BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion/RIM) got about as close as possible to extinction without actually going over the edge. That said, even with the Z10 (and soon Q10) on the market, there’s still a huge uphill battle before we can call their comeback a success. The Z10 is BlackBerry’s Hail Mary and last chance effort at keeping the lights on up in Canada. The importance of the Z10 and BB 10 cannot be understated. If RIM Fails here, they fail outright and it’s over for them.
Grim outlook aside, I came into this review highly positive and optimistic. Not so long ago I was a huge BlackBerry fan who got many friends and family into the smartphone market thanks to BlackBerry. Fast forward several years, though, and the rest is history. Android and iOS happened.
The BlackBerry Z10 is a completely new beast and a pretty big departure from the BlackBerry many know and remember. But is it enough to win back defectors and keep those nearing the ends of their contracts?
Design, Construction & Quality
The soft touch back cover and metal top and bottom pieces on the front of the phone feel and look premium. Compared to some phone manufacturers who make a habit of stuffing every software feature into the phone in hopes you’ll overlook the shoddy (read: crappy) plastic case, BlackBerry has made sure both he software and hardware play the part. The Z10 is simply a well designed phone.
On the top of the phone you’ll find a centered power/lock button with a standard headphone port over to the left. Volume up/down and a voice control button can be found on the upper right side while the left side holds the micro USB charging/sync port and a mini HDMI port. Again, BlackBerry really got it right this time around with the Z10′s design and construction. Oh, and bonus points for making a thin, sexy phone that still features a removable battery.
Hardware Specs & Feature
At 4.2 inches and 1280 x 768 resolution, the screen is sharp and clear. While the Z10 doesn’t follow the latest Android phones by cramming a 1080p panel under its glass, we’re not really all that disappointed or worried about it. At the distance your phone is typically from your face, the discernible difference between 720p and 1080p is pretty low.
Pushing all the pixels onscreen is made possible by a dual-core 1.5 GHz ARM processor coupled with 2 GB of RAM – both specs that scream 2012. But as I (and many others) have said countless times, raw specs don’t tell the true story. Some of the highest spec’d phones on the market aren’t the smoothest or fastest in day-to-day operation nor do they feel the fastest to the naked eye – something that is far more important than endless benchmarks. Simply put, the hardware BlackBerry has put inside the Z10 will rarely leave you asking for more.
BlackBerries have never been known as fantastic point-and-shoot replacements. And with the Z10, while drastically improved over previous BlackBerries from yesteryear, it’s not enough to unseat top mobile cameras such as those offered on the iPhone 5, Lumia 920, Galaxy S III or HTC One X (to name a small handful). That said, pictures taken with the Z10 are pretty decent; colors are most accurate and getting a nice dynamic range between lights and darks is usually acceptable. The big selling point with the Z10′s camera, however, is the Time Shift feature. Basically, Time Shift takes multiple photos in a burst mode and then allows the user to go back and choose the best image. The only downside is that some people may never notice it as BlackBerry has disabled it by default.
16 GB of built-in storage plus support for microSDXC cards means that unlike many flagship smartphones (and sadly, increasingly many Android flagship smartphones), Z10 owners can storage a massive amount of media on the device itself. And as someone who simply can’t rely on cloud/streaming content 95% of the time, this is a huge plus.
The Z10 hardware is a fantastic effort by blackberry. And if we were to rate the Z10 on the hardware alone, it would definitely be one of the top phones to get. But in this day and age, great hardware isn't enough. Just to look at HTC. They've made some pretty awesome phones in terms of hardware design and specs over the last year and a half. But because their software has been somewhat lacking (poor marketing as well), it has hurt them severely. Much the same, a Z10 with a terrible OS isn't going to go anywhere.
The Z10 hardware is a fantastic effort by blackberry. And if we were to rate the Z10 on the hardware alone, it would definitely be one of the top phones to get. But in this day and age, great hardware isn't enough. Just to look at HTC. They've made some pretty awesome phones in terms of hardware design and specs over the last year and a half. But because their software has been somewhat lacking (poor marketing as well), it has hurt them severely. Much the same, a Z10 with a terrible OS isn't going to go anywhere.
BB 10
BlackBerry 10 is a massive departure from OS 7 and prior. While some will maintain that this is bad as it breaks a lot of users’ ease of use in picking up the new BlackBerry and knowing how to use it right off the bat, it was sorely needed. Another generation of OS7-like software would have killed BlackBerry, plain and simple.
On the surface, BB 10 is a very new, potentially powerful animal. It’s much easier on the eyes, more fluid and seems to be doing an ok job courting developers. Then again, the underdog always goes the extra mile.
The biggest thing I have had to get used to with BB 10 is the lack of a true home screen. You don’t hit a home button and go to a static screen of app icons and/or widgets. Instead, swiping up from the bottom of the display brings up the 4 most recently used apps. Swiping right brings up the Hub (more on that in a few) while swiping left takes you to something more familiar – a standard app launcher/grid of icons. Since I use Zephyr on my jailbroken iPhone to allow quick launching of the fast app switcher by swiping up from the bottom of the display, the action itself on the Z10 wasn’t new and was quick to pick up. However, I still find myself starting to move my thumb to the button of the Z10 as if it is about to find a home button to hit, only to remember that nothing is there.
Navigating from app to app as well as in-app actions are buttery smooth – I’m talking iOS smooth (in most cases). However, after coming from a jailbroken iPhone with a tweak to make transitions a bit faster as well as a Nexus 4, the smoothness is almost ruined by transitions that feel slower than necessary to the point of being sluggish. All that said, I’d take slightly too slow but super smooth animations over laggy, fast ones. Too each their own.
Considering that the tech/social world online is my life, I’m constantly getting alerts, pings, emails, calls, etc. So far Android has offered the best in terms of notifications with iOS being a close follow-up second. On the Z10 I’ve found that it is a mixed back. The BlackBerry Hub is sort of like a massive dumping ground for anything and everything that wants to get your attention. And while you can configure what is dumped there (I had to turn off Twitter alerts there or else the Hub would have been useless), there’s definitely some more work needed to make the Hub more manageable. Looking for alerts takes a lot of scrolling. And quite frankly, sometimes it’s easier to just go to the app you want to check at that point in time.
Great hardware and a killer OS are two pieces of the puzzle. But really, apps are the real deciding factor. Without apps your smartphone is a fancy feature phone. BlackBerry claims over 100,000 apps are now in App World with only about ~20% being Android apps that run inside the emulator of sorts. In our daily treks through App World, while we did find a lot more big name apps since our last major stint with BlackBerry (during our PlayBook review)***, there are still a lot of big name, official apps missing****. Oh, and for the record, the Android apps available shouldn’t really count. They’re based off a runtime for Android 2.3 which is way old, run poorly and simply look/feel like a tacked on solution to BlackBerry’s need for app count. Seriously, don’t waste your time. Playing ported Android apps was a stupid idea when it was first announced and it’s still a poor idea now. The problem is that said apps will never be on the cutting edge of either Android or the BlackBerry OS. Getting everything primed and operating efficiently takes months of work and optimization. By the time a runtime is released (one for 4.x apps is coming), Android will have increased by a version number or two (or ten).
Battery L!fe
Naturally, battery life can make or break a great phone. Case in point: many recent HTC Android devices have awesome hardware, so-so software and abysmal battery life. Such a shame. In moving from pre-BB10 hardware and software to the Z10 and BB10, there are some big improvements in processor type and speed, screen size and resolution and finally, network support (in this case LTE). LTE is a battery killer no matter how you slice it. Apple has done a pretty decent job so far of making the iPhone 5 perform admirably well considering how small the battery is inside of it compared to many competing Android smartphones. Can BlackBerry, a company who has long produced smartphones with very good battery life continue the trend?
The mostly did. While I’ve seen a decent amount of reviews criticizing the Z10 for having weak battery life, my experience of the last week has been mostly favorable. Starting my day at 5am I can usually make it until about 5pm before the Z10 is throwing up desperate alerts for an outlet to pair up with. Notifications and alerts are plentiful, originating from ~8-10 social networks (most with multiple accounts) as well as 3 email accounts. Twitter usage is the primary battery drain as is keeping that nicely sized 4.2-inch display illuminated the entire time.
Coming from an Android user’s perspective, the Z10 is a good upgrade in the battery life department. From an iPhone, it’s a couple of steps backwards but not overly traumatic. Your current/past device and it’s battery life have to be taken into account when putting the Z10′s battery life into context.
Is BlackBerry back?
Many big name companies over the last couple of years have made big moves away from BlackBerry hardware. Most of the time it is to iOS. But increasingly, companies are becoming more open to BYOD scenarios in which employees are allowed to use their own personal devices, with some companies using software solutions that allow some degree of corporate control for privacy’s sake. For BlackBerry to stop the now well developed corporate world of iOS and growing one of Android with their own, new BB 10 will take a bit of time.
While it’s certainly not “the end” yet, BlackBerry will now need to follow up the Z10 (and later Q10) with more just as awesome hardware and quickly update BB 10 to stay relevant with both iOS and Android – both of which are now steamrolling the mobile market.
In the end, the Z10 is a great piece of hardware with mostly good software that has a good base. Provided BlackBerry can keep on top of their new platform and abstain from getting stuck in another rut, it appears that they are in fact “back”. The only question is, is the product good enough to keep current customers from jumping ship and winning over those that already have switched to another platform? For most on other platforms, BB 10 and the Z10 aren’t quite up to par just yet. Perhaps generation 2 hardware and the next version of BB OS will close the gap. For current BlackBerry users, the new hardware and software is certainly compelling enough to stick around. If you’ve made it this long with a fledging platform, this sudden and quick turn-around is a night and day difference. What’s another year?
Overall a solid effort by BlackBerry and a resounding comeback rallying cry that has mostly succeeded in fixing what was broken. If it were early 2012, this would be a no brainier. Since it’s nearing mid-2013, and taking into consideration what’s coming out over the next few months, some pause for consideration is needed.
Via BB Z10
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