Rim did not forget about physical keyboards in BB10

I have to admit, for a second there I was worried RIM forgot what made them special in this ruthless market. It wasn’t their super complicated menu riddled OS, it wasn’t their fan acclaimed BBM service, it was as simple as their beautifully designed phones with physical keyboards. Luckily, RIM announced a new Blackberry 10 prototype device featuring a physical keyboard… and the crows goes wild! Although there are no pictures of the device as yet, I have full faith in RIM that this device will be as beautiful as any other “bold” effort they’ve ever put forward.

With 1,500 of these prototype devices to be make available, they’ve also announced a point system to which developers will be scored to acquire a device.

For example, developers get 50 points if their apps are ported from Android, 250 points for all other native apps, all the way up to 1,500 points for a Built For BlackBerry certified application. Those with the biggest point scores will get priority access to the new prototype devices.

That seems fair enough! They also dropped the word “app” from the Blackberry world app store, from now on, you can refer to it simply as “blackberry World.”

source technobuffalo