BlackBerry 10 Brainstorming: Content is King

This is a screenshot taken from a Q10 showing the CB10 app (thanks, Snazy!), and how it truly maximise the available screen size. But why not do the same for all devices? Why just limit it to the Q10?


According to BlackBerry’s UI Guidelines for BlackBerry 10, “Content is king”. In summary, focus on what is important, the content. Be it movies, pictures, messages, or text, every additional UI element that is present on screen, means that there is less content that can be viewed.

"As described in the screenshot on the Q10, developers can enable to top bar to scroll away off screen as you scroll down. As you scroll down, the action bar at the bottom disappears too, and only appear when you scroll up. Not only that, the Q10 utilises a smaller action bar that doesn’t describe the icon. To see what the icon does, simply tap and hold, and a pop up above it will describe what it does."

Here’s a link to the Guideline describing this: Content is King

I think that is a great way of doing it. After using my Z10 for so long, I can almost remember what all the icons does by just looking at it, without the need to read the descriptions at all. For others who are not familiar, they can always just tap and hold to see the description. So why doesn’t BlackBerry do this for all resolution. Yes, the screen is large enough on a Z10 for example, but on a mobile device with a small screen, every row of pixels count.

Let me show you what I mean. (Do note that the resolution I used is 1280 x 720 in a 16:9 aspect ratio, rather than what is on the Z10 currently)

By simply changing the size of the action bar to a smaller size as well as remove the description (like on the Q10 or when you use the your Z10 in landscape mode), I got one more line of text.

Then by allowing the top bar, and action bar to hide like on the Q10, I got 5 and a half lines more than I would normally. That is a huge amount  of content! And I have not even adjusted the top bar, which is slightly thinner on the Q10 as far as I can tell.

Anyway, the top bar for most apps does nothing other than to just inform you of which app you are in, or where in the app you are. Which to be honest, feels like a waste of space. I can’t imagine myself using the CrackBerry app for example, and then suddenly forgetting what app I am in while using it. That would be pretty daft.

If you have minimised the app to the home screen to go to another app, the active frame does tell you the name of the app. And if you want to know where in the app you are, you can just scroll up a bit to get the action bar back anyway.

Next on the browser, by hiding the URL bar when scrolling down, I was able to view 7 thread titles, rather than just 6. I don’t think it will affect functionality much. Whenever we need to use an item on the URL bar, scroll up a little and the URL bar appears. And I do believe that the trade-off is worth it.

If BlackBerry could implement using the left and right bezel to go “back” and “forward” a page (like what was announced at WWDC yesterday on iOS 7), it could replace another frequently used button on the URL bar.

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I think that this could be a way to really showcase the mantra "Content is King". Also provide a consistency between both full touch devices with a 16:9 or 15:9 aspect ratio, as well as a 1:1 ratio.