In addition to announcing that BlackBerry saw an increase in subscribers to the service at the BlackBerry Jam Americas conference in San Jose, RIM also gave details on new features in the upcoming BlackBerry 10.
The main new feature is called BlackBerry Flow. Users will have access to ‘active frames’ for all running applications on their device, which provide information from those apps without having to swap in and out of different functions. This area can easily be swapped with the BlackBerry Hub, a new feature which collects all of a user’s conversations in one place. Everything from Facebook to BBM, numerous email accounts and pretty much anything else that can be updated frequently seems to appear in this section.
BlackBerry will also be launching a new BlackBerry App World for BlackBerry 10 which will give users access to everything available on the service from music to videos to games and other apps using a single BlackBerry ID.
The company will also be integrating personal and enterprise functions, in a sense, while also keeping them separate. This stems from the Flow feature and is called BlackBerry Balance. RIM said:
While the integration of BlackBerry Balance technology will keep personal and corporate apps and data separate (and secure) but enable users to transition seamlessly between personal and work activity. RIM also confirmed BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, which will let businesses manage BlackBerry, iOS and Android devices from a single console.
Updated developer tools – Beta 3 of the BlackBerry 10 Native SDK and the BlackBerry 10 Webworks SDK – and a new testing device, Dev Alpha B, were also announced for app developers.