BlackBerry is back. Right now only known as
"BlackBerry", the company once called RIM has its new senior phone -
the full touchscreen Z10 - with a new operating system, BlackBerry 10.
Black
Berry Z10
BlackBerry is back. Right now only known as
"BlackBerry", the company once called RIM has its new senior phone -
the full touchscreen Z10 - with a new operating system, BlackBerry 10.
There are no hard buttons for navigation,
and operations based entirely on touch. It is the first phone of this type, but
BlackBerry 10 allows navigation quickly becomes second nature.
Build Quality
It's
clean and simple, with straight edges and rounded corners
Z10 really is the BlackBerry's iPhone, and
its design is similar to the design of the latest smartphone of Apple. It's
clean and simple, with straight edges and rounded corners. The front looks
almost identical to the back of the iPhone, but the screen and the back looks
like a plastic version of the iPhone. A textured rubber including those small
ripples is similar to Nexus 7.
It is slightly larger than the iPhone with
its 66x130x9.2 dimensions. The phone is nice and light which only weigh 135g,
and is available in black and white.
However, we were not impressed with the
build quality. The body is mainly plastic, so the phone feels cheap. We do not
like its fragile back cover, just tap on the Z10, the components inside of it
immediately clicks.
Performance
BlackBerry
Z10 with battery cover removed
Powering your phone's a dual core processor
1.5GHz and 2GB of memory. BlackBerry OS 10 is fast, and in our tests it does
not show any signs of delay. The web browser is also faster no less, and the
1710ms score in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark does not reflect our
subjective experience. Remember that Z10 is not perfect: we have seen problems
when double-tap to zoom our website.
Adobe Flash is present but turned off in
the settings. The BBC dedicated application is only used for opening your
browser.
With a 4.2 inch, the screen is large enough
to comfortably browse the web, use apps and watch video content. The 16:9
screen with 768x1280 pixels and its density of 355ppi overcomes most Retina on
all other phones except Xperia Z and HTC One.
Text and images look bright and clear.
Vivid color, good contrast and plenty of brightness. Our only worry is how fast
the screen will attract fingerprints - clearly there is no uncoated oleophobic
here.
Vivid
color, good contrast and plenty of brightness
The internal storage is only 16GB, a
quarter of which was occupied by the operating system BlackBerry 10.
Fortunately that microSDXC slot allows you to add 64GB.
In addition to micro-USB port and normal
headphone jack, the Z10 also has Micro HDMI. It allows you to connect your phone
with a larger screen. Also present here is dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS
and NFC.
If the connection is available in your
area, Z10 also supports 4G LTE. It's much faster than 3G, but still a
relatively new technology (at least in the UK).
8MP primary camera included LED flash, a
dedicated microprocessor signal photo and f/2.2 lens. It can also record
full-HD videos. Our sample images look as beautiful as the image of the Nokia
Lumia 920 and the iPhone 5.
The salient feature of the BlackBerry is the
Time Shift, a burst mode from which you can choose the elements of each image
you see is best to create one high-quality image.
The good editor let you crop and rotate
images, adjust white balance and adding filters and Instagram-type borders.
BlackBerry 10
The
well-known BBM IM service has received updates from BlackBerry 10 with video
chat
The well-known BBM IM service has received
updates from BlackBerry 10 with video chat. The front-facing camera features
720p video recording, and in our tests, it looks beautiful. There is not Skype
application available, but it going to be there soon.
The full touchscreen activity means to
control the Z10 a little bit obstacles at the first place. BlackBerry 10
similar to PlayBook OS, with one home screen, which is empty until you start
running one application. The open application is shown in small windows, with 4
apps on the screen at any given time and the latest applications at the top. We
like the ability to pin favorite applications here.
The swipe up from the bottom will take you
back to the home screen, and you tap the X button to close the application.
The traditional menu application is just
away from you a swipe to the right of the home screen. The swipe from the top
of the screen will bring phone settings or options related to the opening
application.
Also new is the BlackBerry Hub, a center of
inbox / message all-in-one for email, text, call, voicemail, BBM and social
networking. You can select each account separately as you prefer. Hub is
available wherever you are in the operating system.
BlackBerry fans expect one good keyboard,
and the keyboard is not bad. The more you use it the more it can predict what
you want to write.
Application
At the time we made this review, the
BlackBerry World app store has about 70 thousand applications. Games, music and
movies are bundled, and you can buy magazines from BlackBerry Newsstand.
Facebook and Twitter are preloaded, but
some big names like Amazon Kindle and WhatsApp are absent. BlackBerry says that
such apps will soon arrive.
The removable 6.7Wh battery is expected to
provide up to 13 days standby or 10 hours of talk time. We only get 1 hour of
use.
Verdict
Z10 look like a plastic iPhone with an
excellent display. The new OS make this phone become the most attractive BlackBerry
so far, but it still cannot beat iOS or Android at this price.
·
Price: $700
·
Design 3.5/5
·
Feature: 4/5
·
Performance: 3.5/5
·
Value for money: 3/5
·
Overall: 3.5/5
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Specifications
·
Product name: BlackBerry Z10
·
Price: $700
·
Dual-core processor ARM 1.5GHz
·
Operating system: BlackBerry 10
·
4.2 inch touchscreen LCD (768x1280)
·
2GB RAM
·
16GB internal storage
·
Connectivity: dual-band 802.11b/g/n, 4G LTE,
Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, Micro- HDMI, Micro-USB, microSDXC card slot
·
8MP primary camera (1080p video), 2MP front-facing
camera (720p video)
·
Dimensions: 66x130x9.2mm
·
Weigh: 135g.
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