RIM gave us a brief peek at the BlackBerry 10 virtual keyboard during the BlackBerry World, showing off both the look of the ‘board as well as the ability to swipe up on a predicted word to insert it into a message. Today RIM has posted a new video that goes a bit more in-depth on the software QWERTY found on its new platform. Vivek Bhardwaj, Head of Software Portfolio at RIM, spends some time in the video discussing the look of the keyboard, including the BlackBerry “frets” and the white, capitalized letters set against a black background. Bhardwaj also said that the next word suggestions of the keyboard are personalized to a user’s vocabulary.
Another new keyboard feature that Bhardwaj talks up is space inference. This gives the keyboard the ability to recognize when a user misses the space key while typing multiple words and then automatically insert spaces where it believes they should be included.
While there have been BlackBerry smartphones with software keyboards in the past, such as the Torch 9800 and 9850, the virtual QWERTY on those devices weren’t considered to be particularly strong, especially compared to the ‘boards on competing platforms. It looks like RIM is trying to change that with BlackBerry 10 by focusing quite a bit of effort on its new software keyboard. Considering that RIM’s first BlackBerry 10 handset will be a touch-only model, just like most other smartphones released nowadays are, that’s probably a smart move. You can check out the BlackBerry 10 keyboard demo below.
Source: Inside BlackBerry
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