BlackBerry’s struggle to re-establish themselves in the modern day smartphone market takes another step in software this weekend, with the rollout of the next major point release of the BlackBerry 10 operating system.
BB OS 10.2 brings a new addition to the BlackBerry Hub with Priority Hub (to highlight important messages sent to you over a number a networks), better previewing from the idle screen, tweaks to the keyboard, and a significant number of other minor changes. As BlackBerry looks for a white knight to come in and support the company, suitors will want to focus on three areas of the Operating System roll-out to see how BlackBerry is handling this vital part of a modern
The first is competence. There are millions of BB10 handsets out there, and all of them are eligible for this update, and the faithful BlackBerry fans will want the code as quickly as possible.
BlackBerry is taking it slowly. Just as the launch of BBM on iOS and Android had a queue system to limit the impact of millions of users turning up at a server’s door together, the roll out of the OS will be on a region by region basis, and will be also be limited by carrier certification. That takes a few wrinkles out of the system, but there’s still going to be a huge amount of interest.
BlackBerry needs to be seen to service this demand smoothly, and with as few timeouts as possible.
While BlackBerry fans appear to be very vocal on line, it will be interesting to see how many of these fans are engaged with the ecosystem to go ahead and install the update. Here’s where the involvement of the carriers has a detrimental effect on the platform, as they take their time to certify the code.
How fast can BlackBerry get the handsets onto the new codebase? How long will developers have to contend with two OS variants on the same hardware? And can the Canadian manufacturer improve on Android’s update rates (more than likely) or reach the 64% update rate to iOS 7 that Tim Cook promoted at the recent Apple developer event. The faster the process, the better it is for BlackBerry.
Finally, it’s important that the improvements in the new version of the operating system are stable, and worthwhile. While BB10 has a number of interesting concepts, the initial versions that shipped with the Z10 had some intriguing gaps in the software – once more I’ll mention the lack multiple Twitter accounts or Facebook Pages or Groups in the Blackberry Hub, facets of social networks that are likely to be monitored and used by more than a single end-user.
BlackBerry has an advantage due to the tight integration between hardware and software. Currently only Apple has a similar relationship in the smartphone world. They also have a dedicated fan based who are happy to tinker at the edges with their smartphones, and think nothing of tweaking security settings, downloading and repackaging APK files to BAR files, and other strange incantations.
Those people could probably compile and install the OS update, it’s the other consumers BlackBerry is watching out for. A simple one or two touch operation on their handset to lift them to the latest software is the expectation. BlackBerry is starting to deliver that, and the feedback they get should be good news for BlackBerry, for the engineering teams, and for anyone looking to invest into BlackBerry over the upcoming months and years.
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