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Nokia MeeGo fans will appreciate UI elements of BlackBerry 10

Anyone who used MeeGo will quickly see that BlackBerry 10 has many of those swiping design elements in its new UI. MeeGo went farther in some respects, but there are much better prospects for more extensive application development with BlackBerry than there are with MeeGo now that Nokia killed that project.
Written by Matthew Miller, Contributing Writer

I am testing out the new BlackBerry Z10 device, and even though I am currently disappointed in the app offerings at the moment I think the hardware and user interface is excellent. The user interface actually reminds me a lot of my MeeGo-powered Nokia N9 and to show how similar they are I took the short video below showing similar design elements.

Z10N9

I think MeeGo is a fantastic OS and pop my SIM into the N9 every once in a while to experience it. Unfortunately, Nokia killed it off and application development dried up. I still believe that Nokia should have kept it going in parallel with Windows Phone. Given the BlackBerry is throwing serious resources behind BlackBerry 10, there is hope for us MeeGo fans to experience a similar UI on BB10 devices along with a hopefully growing application store.

You will see the following similar elements in BlackBerry 10 that we have in MeeGo:

  • Tap/swipe the screen with no button press to turn on and unlock device

  • Swipe up from bottom to return to "home"

  • Display of applications and folders, one with multitasking tiles that are live, and one with recent comms (BlackBerry Hub)

  • Swipe down to reveal upper menu

  • Slowly move finger across the screen to see elements behind active one

  • Deep multi-service integration.

IMHO, BlackBerry goes farther than Nokia did with MeeGo when you look at all of the communications in BlackBerry Hub and maybe you could do this in MeeGo with third-party utilities. MeeGo lets you have more live and active apps in the task switcher (BB has an eight-app limit) and also lets you swipe down from the top within an app to actually close it.

Like MeeGo, there is a serious learning curve with BlackBerry 10. Out of the box it is not as intuitive and simple as Windows Phone or iOS. PlayBook owners will be familiar with UI elements, along with those of us who use MeeGo, but for the rest of the folks there is effort required on their part to understand BlackBerry Flow. Given that some people seem bored with iOS and Android, I don't think it is a bad thing that BlackBerry offers up a unique and interesting UI and something different is refreshing. Just take the time to follow the tutorials and remember you can always jump back into Setup to practice more.

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