MOBILE PHO
The BlackBerry Z10 is a full-screen BlackBerry with a terrific display, new operating system, fast processor, 4G capability and some additional business security features.
For a while now it's felt as the BlackBerry brand has been living on borrowed time, its innovations slowly but steadily eroded by the juggernauts of Apple, Google and even Microsoft. But now comes a potential saviour, on sale now for £480.
Design
The Z10 is a solid slab of tech measuring a hefty 130x66mm but manages to keep the thickness aspect down to just 9mm, which is a mite portly by iPhone 5 standards, but still slim enough for most. There's a power button and headphone jack on top and as with BlackBerrys of yore, the volume buttons flank an additional key, but it's no longer programmable -- it mutes the sound or if you hold it down you'll access voice control functions. On the opposite side are a microSD power/sync port and a mini HDMI out for sending your videos and pics to an HDTV.
In common with the Samsung Galaxy S3 and others the removable back is distressingly thin and flimsy. Fortunately it clips securely into place and doesn't suffer from any obvious flex. Underneath are an oddly long and thin battery, plus slots for micro SIM and microSD memory cards.
Screen quality
The 4.2-inch touchscreen has an HD resolution of 1,280x768 pixels and a pixel density of 356ppi. That puts it ahead of the iPhone 5's Retina display sharpness-wise, and on a par with Nokia's Lumia 920. It looks beautiful and was a cinch to use. Beneath the screen is a large BlackBerry logo across an outsized bezel.
There's a point to this besides vanity however, since the bezel is active -- you use it to move around the various screens by swiping up through the screen. Swiping from within an app will show you compressed views of all the apps you're currently running, and from there you can either choose to go into one or swipe to the left to reveal your shortcuts. Swiping up and to the right gets you inot the BlackBerry Hub, which pulls together all your emails, texts and social networking updates.
BB10
The BlackBerry 10 operating system marks a break from past versions, and sees BlackBerry moving a step or two closer to what we've come to expect from iOS, with a little bit of Android. So you get multiple home pages that you can populate with shortcut icons, but there are no active widgets to hit you with regularly updated info as soon as you switch on the phone. Then again, you won't get the battery drain that constant updates tend to demand.
One asset for business types who sign up to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server is the BlackBerry Balance feature. So you can swipe up to flip between your personal phone settings and your company's corporate account, with whatever content your IT department has established. You can't copy between the two, so security concerns are covered, which ticks the BYOD boxes for the suits and will certainly make some IT managers very happy.
It's clear that BlackBerry still sees business as its core, but that's really the only area where it has any kind of an edge. For virtually all other smartphone aspects, it's long since ceased to be a leader. Still, the Z10's certainly a good enough phone that you wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen with one.
Virtual keyboard
BlackBerry is still strong on messaging, and the new text prediction is unique. The keyboard will consistently throw up suggestions for possible words, but unusually, these will be dotted around the keyboard, based on the position of the next letter for each prediction. If you want to use one, you flick it up onto the sentence you're typing. The flick technique takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you're there it's pretty easy to use.
It's a bit disconcerting that the onscreen keyboard only shows capital letters though -- they'll appear as lower case unless you say otherwise, but when you're used to Android or iOS offering a choice, it seems a bit weird.
PerformanceThere are no quad-core processing pyrotechnics, but the dual-core 1.5GHz engine is backed by a full 2GB RAM, which puts it a step in front of most dual-core handsets and there were no obvious signs of lag, even when we were running a dozen or so apps at once.
Speaking of apps, of course BlackBerry World doesn't have anything like the sheer number available to iOS or Android users, and nor is it ever likely to. But the important thing is that it has lots of the major ones and comes with about 35 preinstalled, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Box and YouTube.
Other features include the BlackBerry Link syncing software, which is fairly straightforward, automatically sussing out your music, pics and vids on your computer and lining them up for syncing. NFC's on board too and you can use it for both payments or for changing your settings using smart tags. BlackBerry Maps is favoured over Google and while it's not as detailed or as well featured as the world leader (which can be a problem, as Apple found to its costrecently when it humiliatingly backtracked on its attempt to oust it from the iOS platform) it'll get you there in most cases.
Cameras and battery
The 8-megapixel camera comes with autofocus and an LED flash but not much in the way of tweaking features. There's no smile or face detection, and no touch focus either, but it does have TimeShift, which lets you take five quickfire shots both before and after you press the shutter -- very handy for capturing elusive moments. It also has a large F2.2 lens to let in more light and picture quality is generally pretty good, although it can be a little light on detail compared to the best. It will record full HD 1080p video too, and there's a 2-megapixel camera on the front for video calls. There's 16GB of memory on board though unlike most Windows phones or indeed the iPhone, you can add up to 64GB more via microSD card.
The 1,800mAh battery did a decent job of keeping the phone active throughout a full day of fairly heavy use -- it's certainly not exceptional, but like most elements of the Z10, it's enough to keep the wheels on the bus without trying to reinvent them.
Conclusion
BlackBerry had a lot of work to do just to keep itself in the premium smartphone game, let alone anywhere near the front of the pack, and it's safe to say that it hasn't cocked it up (it was probably a good idea to end any ongoing confusion by ditching the old company name too). The Z10 may not be exceptional when compared to its rivals and the premium price doesn't really help it either, in these days where top-end prices are rolling downwards. But from its HD screen to its nippy processor, business security features and decent 8-megapixel camera, it does a sound job. It will be interesting to see theQwerty keyboard-toting Q10 in a few weeks' time.
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