Hands On With the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha

RIM isn't showing any BB10-based devices for consumers just yet, but the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device should give us a good taste of what we can expect to see from the new OS.

In the developer app Cookbook, you won’t find recipes for steak frites; instead, the app presents a list of actions available natively in BB10, along with the necessary coding.

The way the dates are laid out here show how they will appear on BB10 devices and how developers can use them.

This is a list of some of the colors that will be available on BB10.

The Accuweather.com app I saw was smooth and elegant, incorporating design elements from the BB10 OS.

When you tap on the weather for a specific day, it appears instantly in a small, separate box.

A look at the keyboard open on top of an app.

bbUI Samples is designed to help developers integrate the look and feel of BB10 into HTML5 applications.

This HTML5-based app was created to capture the look and feel of the BB10 OS.

Even with all of these fancy developer apps, sometimes the simple ones are the most fun.

Though this isn’t final hardware, the BB10 developer device looks more than a little like Apple’s iPhone 4S.

You can’t see it on this photo, but the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device features a 4.2-inch screen with sharp 1280-by-768-pixel resolution.

A screenshot of the new BB10 keyboard—note the word choices that automatically become available via swipe gestures.

Here you can see how the new BB10 OS allows you to pull an app to the side in order to glance at what’s underneath.

As you open new apps, previous apps remain in the background, running in real-time.