BlackBerry (RIM) CEO Thorsten Heins at the launch
After repeated promises, delays, leaks, and previews, the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones — the touchscreen Z10 and the QWERTY-packing Q10 — were revealed on January 30 at simultaneous launches in New York and London. Research In Motion — the company now calling itself BlackBerry, has both everything to lose and everything to gain with the new devices: its smartphone market share is now in the single digits, and its stock has plummeted 90 percent since 2008. The question on everyone’s lips is: can the first BlackBerry 10 phones save the company?
So far, the answer seems to be yes — but don’t expect BlackBerry to steamroll ahead of the iPhone or Android platforms. If BlackBerry 10 is even modestly successful, it will at most steal some market share from Windows Phone 8 in the smartphone OS battle for third place.
BlackBerry is targeting BB10 at both businesses and consumers. The original BlackBerry platform and phones were an early favorite of businesses, and the new BlackBerry 10 aims to keep it that way. In fact, BB10 takes it one step further with BlackBerry Balance, which neatly and securely separates your work and personal data on the phone. This unique feature is sure to be a huge plus for many IT department device administrators.
BlackBerry 10 offers some other unique features, too. Below are a few of the coolest, with links to short video demos:
BlackBerry Hub, which acts as a communication center for business
BBM Video Chat & Screen Share, which lets you share a variety of images with the person with whom you’re chatting.
Predictive keyboard on the Z10, which learns and predicts what you want to type.
Time Shift Mode, which lets you delete or replace parts of a photo with elements from other images captured within seconds of your photo.
Story Maker, which lets you select photos and other media to quickly create a multimedia presentation.
Z10 reviews and comparisons roundup
So far, all BlackBerry Z10 reviews have been remarkably consistent. With the exception of the die-hard BlackBerry fans at CrackBerry, most reviewers conclude that the phone is very good, but doesn’t lead in any major way. Among the reviewers’ biggest gripes is the relatively poor-quality of the Z10’s 8-megapixel camera, and the lack of apps at launch. Although BlackBerry claims 70,000 apps at launch — many more than Microsoft had when it launched Windows Phone — it’s still small potatoes compared to the nearly one million apps available to iPhone or Android smartphone owners. On the plus side, most of the top-selling apps already support BlackBerry 10, so if you are a BlackBerry loyalist or just want something different, the number of apps may not be a deal-breaker.
AllThingsD review:
“The hardware is decent and the user interface is logical and generally easy to use. I believe it has a chance of getting BlackBerry back into the game, if the company can attract a lot more apps.”
CIO review:
“If you’re looking for a high-end, touch-screen smartphone that feels different than the iPhone, Android or any other mobile OS – and you’re not too concerned with the lack of quality BlackBerry 10 apps – you’ll find a friend in the Z10. But if you want a healthy selection of the most popular mobile apps and the best overall mobile experience available today, you probably want to look elsewhere.”
CNET review:
“3.5/5. Members of the BlackBerry Faithful…the BlackBerry Z10 has everything you’ve been waiting for: a sleek, modern, and professional touch-screen body with an up-to-date OS to match and 4G LTE support. You’ll revel in the virtual keyboard’s ease and in BlackBerry Messenger’s seamless voice chats. You’ll crow about the Z10’s Micro-HDMI port. Slip off the RIM-colored glasses, though, and you won’t be able to ignore the minor hardware and OS irritations that nevertheless pile up as you use the Z10 over time — like having to use an antiquated and unintuitive file system to create a new photo album, and a basic mapping app that can’t possibly stand up to Google’s best-in-show. For their part, BlackBerry detractors will plainly see a poor iPhone clone that offers little more than the usual features found in any present-day OS worth its salt.”
CrackBerry review:
“The UI experience is buttery smooth and built for touch. The OS is rock solid stable. There’s no crashing, no choking, and no slow downs. The BlackBerry Z10 can yank down data fast. With the BlackBerry Z10, I can finally start walking around with just one device in my pocket without feeling like I’m missing out. BlackBerry 10 retains the best features of the BlackBerry of old, plays catch up in the OS and apps department to the competition, and with features like Hub and Flow actually push the smartphone experience further. It’s a BlackBerry that is equally good at getting work done and having fun too. If you’re fan of the BlackBerry experience, when the Z10 becomes available on your carrier RUN, don’t walk, and pick it up.”
Engadget review:
“BlackBerry’s BlackBerry Z10 is genuinely a pretty nice phone. Performance, helped by the lightweight QNX-based OS, is more than acceptable. The form factor offers you plenty of screen size in a device that may not feel luxurious, but does at least seem durable. And, bucking the trend, the battery is removable. Camera performance is adequate in most cases and overall there’s really a lot to like. But, tragically, there’s really nothing to love. Nothing in the Z10 stands out as class-leading.”
Gizmodo – Blackberry Z10 vs. the competition:
“Unsurprisingly, there’s not a whole lot of variability under the hood of top phones. BlackBerry’s playing catchup here, and so while they’re hitting all the features we’ve come to expect in top of the line smartphones (e.g. LTE, 8 megapixel camera, high pixel density, NFC), they’re not offering any real standout innovation.”
Mobile Industry Review review:
“I LOVE the fact there’s a removable battery. The on screen keyboard is simply the best I’ve ever used…It’s fast, it’s incredibly accurate and I really, REALLY like the fact you can more or less type whole sentences without spaces and the system will parse it for you. …The BB10 keyboard parses ‘somethinglikethis’ into ‘something like this’ immediately without any thinking on your part.”
Pocket-lint review:
“We can’t help feeling that RIM has done what it has always done: made an amazing smartphone for its customers and no one else. That’s fine when RIM ruled the roost and it had lots of customers, but there is nothing overly amazing here that is going to woo back Android or iPhone users who are disgruntled. This is not the end of RIM though: when it comes to enterprise customers, Android and iPhone don’t come near it.”
The New York Times review:
“The software is simple to master, elegantly designed and surprisingly complete. It offers features nobody else offers, some tailored to the corporate world. On the other hand, wow, is this horse late to the race. The BlackBerry music, movie and app stores are just getting under way. If you choose BlackBerry over iPhone or Android, you give up some very attractive ecosystems, like the way Apple synchronizes your calendar, messages, and photos on all your gadgets. Or, for Android, the similar conveniences of Google Voice and Google Maps. But this much is clear: BlackBerry is no longer an incompetent mess — and its doom is no longer assured.”
The Telegraph review:
“The Z10 is a very good device. …[But] in an era when Apple’s iPhone 5 was a slight disappointment because it was a little bit predictable, and when Samsung is packing phones so full of features it’s hard to always find a use for them, the Z10 is merely quite good. It will find its corporate niche, and ‘too little too late’ is too harsh. But it’s not quite enough, not quite soon enough.”
The Verge review:
“7/10. The problem with the Z10 is that it doesn’t necessarily do anything better than any of its competition. …If you love RIM and the BlackBerry brand and really want to keep supporting them, buying a Z10 wouldn’t be a mistake. But I think there are better phones on the market, and I don’t yet see a compelling reason for most customers to choose this phone over those better ones.”
The Verge – BlackBerry Z10 vs. the competition:
“Windows Phone hasn’t yet established that there’s room for three in the smartphone landscape; BlackBerry’s task is proving it’s a viable fourth option.”
BlackBerry Q10 hands-on roundup:
Finally, here’s a brief roundup of the keyboard-packing BlackBerry Q10. This phone isn’t being released until April and isn’t yet available for reviewers, but here are some hands-on impressions from the launch events:
What do you think — will you be trying out the Z10 or Q10, and if so, which features won you over? And if you’re opting out of the BlackBerry 10 experience, what’s your phone of choice?
