Touch of class

Blackberry ditch keys to take on iPHONES

Flash

BLACKBERRY Z10 – www. carphonewarehouse.com – £379 – Sim Free BLACKBERRY have decided to ditch the QWERTY keyboard in favour of a touch-screen offering set to take on the might of the iPhone 5.

And in terms of the way it looks, you’d be forgiven for confusing the two. In fact, five beers down the line you may even end up walking out of the pub with your mate’s mobile.

Both sport a similarly-sized screen: the BlackBerry’s 4.2-inch display is only the tiniest of fractions bigger than the iPhone’s four-inch offering but, as we all know, bigger is better.

And short of the word ‘BlackBerry’ being written on the front, and the metallic logo on the back, they could be identical.

But while the Berry is clearly aping the iPhone’s style, as a gadget in its own right the Blackberry still has plenty to offer.

Its 16GB internal storage is bolstered by an SD card slot, which can add an extra 32GB of memory. That’s roughly an extra 8,000 songs!

Its rear-mounted camera offers a top-end eight megapixels with 1080p HD video recording. It’s got a proper flash, too.

And the pictures and videos you do take will look crisp and clear on the screen, as it offers 1280 x 768 pixel resolution.

That amounts to 356 pixels per inch, which is one of the highest available on any modern smart phone. That screen clarity means that you can make out minute detail easily and everything will still be visible in all but the brightest of sunlight.

So your home-made sex tapes will never have looked better!

It’s 4G ready, which is “Totes Amazeballs” – to quote that bloody Kevin Bacon advert – but if you’re not with the network EE that’s still okay, because 3G works fine.

And with the BlackBerry 10 operating system you probably won’t notice the difference anyway. Designed especially for this phone, the platform offers quick and seamless menus and faster internet browsing.

Part of the reason for this speed is the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor that lives under its skin. It’s quick, efficient and relatively reliable.

It also uses the now standard Micro-USB port, which is present on pretty much every smartphone bar the “look how bloody unique we are” iPhone.

This is fantastically beneficial, because you can borrow your mate’s charger no matter what brand they have.

But despite the many positives, there is one area where BlackBerry STILL seems to lag behind – and that’s the all-important apps.

Both Apple and Android phones have access to over 800,000 games and gadgets to download. BlackBerry and Windows lag well behind that.

In March, a study was carried out which discovered that out of the top 100 apps available on Apple App Store and Google Play only 34 per cent were available for BlackBerry users.

That’s not a good return, and it’s an issue that BlackBerry is desperately trying to address.

In the first five months of this year they added over 50,000 apps to their roster, including big names like Skype and Angry Birds.

The BlackBerry Z10 is a step in the right direction, then, a truly fantastic bit of kit that puts a grin on your face the second you start playing with it.

But is it any good to have a phone that works seamlessly if you don’t have the apps to make the most of it? Only time will tell.