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thelostone
31-01-2013, 06:57 PM
BlackBerry 10 was launched today with two new handsets running the new mobile operating system, while the company previously known as RIM also announced a new name - BlackBerry.
The new operating system brings the BlackBerry platform a desperately needed update and helps put it on the same functional level as Apple's iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone 8. But after falling behind for a couple of years, the big question is whether the company can catch up.
"Today represents a new day in the history of BlackBerry," said Thorsten Heins, CEO of BlackBerry, in front of an audience of journalists and analysts in New York. The company used the event to reveal its name change from RIM.
He said: "Our customers use the BlackBerry, our employees work for BlackBerry, and our shareholders are owners of BlackBerry. From today on, we are BlackBerry everywhere in the world.
"Two years ago, we had to make a very serious decision: adopt somebody else's platform or build a whole new one," he said. "And we made the tough call to go it alone."
BlackBerry based the new operating system on QNX, a real-time OS that it acquired in 2010.
At the heart of the new platform is the BlackBerry Hub, a message centre that brings together email, Twitter and Facebook messages, BlackBerry messaging, and just about any other means of communication. The hub is accessible from anywhere within the phone with a rightward swipe of a finger.
It goes beyond a notification center or icons by providing direct access to incoming messages without launching external applications. And users can also respond to messages from within the hub. It's intended as a time-saver and serves as proof that RIM continues to see fast and efficient messaging as a key concern of its target users.

BlackBerry's core messaging platform, BBM, is also getting an upgrade with the addition of video chat. The same system also makes screen sharing possible, in which one BlackBerry user can share their screen with another user via a BBM session.