BlackBerry still loves its developers, it seems.
Having released the BlackBerry 10 operating system on January 30 alongside the Q10 and Z10 models, the Canadian manufacturer has released 12,000 limited edition red Z10 devices to developers for “taking a leap of faith”.
BB10 VP of developer relations Alec Saunders posted a blog, entitled ‘Thank you Developers!’, waxing lyrical to all the devs who have worked on the most recent BlackBerry.
“Thank you for all of the outstanding applications you have developed for BlackBerry 10,” Saunders wrote. “Thank you for all of the long hours, late nights and early mornings you’ve spent coding.
“Thank you for taking a leap of faith. And thank you for believing in BlackBerry 10.”
This seems to be the Limited Edition device, whereby developers with a qualifying BB10 app could trade in their dev alpha set. The deadline for developers to do this has been extended to February 28.
The aforementioned dev alpha sets were trading on eBay a full four weeks before the launch of BB10, with punters taking a risk buying a product with a big ‘not for sale’ sign on it.
BlackBerry – having changed its name from Research in Motion at the launch – has consistently made a concerted effort to get developers onside, including the 10k Developer Commitment in September and the earnest, if a little cringe-inducing, musical number a month later fronted by Saunders to the strains of REO Speedwagon.
Elsewhere, BlackBerry has announced an updated SDK for its QWERTY keyboard Q10 phone. In a developer blog post, Tim Neil wrote that it was “to ensure that the development runtimes have proper support for the physical keyboard and screen size, and to provide simulators so that developers can start testing their applications on the 720×720 screen resolution”.
If one were a cynic, the thought may occur that it won’t take too long for the limited edition red Z10 phones to make its way onto eBay, in a manner similar to the dev alpha devices last month.
Yet BlackBerry’s commitment to its developers remains impressive. Would this sway you into developing for BB10?
