Sunday ET: Five key new features of BlackBerry 10

Here are the five key new features of BlackBerry 10 you can look out for:
Balance:

This feature lets you keep your personal and professional life on the same device — each within its own silo. In a scenario where the device is managed by your company, the device can keep your personal apps and data separate from work apps and confidential data.

Hub:

This is the central place that collates and displays all your messages (such as text messages, multiple email accounts, chats), social network updates ( Facebook, Twitter, etc) and other notifications you receive. You can access the Hub at any time by just swiping up and right in one smooth motion.

Keyboard:

BlackBerry has traditionally been known for the QWERTY keyboard. In the all-touch Z10, the virtual keyboard continually learns what you type (even proper nouns) and then suggests them automatically. Other words suggested by it appear over different keys and can be selected by just swiping upwards on them.

Camera:

A new feature called Time-Shift lets you ‘correct’ photos after you’ve captured them. The device captures information both before and after you click the shutter. So for instance, if someone in the photo has eyes closed, you can select his/her face and choose a point in time where the eyes were open.

BBM:

The popular BBM now supports video chat over a 3G network. Apart from talking face-to-face, you can also share your camera view or your screen — in other words, what you see on your screen can be shown to the contact you are chatting with. This is useful to view photos/emails/documents together — while the audio chat continues.

The Bottom Line

The change in name to BlackBerry and the new Nasdaq stock symbol (BBRY) which takes effect on February 4, signify a fresh start. Since BB10 is different from all previous versions of the BlackBerry OS, it can be considered the first version and it is miles ahead of what the first versions of iOS and Android offered.

But therein also lies BB10’s greatest obstacle, that it must compete with and attract users from rival platforms that are mature and armed with enormous app libraries.