BlackBerry BBX OS and Spotify app announced
With all this Ice Cream Sandwich and iOS 5 talk, don't underestimate the suited and booted dark horse of mobile OS
You didn’t think that the handful of free apps offered to disgruntled BlackBerry users was all RIM had left in the tank after last week’s service disruptions, did you? Oh no – a new unified mobile OS for future BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets has officially been let out of the bag at RIM’s developer’s conference.
The BBX OS, based on QNX, will support HTML5, Flash and Adobe AIR – plus RIM hopes to encourage developers to build “Super Apps” to work with BBX’s Cascade UI with advanced graphics. So we can expect 3D animations and effects and more integration between apps and the OS.
There’s more – hard-done by BlackBerry addicts now get a Spotify app of their very own. It’s only a preview release at the moment, which means that it’s only compatible with the Bold 9780, 9700 and 9000 and Curve 9300 and 8520 handsets. But the music streaming offering for BlackBerry looks pretty similar to what we’re used to on Android and iOS. So if you’ve got a Spotify Premium account, you can stream tracks over Wi-Fi and 3G and sync playlists for playback offline.
We can’t wait to play around with whatever RIM has come up with. We’ll talk you through our first impressions of the new BBX OS as soon as it turns up on a BlackBerry device near us.
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Tom Wiggins
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