The
BlackBerry Z10 has finally arrived after what has been a very tough year for
the company and with the rumoured iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S4 handsets due
to land in 2013, the battle has only just begun.
Launched
alongside the physical keyboard-toting BlackBerry Q10, the Z10's current
competitors take the shape of the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X and
Nokia Lumia 920. But has it got what it takes to make it into our list of the
best smartphones around? Read on to find out.
Size and build
Hold
it in your hand and you’ll be forgiven for being less than overwhelmed with
BlackBerry’s new smartphone. The understated design is available in either
all-black or a slightly more eye-catching white on black.
A
large glass front is then sandwiched by two plastic ends with a slightly
rubberised back covering the rear. With the functional 'substance over style.
stealth-like aesthetics, the Z10 is something that we would imagine to be as
comfortable in the hand of a bat-obsessed crusader as a businessman.
Measuring
in at 130mm x 65.6mm x 9mm it might be considered ‘chunky’, however thanks to
the build quality it instantly moves into the realms of ‘durable’ rather than
‘heavyweight’. It feels like a phone that was made for a marathon of suit trousers,
coffee spills and desk-level drops.
Screen
With
a 4.2-inch 1280x768 display, the Z10 boasts a pixel density that exceeds the
iPhone 5. While it may not be able to combat the sun as well as Apple’s
handset, it makes up for it in sharpness.
The
Z10 boasts a fairly sizable bezel, something other smartphone makers are
hastily trying to remove. The reasoning for this is actually the software
itself - BlackBerry 10. Many of the main gestures in BlackBerry’s new OS are
done by swiping from off the screen onto the display. with a swipe up from the
bottom acting as both the ‘Home’ action and also as a way to unlock the phone.
A
swipe upwards from the bottom of the screen acts as both the ‘Home’ action and
also as a way to unlock the phone.
Once unlocked you’re greeted with what looks to be BlackBerry business as usual
- a series of app icons split up over windows with an unlimited number allowed.
Apps
can be minimised by swiping up, turning each one into an ‘Active Frame’ which
then remains in a window next to the apps. Essentially minimised apps, the
Active Frames can also function as live widgets showing realtime updates on
news stories, giving you essential calendar information or even showing you the
weather at your location. You can have up to 8 running at any one time.
You
can see that BlackBerry has created these as an alternative to Android’s
widgets however it’s more a halfway house at the moment with some apps like the
Guardian showing a brilliant slideshow of news images while some others show an
infuriatingly tiny version of the app screen.
Hub
Central
to BlackBerry 10 is the Hub - a stream of notifications encompassing all your
accounts including Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, showing you
everything from messages to birthdays. It’s certainly an impressive feature and
something we can really see business users and heavy social network addicts
appreciating.
BlackBerry Balance
To
help appease the business users, BlackBerry Balance has been created,
essentially splitting your Z10 into two halves. It lets you switch between work
and personal with the two being completely cut off from the other, avoiding any
potentially disastrous situations involving your holiday snaps and a business
presentation.
BlackBerry World
To
get your mitts on apps you’ll need to use the BlackBerry World app store where
you’ll find the usual mass of overpriced stock exchange apps but also some more
pleasant surprises including recent HD films, pretty much the entire singles
music chart and some apps you’ll actually recognise.
In
fact there’s over 70k apps available at launch and confirmation of yet more big
names including Skype and WhatsApp with Instagram likely to appear as
well.
BBM Video
One
of the big new features to land on BlackBerry 10, BBM has been given an upgrade
letting you perform crystal clear voice calls as well as video calls on the 2MP
front-facing camera with other BBM users, rivalling both Skype and Apple’s
FaceTime service.
BlackBerry
10 also includes Story Maker, which is BlackBerry's version of iMovie. This is
a simple movie editing app that aims to take the hassle out of creating a short
home movie.
You
can add videos or images and then apply any soundtrack of your choice. Six
filters are available and then once complete it’ll be rendered in HD where you
can then upload to YouTube.
Screen Share
A
feature exclusive to BBM, Screen Share lets you do exactly that. At the press
of a button you can share your screen with the person you’re having a video
call with whether it’s a YouTube video, internet page or contact information.
Clearly implemented as a business focused feature, Screen Share also has social
potential.
You can add videos or images and then apply any soundtrack of your choice. Six
filters are available and then once complete it’ll be rendered in HD where you
can then upload to YouTube.
BB10
also gives you BlackBerry Remember - the brand's answer to the popular app
Evernote. Whether it’s a shopping list or a project, you can create a workbook
and then fill it with images, videos, documents or music.
You can also add voice memos and emails to help remind you.
Performance
All
of these apps require large amounts of memory and that’s where the specs list
comes in. Under the hood you’ll find a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, which may
not sound like much but it’s actually on par with Sony’s flagship Xperia Z and
most of the Nokia Lumia range, making the handset pretty zippy.
You
also get a very impressive 2GB of RAM, something which at present is limited to
high-end Android tablets. Hidden inside you’ll find a 4G antenna which
means you’ll be able to use the current 4GEE service from EE and also any
upcoming 4G networks. NFC comes as standard as well letting you add BBM
contacts and send images.
There's also a Micro HDMI which means you’ll be able to throw the latest HD
films and TV shows from BB World straight up onto your HDTV.
Keyboard
Onto
the keyboard - the bit that every self-respecting BlackBerry fan wants to know
about. The moment you start adding accounts the Z10 will actively sweep your
emails and texts, learning the language you use and creating a catalogue of
common phrases. This means that when you start typing it’ll intelligently
predict words that only you're likely to use.
In
short the keyboard is very good, and while there will be those that simply
can't cope with the lack of a physical keyboard, this is one of the best
touchscreen keyboards we’ve seen.
Camera
BlackBerry
claims to have paid as much attention to the camera with the Z10 sporting an
8MP snapper on the back and a 2MP front-facing camera for video calls.
One
of its key features is Time Shift where you can take a picture of a group and
then change each face to several seconds back or forward until you’ve got them
all with their eyes open (or closed if you’re feeling mean).
The camera itself is reasonable - images are very clear but a little dark and
rather oddly, you have to drag and drop where you want to focus making it a
less than speedy process.
Verdict
Is this the phone to
save BlackBerry? Some would argue that it has to be and in many ways, it is. By
creating BlackBerry Balance, the maker has shown that it can still be the
smartphone of choice for businesses.
For the rest of us all the features that make it such a capable work phone are
then focused on making it a social phone.
The Z10 will certainly win over BlackBerry fans and if they can get the big
apps released soon then they could well steal back even more users, but we
can't seem them winning over iOS, Android and WP8 in huge numbers.
In a world where everything is ‘quad-core’ and ‘next-gen’ the Z10 still manages
to fight through the noise by being quietly efficient suggesting that
BlackBerry may have won the first round, but only just.
