New Blackberry is elegant, intuitive
Keyboard is still what sets it apart
The BlackBerry Z10 is the most important product for the company formerly known as RIM. Ushering in a new mobile OS called BlackBerry10, the Z10 hopes to be the first in a series of competitive new products in today’s cutthroat mobile market.
The BlackBerry Z10 is promising. In terms of hardware, it is elegant, responsive and intuitive in usability and features. It defines what a modern BlackBerry device should be.
Many users will love the way the Z10 feels in the hand. It is a very well designed smartphone and one created around function rather than frivolity. A 4.2-inch screen is the focal point of the Z10 and it is surrounded by matte polycarbonate plastic on the top and bottom of the front fascia.
The 1280 x 768 resolution of the display has a remarkable 356 dpi pixel density, which improves the readability of text and images. Watching video on this device is comparable to many of the current larger screen smartphones in the market.
Coming from an iPhone 5 and various Android smartphones, I felt the Z10 was just as fast in most tasks. Multi-tasking seems to work well with up to eight open apps before the system decides to close open apps to be able to manage resources better. The browser is fast and has a unique Reader mode function that strips images and formatting for easier reading of text.
The Hub is another innovation; it serves as a sieve for all messaging and essentially declutters your experience by bunching all your alerts and messages in one place.
BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) can be set up on the phone and in less than three minutes. You no longer need a special BlackBerry data plan for BBM which makes it more convenient than ever to set up. Government grade security is also baked right in with tracking and remote wiping functions available should the device get lost or stolen.
The new BB10 software keyboard is pure genius. It is a multilingual and intelligent predictive keyboard that learns each user’s vocabulary and floats the next possible words on top. Choose the right word and simply flick it up and it gets added to your message.
BlackBerry is clearly aiming for consumers but also has a great built-in advantage for professionals.
The Balance feature smartly segregates work calendars, applications and documents from personal ones, making it easy to have one device instead of two.
With Balance (which requires a BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) hookup, users who leave their jobs can still keep their personal data secure.
BlackBerry was boasting 70,000 apps upon launch but while this is an impressive number for an upstart ecosystem, the top-tier apps on other platforms like Kindle, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google Maps and many others aren’t yet available. Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Twitter are already included as preinstalled apps on every Z10.
The Z10’s camera offers a unique Time Shift feature that captures the perfect portrait.
But as a standard smartphone camera, it isn’t as stellar as what you will get on an iPhone or any of the flagship Android or Nokia smartphones today.
I suspect hardcore BlackBerry fanatics will wait for the QWERTY keyboard equipped Q10 but the Z10 will appeal to users looking for a fresh take on the mobile OS with a handset that seems to cover many of the key areas in anyone’s musthave smartphone wish list.