10 Mobile OS?

Pradeep Chandrasekaran
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: BlackBerry 10, developers