Up close: BlackBerry 10 on Dev Alpha B

10.10.2012
SAN DIEGO - BlackBerry 10 will offer smartphone users some novel features when it finally ships next year, including text prediction software and BlackBerry Balance, an approach that separates work from personal data.

RIM demonstrated text prediction with BB 10 in a keynote at MobileCon here, and I got an up-close demo and quick hands-on afterwards with Jeff Gadway, senior product marketing manager for RIM.

He showed me how predictive text will work on a rather clunky Dev Alpha B smartphone prototype device being used by 6,000 RIM developers to build apps for coming BB 10 smartphones, which are due out in the first quarter of 2013.

Gadway was able to quickly type letters with both thumbsclicking through the touchscreen, but also how he could hunt and peck with one finger.

With the one-finger approach, the BB 10's predictive text capability was able to show words that anticipated what Gadway intended to write. He simply swiped a suggested word appearing above an individual letter into the body of text on the phone's display.

For example, if he was typing an email or text, "Do you want to go to get dinner?" the predictive software would suggest "dinner" prior to his even typing the letter "d." For another user, the predictive word could have "drinks" instead of "dinner" because drinks might have been more likely for that user based on prior typing behavior.