BlackBerry 10 OS 
 
 Here's what you need to know about the new BlackBerry 10 OS: it looks cool, it's gesture-driven, and it'll take you at least a few minutes to pick up. (Photo: Research In Motion) 
 
 There is a new smartphone coming to market, running on a new operating system. It's an all-touch device—with no physical navigation controls and no physical keyboard—and serves as a platform for third-party apps. View Graphics Photos From the Event The company unveiled two new phones in New York. (Credit: Josh Miller/CNET) 
 
 Design and build 
 
 At first glance, the handsome BlackBerry Z10 looks suspiciously like Apple's black iPhone 5: tall and narrow, with straight edges that meet at rounded corners, and a roughly 4-inch screen. In some ways it's quite advanced -- I'm a fan of BlackBerry Balance and the virtual keyboard -- and in other ways, you wonder what RIM's been doing all these years. If you choose BlackBerry over iPhone or Android, you give up some very attractive ecosystems, like the way Apple synchronizes your calendar, messages, and photos on all your gadgets. And there are other missing or lagging features. Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins talks with WSJ's William Connors about what to expect from the BlackBerry Z10, how much RIM is staking on the launch, and what's in store for company beyond the new phones. In the U.S., all four major carriers are expected to sell the phone, for $199, according to RIM, but the company says it won't be available until mid-March. On the all-touch-screen model, BlackBerry has come up with a mind-bogglingly clever typing system. On the other hand, wow, is this horse late to the race. It comes in black and white, and has only one memory configuration—16 gigabytes (the base on the iPhone)—but the memory can be expanded by up to 32 more gigabytes using a removable card. Without even pressing a physical button, you swipe up the screen; the Lock screen lifts like a drape as you slide your thumb, revealing what’s underneath. From there, swiping to the left takes you through screens of app icons, similar to those on Apple and Android phones. BlackBerry Hub 
 
 Although it isn't technically the home screen, RIM expects most users to spend most of their time in the device's unified inbox, called BlackBerry Hub. The Hub contains emails from all the accounts you've set up on the phone, as well as text messages, messages from RIM's BlackBerry Messenger service, and even updates from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You'll revel in the virtual keyboard's ease and in BlackBerry Messenger's seamless voice chats. If you’ve typed “made of sil,” for example, the word “silicone” appears over the letter I key, “silver” over the V, and “silk” over the K. You can fling one of these words into your text by flicking upward from the key — or ignore it and keep typing. And it learns words and abbreviations you frequently use, even proper names. Photo 
 
 Incredibly, BlackBerry says that there will be 70,000 apps available on Day 1. Most of the big-name apps are already there ( Skype , Yelp , Twitter, Spotify, Foursquare, Dropbox , Angry Birds and so on), but a few important ones are still missing: Netflix , Draw Something, Pinterest , Hipstamatic, Instagram and most airline and bank apps. If a company has BlackBerry’s corporate software suite, separate worlds can be created on each phone: personal and work, with distinct calendars, address books, wallpaper and even app collections. You just swipe down and press a button called "Personal" or "Work" and the apps, and even the background, change. You can sign into multiple e-mail accounts and social networks, and populate your address book and calendar from these cross-pollinated networks. In between the BlackBerry Z10's volume buttons is the voice control key. And yes, this is precisely why many people use a wireless headset. Enlarge Image Close Research in Motion The BlackBerry Z10 comes in black and white and looks very different from past BlackBerrys. The hardware is decent and the user interface is logical and generally easy to use. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.
– BlackBerry is betting its bottom dollar on the BlackBerry Z10, the first phone to bear its radically redesigned new BlackBerry 10 OS. So how does it stack up? Critics generally like it, but worry that it's not enough to save the company. Here's what people are saying: David Pogue used to think BlackBerry was doomed. "I was wrong," he writes in today's New York Times. The Z10 is "lovely, fast, and efficient, bristling with fresh, useful ideas." It may lack Blackberry's signature physical keyboard, but its "mind-bogglingly clever typing system," which positions word predictions over the next letter you'd naturally type is "freaky and brilliant and very, very fast." The package is good enough to give BlackBerry a fighting chance. "On the other hand, wow, is this horse late to the race." "I would expect the handset to mostly appeal to the legions of BlackBerry fans that, judging by the pre-launch interest, are still out there," writes Edward Baig at USA Today. "BlackBerry very much has its bread-and-butter business customers in its sights," with excellent security features, and a pre-installed Documents to Go app that can create, edit, and view Microsoft Office and PDF files. But the new "user interface is so different that it will seem foreign to longtime BlackBerry users," warns Walt Mossberg, who seems generally unimpressed in the Wall Street Journal. "It worked fine in my tests, but I found it a work in progress," lacking its competitors' app selection, cloud ecosystems, and other features. "In the most important ways, everything comes together: a lovely HD screen, a fast processor, a camera (with tricks!) that's good enough to stand alongside the big boys," CNET's editors write. But "the Z10's unintuitive gesture paradigm creates a learning curve, and a long list of OS inefficiencies and omissions sour the experience."