I received the new BlackBerry Z10 a couple of days after its launch - it arrived to great anticipation at my office on the 1st of February. I'd hung on patiently, continuing to use my faithful BlackBerry Bold 9780. It was a long overdue change.
The Z10 was a leap of faith for me, mainly due to the soft keyboard. I've never been a fan of soft keyboards, especially following my iPhone experience and use of Android. Nevertheless, as you'll see below, it's probably the centrepiece of what RIM (sorry BlackBerry) has accomplished with the 10.
Pro's
- Exchange integration much improved through ActiveSync - no need for USB sync on the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) anymore; it's just like BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Service)
- The soft keyboard is excellent, with superb predictive text feature and good auto correct (better than iOS and Android) - the word flick feature is great after you get into it (see photo)
- The physical device is beautiful. Bigger than an iPhone 5 in terms of width, but about the same length - it feels very well put together and the screen is excellent in terms of size, aspect and quality
- The Hub feature is very good and has a great user experience to it
- 'Flow' is excellent and really helps to integrate journey, not just experience
- Key social media support is engineered into the platform, with Twitter and Facebook integration very smooth
- The camera and HD video camera are both great; time-shift is superb for 'moment in time' photographs
- The music player is easy to use and the output is of a good quality
- The handset supports HSDPA and using the WiFi hotspot it's very fast from a laptop, where coverage exists (Vodafone UK) - see photo of speedcheck from the phone itself (taken at Woking station on a Wednesday at 0820
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Keyboard: The soft keyboard showing a single sentence completed using the word flick feature.
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| Speed: The speed check (www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk) from the handset. Done at 0820 on 27th February 2013 at Working station. 1.23Mb/s down; 0.27mb/s up. |
Con's
- Battery life lower than anticipated - seems similar to iOS (on iPhone 4s) and better than Android (Samsung GS2), but not by a great deal and could be a deal breaker to many BlackBerry stalwarts (battery life has always been great)
- The accelerometer could do with being more sensitive - it sometimes takes longer than it should to rotate between portrait and landscape
- The screen unlock uses the standard keyboard, which is too small and fiddly for this simple job
- The hotspot eats the battery life - use sparingly (this is true of all smartphones with this feature)
- Not part of the phone, but still part of the family, BlackBerry Link is at best okay - not as slick as iTunes [was]
- Again, not part of the phone, but decent accessories are fairly limited at the moment
- Apps. Apps. Apps … next section, please.
Top-10 Apps missing at time of writing - will impact adoption (1 being biggest impediment to adoption)
- Facebook - it's there, but might as well not be. It's that dreadful, really awful
- Instagram - no matter what you think of it, it's important
- Twitter - not far behind Facebook in the 'awful app' stakes
- Spotify
- Temple Runner (for the kids, of course)
- Skype [anything]
- Sonos (RoomTunes at £7.50 is an alternative - and by all accounts an excellent one)
- Strava
- Runtastic
- Skitracks
So, there you have it. The BlackBerry Z10.
- Am I pleased I waited - Yes
- Has it met my expectations - Yes
- Will it save BlackBerry - if the Apps come along quickly, yes; if not, then no
- Apart from Apps, what advice would I give to BlackBerry - work on battery life
Stay tuned.
Nice summary, unfortunately I think it's too late and really just a me too play. Nothing out of the ordinary from a keyboard perspective either as soft keyboards move towards swype style keyboards.
ReplyDeleteI agree that apps will be the key to the success of this device / OS in the long run. It's good to see Blackberry opening up it's OS where traditionally it's been more proprietary.
My thoughts:
ReplyDelete• I agree about the keyboard - this works really well.
• It doesn't feel that nice in terms of build quality - Nexus 4 feels nicer. Doesn't compare to iPhone 4 or 5. Hopefully it won't be as scratch prone as the iPhone 5.
• Still in two minds about the flow - nice in principle, but too often you have to make multiple steps to get back, which sort of defeats the purpose.
• The time shift idea is great, but it is awfully slow. The camera's performance and results are pretty woeful overall.
In terms of the UI, I'm a little disappointed. I was expecting something a bit more revolutionary from some of the previews. Appreciate it has to drag the enterprise users along and not change icon designs too much for example, but I feel they could of shifted things further upstream in terms of design finesse and execution.
I hope this does save Blackberry, we need competition and not monopolies/duopolies!