Research In Motion has announced that it will be giving developers prototypes of its new BlackBerry devices starting in early May.
2000 BlackBerry 10 models will be given out at the BlackBerry Jam conference in Florida, giving the devs a chance to build apps for the newly created operating system.
Says Alec Saunders, RIM's vice-president developer relations: "It's a huge step forward on our path to eventually launching BB10. It's tangible evidence of the company making progress to finally shipping the device."
While the underlying OS will be the same in the test models, the company says the UI will be completely different on finished consumer models: "The experience on this device from a consumer's perspective is not in any way indicative of what the final experience on BlackBerry 10 will be like. We are holding that back to create the interest around that at launch time."
The BlackBerry 10 smartphones are expected to go on sale in September and will be RIM's last hope at relevancy in the smartphone market in which it is now only a bit player.
Says Alec Saunders, RIM's vice-president developer relations: "It's a huge step forward on our path to eventually launching BB10. It's tangible evidence of the company making progress to finally shipping the device."
While the underlying OS will be the same in the test models, the company says the UI will be completely different on finished consumer models: "The experience on this device from a consumer's perspective is not in any way indicative of what the final experience on BlackBerry 10 will be like. We are holding that back to create the interest around that at launch time."
The BlackBerry 10 smartphones are expected to go on sale in September and will be RIM's last hope at relevancy in the smartphone market in which it is now only a bit player.
