Differences between the BlackBerry® 10 Dev Alpha A and Dev Alpha B hardware: Stakes and Opportunities for Developers


Following the questions that developers have asked regarding differences between the BlackBerry® 10 Dev Alpha A and Dev Alpha B hardware and other questions about getting SIM cards, RIM Blackberry has published a post that aims to help clarify some of the hardware details.
It is : 
“A fair bit of the details are the same, but there are obviously some differences that are important for developers. Moving from the OMAP 4460 to the OMAP 4470 has an impact on performance, in particular for graphics with the new SGX544 graphics chip. The next most important differences are in radio connectivity. Both devices have Quad Band HSPA/UMTS, but the 4 bands supported are slightly different. If you plan on getting a microSIM card for your Dev Alpha, check which bands are required for your carrier. For example, the Dev Alpha B is limited to EDGE on T-Mobile USA, while the Dev Alph A can get HSPA. Also, the Dev Alpha B has expanded Wi-Fi capabilities, with 5GHz frequency support for 802.11a\n; it supports DLNA, and Bluetooth 4.0 LE.
BlackBerry Infrastructure
There are some APIs that use connections to BlackBerry Infrastructure, such as BBM™ and Push. These APIs should work over Wi-Fi® without setting up any special ports, and you will be able to see the BlackBerry symbol in the homescreen titlebar, which indicates connectivity to the BlackBerry Infrastructure.
Should you decide to get a microSIM for your Dev Alpha, you do not need to have “BlackBerry Data” turned on for the account. Connectivity will be work with regular Internet access alone. There may be some carriers where data connectivity doesn’t work, but Wi-Fi will work for you in that case. Please note that this is the case just for the Dev Alpha device and not BlackBerry 10 launch devices, which will need to have BlackBerry data on the wireless plan.”

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