Kicking off the BlackBerry World event on May 1 in Orlando, Research in Motion (RIM) CEO Thorsten Heins gave the world a first peek at what BlackBerry 10 smartphones will have to offer.

The new QNX-based BlackBerry 10 comes with some cool new features, emphasizing "flow" between applications, social integration, as well as multitasking, and it will include new gesture-based navigation, a virtual keyboard and some exciting camera functionality.

'Flow' between Applications

One of the most impressive features on BlackBerry 10 is how the applications interact with each other. According to Heins, the new operating system would allow an easy transition between various activities, without having to return to a home screen and switch apps completely. By swiping from left to right across the screen, users can view the apps running in the background, and use the swipe to select the desired background application. "No one has time to pop in and out of applications every time they want to change an application," said Heins, as reported by Mashable. "We want to use a paradigm that is easy and fast. It's all about the flow."

Camera Functionality

When it comes to camera, BlackBerry 10 devices will sport some exciting camera functionality. When taking a photo, the camera caches frames in view of the lens, so users can "go back in time" and select the best shot, even if it was captured before the shutter was pressed. Moreover, users can limit the temporal shift to just one specific area instead of the whole photo. For instance, if you have a perfect shot overall, but one of your friends is yawning, you can apply the effect just to that one friend.

Virtual Keyboard

A great surprise, however, was the virtual keyboard in BlackBerry 10. Not only did BlackBerry get in line with the touchscreen interfaces trend, but it also adds some cool functionality to its revamped keyboard. The new virtual keyboard not only learns the words users might use, but it also considers a user's typing behavior in order to make typing more accurate. While typing, BlackBerry 10 devices will predict the next word a user might want to type, displaying it above the letter key it starts with. A simple swipe up will select and type that word.

Developer Tools

The focus, however, is on developers. On Tuesday, May 1, RIM also launched its toolkit in beta, so that developers can start creating apps for the new Blackberry 10 OS. The toolkit launch also includes support for "Cascades", a new set of developer tools that use C/C++ and the Qt framework. "Cascades" provides developers with standard UI elements, and according to RIM it should help developers create more "graphically rich" apps. The BlackBerry native SDK also comes with a C/C++ app framework, and users should be able to easily port OpenGL-based apps.

RIM has offered BlackBerry 10 prototype devices to all developers attending the BlackBerry World 2012 event, but the features Heins presented will only be available on consumer devices. According to the company, BlackBerry 10 smartphones will launch in the latter part of 2012.

(reported by Alexandra Burlacu, edited by Dave Clark)