BlackBerry
Dev Alpha B

The BlackBerry Dev Alpha B was the second iteration of Research In Motion's (RIM) developer seed hardware, designed to help software creators build and test applications for the then-upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system. Unveiled at the BlackBerry Jam Americas conference in San Jose on September 25, 2012, it replaced the original Dev Alpha A, which had been distributed earlier that year. While the original Dev Alpha was essentially a prototype in a temporary shell, the Alpha B featured more refined hardware that more closely reflected the specifications of the eventual production model, the BlackBerry Z10. It boasted a 4.2-inch LCD screen with a sharp 1280 x 768 resolution (356 PPI), which was a significant jump in quality for BlackBerry devices at the time. It was powered by a dual-core 1.5 GHz TI OMAP 4470 processor and 1GB of RAM, specifically chosen to handle the graphical demands of the new QNX-based platform. The device was housed in a "blocky" industrial casing. It featured an 8-megapixel rear camera with flash, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, and, notably for developers, a hot-swappable MicroSD slot and a removable 1800mAh battery. Crucially, the Dev Alpha B did not initially ship with a consumer version of BlackBerry 10. Instead, it ran a modified version of the BlackBerry PlayBook OS, allowing developers to simulate the gesture-based "Flow" navigation and the "BlackBerry Hub" environment. It served as a vital bridge for the developer community, ensuring that when the BlackBerry Z10 finally launched in January 2013, a library of native apps was already prepared for the new gesture-centric interface.