Vaporizing nickel onto the surface and removing that screen leaves behind a near-perfect grid of metal, hexagonal dots.

FORBES: Magazine Article

It's still a three-element UI, with a central home screen showing running applications, an app grid, and the BlackBerry hub -- a feed of time sensitive notifications from email, calendar, BBM, social apps and more.

ENGADGET: RIM reveals more details about Blackberry 10 Mobile

Alternatively, swipe from any edge across the lock screen to bring up the applications view -- a vertical grid of icons.

ENGADGET: Nokia N9 review Mobile

Swiping from the home screen through the app grid was smooth, and in fact, all the graphical transitions we saw -- from the unlock screen to opening various apps -- were quite fluid as well.

ENGADGET: BlackBerry's new Dev Alpha B handset runs BB10, we go hands-on

As you'll see in the video clips after the break, the home screen here shares some similarities with Windows Phone 8's counterpart -- in the way items snap to grid and resize, even though the former is enhanced by plenty of bouncy animation, more colors and funny sounds (designed by Japanese musician Cornelius).

ENGADGET: HTC-made au Infobar A02 launches in Japan, wraps unique Android UI in trippy body