BlackBerry Q20 Will Be Compatible With Q5 & Q10 Apps

Just yesterday BlackBerry announced the BlackBerry Q20. A full list of hardware specifications was not revealed, nor its design, but according to BlackBerry, it would sport a 3.5-inch display and would feature the familiar “tool belt” of physical buttons above the keyboard which would also include a trackpad.

Given that other BlackBerry Q-series handsets, like the BlackBerry Q5 and the BlackBerry Q10 do not feature that tool belt of keys, how will apps interact with the upcoming Q20? Well the good news is that all apps built for either the Q5 or Q10 will be compatible with the Q20, according to the BlackBerry developer blog.

According to the blog, “As part of our Q-Series line up, you can rest assured that the applications that you’ve built for the Q5 and Q10 will be compatible with this new device.  You can think of the hardware buttons as an additional way to navigate and interact with applications.  The same touch-based interaction model of all the Q-Series devices will continue to work as usual.”

Apart from app compatibility, BlackBerry also plans on adding functionality into the application runtimes that will allow the hardware keys to work with apps, perhaps to a certain extent, optimize it for use as well.

In a way one could think of the BlackBerry Q20 as the BlackBerry 10 equivalent of the BlackBerry Bold 9900. The Bold 9900 featured a touchscreen display but also featured physical navigational buttons which could be used to navigate the handset alongside the touchscreen display.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: BlackBerry, blackberry q20