This morning we sat in what was actually a first for RIM, a direct interface session between the gathered press and the CEO. Thorsten Heins gave a short speech reiterating the direction in which BB10 will be taking the company, then accepted questions from the press.
Some highlights from the session:
- Physical keyboards – "We make the best physical keyboard on the planet, and we don’t want to give that up." Thorsten addressed this in his opening monologue, and again in response to a direct question: “A physical keyboard WILL be an option in the BlackBerry 10 portfolio.”
- Localization – Press members from China and Turkey asked if localization would be available to their regions in BB10. Heins confirmed that it will, and added comments to the effect that the adaptive keyboard in BB10 will actually learn and recognize the language being input by the user. He implied that there would be no need to enter an Options or Settings screen to choose an input language, but that, of course, remains to be seen.
- RIM has a whole localization team dedicated to making localization work
Ashley ( View Profile) - Posts: 1007
Posted: May 2, 2012 at 12:05 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9900 | OS 7.1.0.284
I would have loved to catch a glimpse of what it’d be like to #BeBold w/BB10… Hopefully peeks come soon
loooooove my physical keyboard…. It embodies the true roots of BlackBerry taking it way back to the days of the Inter@ctive 900 Pager…. 
no surprise we get miniPlayBooks 1st, QNX was birthed on the PlayBook, but the BB10 Bold line phew… Hot just thinking of it….
John Not Registered
Posted: May 2, 2012 at 12:07 PM EST
I am fine with BB10, it’s still months away! But give me that on PlayBook, please!
DanielH ( View Profile) - Posts: 577
Posted: May 2, 2012 at 1:19 PM EST
Now that is what I wanted to hear…BB10 on a device with a physical keyboard!
Steve ( View Profile) - Posts: 686
Posted: May 2, 2012 at 1:28 PM EST from my BlackBerry PlayBook | OS 2.0.1
Most definitely
Jay Harker ( View Profile) - Posts: 1365
Posted: May 2, 2012 at 1:20 PM EST
That is awesome news. So glad they’re not scrapping their amazing physical keyboards. Beyond excited for BB10 to be released!
Heavens ( View Profile) - Posts: 267
Posted: May 4, 2012 at 8:20 AM EST from my BlackBerry PlayBook | OS 2.0.1
Yay … I want the physical keyboard too!
Heavens ( View Profile) - Posts: 267
Posted: May 4, 2012 at 8:24 AM EST from my BlackBerry PlayBook | OS 2.0.1
Re localisation – i want to be able to choose Australian English per the Macquarie Dictionary and i want any predictive text to be in Australian english.
Believe it or not we don’t currently get the Australian english option!