During the recently held BlackBerry 10 (BB10) Jam World Tour event in Cape Town, RIM (Research In Motion) provided application developers with BlackBerry Dev Alpha devices to developers to test their apps on. The screen resolution of the Dev Alpha smartphone is 768 x 1280 across a 4.2" display, and RIM has now officially revealed that this will be the screen resolution shipped with the first BB10 full touch devices during Q1 2013.

BlackBerry users that want a physical QWERTY keyboard on their device, will be happy to know that new devices with physical keyboard will also become available at a later stage, and will sport a display resolution of 720 x 720.

These touchscreen specs do fall in line with a leaked report by tech news site N4BB.com in June, stating that the Canadian smartphone and tablet maker will be releasing an all-touch BB10 L-range, as well as the more conventional N-series, which features the firm’s excellent physical QWERTY keyboard.

In addition, RIM announced that application developers are able to design apps that fit into two main display form factors, namely full touch devices at 720 x 1280 (16:9 aspect ratio) and keyboard devices at a resolution of 720 x 720 and aspect ratio of 1:1.

The company stated that it will continue to add features and functionality to the application frameworks, enabling developers to easily manage the differences between the two screen sizes for BB10 devices.

In related news, Vodacom and RIM recently kicked off a trade-up offer for BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone owners, providing them with the opportunity to upgrade their device at a reduced cost through certain Edcon-owned stores. Vodacom subscribers that own a Curve 8520 can go to an Edgars, Jet Cellular or CNA store in order to trade in their device for a BlackBerry Curve 9320 smartphone, or any other BlackBerry 7.1 OS operating smartphone.