I never thought I'd be championing BlackBerry over Lumia, but in the funky world of smartphone speculation, sometimes the unexpected comes knocking. Read on to have some what-if fun with Pocketnow.
Not so very long ago BlackBerry filled a niche, providing near real-time communications for corporate suite on-the-go. I have to wonder, should RIM have gone with Android? If they had, what cool new products would Android have today?
Most of us outside of Japan live in a world dominated by slab phones. Sure, they're getting easier to tolerate as manufacturers like HTC and Nokia push the boundaries of hardware design. But they don't have hinges for fun folder action, they don't snap satisfyingly closed at the end of a frustrating call, and they don't fit as well in a pocket.
One of RIM's options for survival would be to follow Nokia's example and strike a strategic alliance with Microsoft to deliver BlackBerry handsets running on the Windows Phone platform.
RIM seems to be planning to augment its hardware keyboards in BB10 with a miniature version of its virtual keyboard, offering word suggestions and allowing for extended input.