BlackBerry 10 Alpha which was the prototype showcased by BlackBerry representatives and Thorsten Heins at this years BlackBerry World Conference is the device that is crucial to the survival of Research In Motion and their consumer based market. This year at the BlackBerry World Conference the BlackBerry team was very laser focused on giving its participants and BlackBerry developers a good look at what’s to come in order to drum up some excitement and enthusiasm from the developers. Until now RIM has really failed to release a BlackBerry Smartphone that has focused on the consumer and what they want, and which has been tested enough to work out all of the kinks and glitches. This has caused them to lose a dramatic amount of crucial ground in the mobile market.

Even though the BlackBerry 10 device has been postponed BlackBerry wowed many participants of this years BlackBerry World Conference with the cool new features of the BlackBerry 10 Alpha and with the hint that there is more to come with the actual BlackBerry 10 device that will be launched this coming fall. A few of these features that were showcased include a camera that records frames before and after the picture so you can back up or go forward to the best frame for a perfect picture as shown below:

The BlackBerry 10 Alpha also features a smoother, easier flow from screen to screen, as well as a more robust set of hand gestures that will allow you to do more with your current open apps and conversations. This video below shows this new flow that will be on the new BlackBerry 10 Smartphones:

In addition to the flow and camera feature enhancement the BlackBerry 10 Alpha was used to show the new keyboard feature that will follow along with many of the androids with the swipe typing concept. This new software keyboard which is very unusual to see on a BlackBerry will have a very intuitive auto correct function that will give you full words based on the letters you begin swiping with. This feature can be seen in the video below:

In my opinion BlackBerry 10 Alpha which was showcased is definitely off to the right start, the start which should have taken place a year ago. The only problem in my mind is that at this point while the new BlackBerry 10 has some cool new features, it still has a long way to go to catch up to whats out there now, and BlackBerry will really have to step up their game with this new BlackBerry 10 device that will come out later this year if they want to gain back a decent portion of their foot hold in the market. I believe it can be done but BlackBerry will have to maintain their laser focused vision on giving the consumer what they want, and creating a good product that works the way it is supposed to.