Blackberry 10 First Handset Will NOT Feature A Physical Keyboard

If there is one thing that we truly love on Blackberry’s is their physical QWERTY keyboard. If I am being perfectly honest, i probably enjoy typing on my Blackberry Bold III much more than on my iPhone 4, or for that matter any touch screen device. the keys are so perfectly made and typing is pure fun and electric fast.
However, in the race to survive and still compete it does seem that Blackbery has decided to let go of their biggest USP as they move towards a new Operating System called The blackberry OS 10.

However if the reports in the popular news agency AP are to be believed then the first Blackberry OS 10 device will be a touch slab and not sport a keyboard. In the past Blackberry has gone this route and have failed. I cannot help but think how poor some of the Blackberry Storms were or even the odd Curve that did not feature the keyboard. The markets truly showed that Blackberry just is not competent enough infront of the likes of iPhone and Android smartphones to be taking them on at their own game. It does not take a genius to figure out that in the recent times the most popular Blackberry has been the 9900 Bold which featured both the physical keyboard as well as a very capable touchscreen.


We have seen plenty of screenshots of the new Blackberry OS 10 and seemingly it is very UI based, so we may even see people like a slab only kind of Blackberry. However, if history is any measuring milestone then Blackberry is not doing the smartest thing on the planet. There have been reports that the first smart phone would be extremely similar to the developers device that was shown off, but with minor tweaks. I was definitely impressed with the hardware and how little things that were shown off worked. But would it be good enough to make RIM a major player in the market again? Only time can answer that.