BlackBerry’s Z10 keeps quite perfectly the
advantages of other previous BlackBerry smartphones, which is good supported in
working. If you consider smartphones as tools for working, the Z10 handset is
reasonable and there is nothing to blame on it. BlackBerry Hub is smart and
efficient with an e-mail application which supports a variety of different
types of accounts.
The built-in Docs To Go Office toolkit allows
processing Word and Excel files, and also Power Point slide shows, with an integrated
miniHDMI port on the left side to output to a projector or large screen easily.
The browser with built-in flash and HTML5 support has the browsing speed a
little faster than Safari on iOS, Chrome on Android or IE on Windows Phone with
features that are not inferior.
However, the plus that is worth mentioning here
in the Z10 is that BlackBerry has balanced the two needs, which are working and
playing on a single phone, which the previous BlackBerry phones were still
"struggling". Social networking applications like Facebook, Twitter are
refreshed on BlackBerry 10 with the same features that they have on iOS or
Android, but work just more smoothly.
One
weakness of the Z10 now is the lack of apps on the store due to the new platform.
The music application on BlackBerry 10 is
changed to make the Z10 more helpful in entertainment. The interface is
designed with more space, showing big album covers quite beautifully. It also has
a built-in DLNA, which allows streaming music and connecting to a variety of
audio-visual equipments for music, photos or video playback over a wireless
network. Its also supports multiple music file types, including lossless;
however, one shortcoming of the music player is that there is no Equalizer tool
to tweak the sound effects.
Besides, the weakness of the BlackBerry Z10
is the lack of third-party appsdue to that fact that the BlackBerry 10
operating system is too new. The majority of the current popular multi-platform
applications or games will not appear on the new BlackBerry platform.
Performance and battery life
The BlackBerry Z10 is equipped with a Snapdragon
S4 1.5GHz dual-core processor, with Adreno 225 graphics card and RAM of up to 2GB.
Although it is not the strongest processor in the current smartphone market,
the Z10 is still a good smartphone thanks to the optimized BlackBerry 10
operating system, much the same with other smartphones running iOS and Windows
Phone.
The
excellent ability of multi-tasking on the Z10
In fact, the BlackBerry Z10 runs very
smoothly, even the integration of graphical effects on the interface are not
maing the device run more slowly like on Android. When testing the popular
Angry Bird Space game, the time for downloading the game is the same to that of
the iPhone 5. The Z10 also shows that it is the smartphone which is capable of operating
stably for a continuously long and tiring time.
Multitasking is the most remarkable feature
of the BlackBerry Z10 if it has to be compared with other competitors using
other platforms. We can run eight applications at the same time and when trying
to use 24 different applications, the device still works normally. Multitasking
on the BlackBerry 10 is also quite good as apps will be displaye as windows, which
is easy to observe.
An interesting point that shows multitasking
works well on the Z10 is when opening an online music page in the browser, on
exit and turning off the screen, the music is still playing as usual. A small
pop-up window like the built-in music player appear, allowing users to adjust
the volume, or turning on/off, tuning to other songs on playing music in the
browser.
Like most smartphones today, on continuous
operation, the Z10 is also significantly hot in the back cover. However, the
heat did not seem to be abnormal and unacceptable.
With
the original firmware, the battery life is quite bad.
The BlackBerry Z10 has the battery life of
1800 mAh. If compared with other previous phones, the Z10 is not a BlackBerry
one with good battery life. If you turn on Wi-Fi, with 3G mode on and with continuous
operation, logging into social network accounts or Blackberry’s Yahoo Messenger
causes time battery to drain very quickly; after 3.5 to 4 hours the battery
runs out.
If you log out from Yahoo Messenger, as
well as Wi-Fi on/off depending on the time of use, you will save a lot of power
for the machine. However, with the full battery and 3G on, the Z10 only works
about 10 hours, equivalent to one working day. The battery life on the BB10 is
just about 15% lower than the Bold 9900 in the same conditions of use.
The high price is also one of the
difficulties that leave some obstacles for the Z10.
Info
·
Product name: BlackBerry Z10
·
Price: $679
Specifications
·
Dimensions: 130x65.6x9 mm (5.12x2.58x0.35 in)
·
Weight: 137.5 g (4.83 oz)
·
Display Type: capacitive touch, 16M colors
·
Display Size: 768x1,280 pixels, 4.2 inches
(~355 ppi pixel density)
·
Memory: microSD, up to 64GB; internal memory:
16Gb storage, 2GB RAM
·
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual band
·
Bluetooth: yes, v4.0 with A2DP, LE
·
NFC: yes
·
USB: yes, microUSB v2.0
·
Camera: primary, 8MP, 3,264x2,448 pixels,
autofocus, LED flash, with geo-tagging, face detection, image stabilization, 1080p@30fps,
video stabilization; secondary, 2 MP, 720p@30fps
·
OS: BlackBerry 10 OS
·
Chipset: Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon
·
CPU: Dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait
·
GPU: Adreno 225
·
Battery: Li-Ion 1800mAh, stand-by up to 312h,
talk time up to 10h.
Advantages
·
Nice display
·
Stable build quality
·
Removable battery
Disadvantages
·
Limited app selection
·
Slow boot and shutdown
·
Underpowered speaker
Verdict
·
The BlackBerry Z10 is a better-than-good, but
far-from-great smartphone.
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