The BlackBerry Consumer Forum is a travelling training event designed mostly for retail staff who will be selling BlackBerry devices. The Calgary event was held last night and there is one more stop planned for Vancouver tomorrow. It is sold out but you can register to be on the waiting list here. I managed to sneak in with my brother last night (we registered and were legit) and we had a great time. There was an awesome reaction to the live demo of the BlackBerry 10 device, which was actually a Dev Alpha B. The crowd of around 100 clapped and cheered when the predictive keyboard and timeshift camera features were shown. My brother, who has switched from BB to Android recently, said he will be getting a BB10 device when they are released after he saw the presentation.
The most exciting part of the event was near the end when they gave away a 4G PlayBook, a Porsche 9981 device (worth at least $1800), and an IOU for one of the first BB10 devices to be released. We weren’t lucky enough to get picked but I did snag a limited edition case that I’ll be giving away soon.
Although most of the demonstration were things I was familiar with already, there were a few things I learned.
- Keyboard
- One swipe from right to left on the keyboard deletes an entire word. I love this feature! No more tapping backspace over and over to get rid of a word
- Up to 3 languages can be typed simultaneously. We have heard about the Multilanguage keyboard but this is the first I’ve heard as far as numbers
- The keyboard not only learns what you type, but how you type as well. If you usually hit right on the edge of the H and mistakenly hit the J, the keyboard will learn and actually adjust the boundaries of the necessary keys to compensate
- Browser
- The BB10 browser scores extremely high on the html 5 test which we’ve seen before. What I didn’t realize is that the browser not only surpasses other mobile browsers, but also desktop browsers. Google Chrome scores 434 while BB10 is 476. Impressive
- As a side note, the PlayBook Browser on OS 2.1 is the best tablet browser when it comes to html5 with a score of 411.
- Camera
- The timeshift camera changes only the faces of those you want to. The rest of their body doesn’t move if you want to change them from blinking or not smiling to not blinking and smiling. So you’re creating a picture that never existed in the real world. Spooky.
- There was a mention of there being filters built into the camera software but when I asked one of the trainers afterwards he could not confirm that
There were a few videos I hadn’t seen before that I am in the process of uploading right now. So stay tuned for those. More pictures of the event are below.
Mmmm, free food on a big red splat.
The cell spa where your BB can enjoy a thorough cleaning.
Rene Vierling – Senior Marketing Director for Canada.
The 9981 right before I didn’t win it. 
Any idea why the box is so huge? Is it just stuffed with cash?
The highly coveted IOU for a BB10 device. Sorry its blurry, I was shaking with excitement! 
