Walt Mossberg's thoughts on the newly-announced BlackBerry 10 platform are up.
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Here are some highlights on how he broke it down:
- The operating system is a huge departure from previous BlackBerry software: "The new OS, which is the most important part of the product, isn't an evolution of the old BlackBerry platform. It is a clean break. Its user interface is so different that it will seem foreign to longtime BlackBerry users. And the first phone to use it, the Z10, looks much more like its rivals than like traditional BlackBerrys."
- It will offer 70,000 apps on launch, but it's missing some important ones: "RIM's app store, called BlackBerry World, includes — or will soon include — some common and standard apps, such as Facebook, Twitter, Angry Birds, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Major League Baseball. But at launch, it will be missing Instagram, Pandora, Spotify, NPR, Google Maps and Netflix, among many others."
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- The battery: "I didn't do a formal battery test, but in my moderate to heavy use of the phone, I found it didn't last as long on a charge as the iPhone 5, and began to get pretty low by late afternoon. It would last some people an entire day, but not everyone."
- Overall: "I believe it has a chance of getting RIM back into the game, if the company can attract a lot more apps."
Click here to see hands-on photos of the two new BlackBerry phones >
