The BlackBerry Z10, the first smartphone to run the brand-spanking-new BlackBerry 10 operating system, finally gives us the first full
look at what Research In Motion (now BlackBerry) has bet its future on. And judging
by the product itself, it's a smart bet. BlackBerry
10 is a truly cutting-edge platform, capable of
mobile-computing feats that Android and iOS
can only dream of. However, BB10 is also coming way late to the
smartphone game, and it's unclear whether it
will ever get the support it needs — from
consumers, businesses and developers — to
really succeed. After using the Z10 for the past
week, I think it would be a real shame if it didn't, because this phone can, in some
surprising ways, be a real joy to use. The BlackBerry Z10 starts winning you over in
the very first second with its novel way of
coming out of sleep mode. Instead of pressing
one of the (very few) physical buttons, you
simply slide your finger up from the bottom of
the screen. The phone's lock screen then lights up, but it doesn't stop there: The phone will
show you the unlocked screen, too, but only up
to the point where your finger is, rather like a
curtain rising. Finish sliding up and the phone
comes alive in whatever state you left it in;
slide back down and it shuts off again. It's useful, clever and addictive — and about as
cool as "slide to unlock" could ever get. The trick also highlights one of the biggest
problems the Z10 is going to have in winning
over customers: It's unfamiliar. The Z10 has no
home button. It consolidates email, messaging
and notification into a Hub that demands users
think about those functions differently. It has an odd way of switching between apps. While some of these departures make a lot of
sense, they amount to learning curve that
anyone picking up the Z10 for the first time
may not have the patience for. In a world
where most smartphone sales happen in a
store, RIM's going to need some serious on-the- ground support for this phone for customers to
really see the potential. I can see a lot of people
throwing it down in frustration after the first
30 seconds. The Hardware At least RIM has designed a phone that people
will want to pick up. The Z10 is a good-looking
piece of hardware, and I don't think that it's
any coincidence that it looks like the iPhone 5
from a distance. It's a little bit larger — 0.35 of
an inch thick to the iPhone's 0.30 — but the overall proportions and design are virtually
identical, right down to the rounded corners. This is a completely different phone, of course,
and it shows. The Z10 has a rubberized back
that feels good in the hand and ensures it
doesn't slip, even on a sloped tabletop. The
back is removable, letting you swap in a spare
battery very quickly and gives quick access to things like the SIM card and microSD memory
(none is included, but it accommodates up to
64GB). There are some nice touches that show off
RIM's skill in designing mobile handsets. The top
and the bottom of the phone are sloped slightly
down toward the edges to make it more
comfortable to hold in landscape mode. The edges themselves have just the right
amount of crispness, slightly duller than the
iPhone's, and the volume buttons on the side
have indented shapes so you can easily identify
them by touch. And yes, the traditional
BlackBerry blinking red LED is there. Overall, the Z10 a joy to hold. The screen is an extremely sharp 4.2-inch LCD
with a resolution of 1,280 x 768. That takes it
well beyond "retina" resolution at 356 pixels
per inch, and the result is ultra-crisp text and
excellent color on things like photos and games.
Of course, beautiful visual experiences are table stakes these days in high-end smartphones, but
it's good to see RIM did its homework here. Those pixels need an engine to drive them, and
the Z10's is a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm
Snapdragon processor with 2GB of RAM. By my
reckoning, the chip did a great job powering
the phone, keeping up with my finger
movements to make the overall experience feel fluid. App crashes were very rare, occurring far
less often than they do on iOS or Android
(probably about 90% less), but keep in mind
BlackBerry 10 has far fewer apps and just one
device that developers need to take into
account. Besides being the first BB10, the Z10 is notable
for being the first BlackBerry phone to have 4G
LTE connectivity. Previously, the PlayBook tablet
(which runs software that's similar, but not
identical to BB10) was the only RIM device with
LTE. Of course, LTE isn't available on every major carrier, but the Z10 will be. The Power of 10 It's nice that the Z10 is a great piece of
hardware, but the BlackBerry 10 experience is
where the phone — and RIM's chance for
redemption — lives and dies. BlackBerry 10 is a
powerful multitasker and organizer, but it takes
some getting used to, and it's not for everyone. The big focus in BlackBerry 10 is the Hub. The
Hub represents a rethinking of how mobile
phones handle messaging. Instead of switching
between different apps to deal with email, text
messages and notifications, the Hub puts them
all in one place — basically a giant Inbox with all of your messages in a single stream. Even
Facebook and Twitter can be mixed in,
integrated as system-wide accounts. It's less chaotic than it sounds. You can choose
to display any single account at one time (say,
just Gmail or Facebook notifications), and even
in the main stream every message has clear
icons so you can tell at a glance what it is. Don't
want your Twitter @replies mixed in, but still want Hub access to them? You can turn off
what appears in the stream while keeping it in
the Hub. The Hub is seemingly ever-present, always
running in the background. Calling it up is a
simple matter, but it's not immediately obvious.
Whatever app you're running, whatever screen
you're on, you can navigate back to the Hub
with two simple gestures: swipe up from the bottom, then swipe rightward from the left
edge. It's not hard — unless no one has shown
you how to do it. Swiping up is actually the gesture for
minimizing your app, putting it on a page with
all other apps the phone is running at any given
time — what RIM calls Active Frames. When
minimized, an app remains running, and you
can resume exactly as you left it. This kind of multitasking, without taxing battery life, is one
of BlackBerry 10's strengths — something iOS
struggles with. Although the number of active
apps appears to be limited to eight, I was able
to call up a game of Angry Birds Star Wars
hours after I began it, picking it up at the exact level I was playing. How the phone responds to gestures is what
RIM refers to as the "flow" of BlackBerry 10.
Part of the flow is Peek, which is what RIM calls
the gesture of sliding your thumb to "peek"
behind your app at other content, typically the
Hub. To get a quick look at the Hub, you slide your
finger up, then to the right from any screen. The
movement tracks your finger precisely,
snapping the "peeked" content back when you,
well, snap back. It's extremely handy — once
you get the hang of it, that is. Back to the Hub. I found it to be an elegant
solution to the issue of "message creep," with
having several different apps for email, texting
and all the rest. However, like most messaging
aggregators, it has its weaknesses. Searching
my Gmail account, for example, doesn't work anywhere near as well as on the native iOS
app. And I'd appreciate something along the
lines of the iPhone's VIP list of top-priority
senders. The Hub provides a quick look at your calendar,
visible when I pulled down from the top of my
stream. There were my appointments for the
next day, but I really started to taste the power
of BlackBerry 10 when I launched the Calendar
app. Calling up a Mashable staff meeting, the phone showed me the Facebook profiles and
contact information of everyone invited. This
wasn't in the Gmail invite — the phone was
actively going out to my contact lists and
accounts to and get any possible info that
might be relevant to what I was looking at. Much appreciated. As much as I appreciated that, the Calendar is
hampered by the classic problem of not being
able to sync multiple Google calendars. This
really has more to do with Google's support
than BlackBerry's, but such distinctions are lost
on users. Google calendars can be accessed via the web, of course, but then you lose the BB10
magic. Messaging Machine One of the biggest things touted in BlackBerry
10 is the touchscreen keyboard, which predicts
text in a different way than iOS or Android do.
As you type, the OS tries to guess the word
you're spelling out, displaying the complete
word above the key for the next letter. If it's right, you just flick upward, and the word
appears. The feature supposedly gets better the
more you use it, and even works in up to three
languages at once. Sound groundbreaking? To me, not really, and it
isn't. Perhaps the predictor just takes some
practice, but I found that trying to read words
above my keys as I typed actually slowed me
down rather than making me a more efficient
typist. Maybe a legion of BlackBerry 10 texters will emerge in the coming months, but I doubt
it. BB10's text predictor is no Swype, where the
benefits are much clearer. BlackBerry 10 does, however, bring with it an
updated version of RIM's extremely popular
BlackBerry Messenger app. BBM has now been
upgraded to include video chat, bringing it up
to speed alongside Apple's FaceTime/iMessage
experience (voice chats were already in previous versions of BBM). Call quality is decent
— better than Skype, but not quite as good as
FaceTime. It's horrid when you're on 3G. BBM video chats have an extra bonus: screen
sharing. With just a tap, you can show the
person at the other end of the line your phone's
screen, letting you quickly share photos, videos,
apps — whatever you're looking at really. The
imagery is a little jagged, improving slightly if you stay on one screen for a couple of seconds,
but it's never as sharp as your native screen. Huge limitation, though: Video chats are only
possible between BB10 devices, limiting them
to owners of the Z10 and the coming X10
QWERTY phone. Most video chatting services
are incompatible in this way (although
progress is being made), but it still sucks. I also encountered some weirdness in the with
email contacts. Trying to email some photos to
myself, the phone for some reason associated
one of my Facebook contacts — someone I
barely ever interact with — with my primary
email address. It's the same email I use for Facebook, but putting this guy's name in the
recipient field made no sense. At least the email
got to me. And if you got it, too, Mike — sorry. BlackBerry 10 handles copying and pasting
similar to Android, just in a slightly more
showy way, with similar highlighting and a
large "lens" that supposedly helps you zero in
on where you want to paste. It's functional, but
not nearly as elegant as iOS's roving menus and useful zoom. One way BlackBerry 10 is not similar to
Android is there's no system-wide back button,
a decision I applaud. The back button on
Android is one of that OS's biggest
weaknesses, mainly because it's unclear what
it's going to do any given time you tap it. In BB10, apps will display a back button — which
typically appears in the same lower-left location
— when it's needed, tucking it away when it's
not. Camera Action Just like most phones today, the Z10 has a pair
of cameras: an 8-megapixel model in back and
a 2MP one in front, the latter of which is pretty
good by today's standards — handy for selfies.
The rear camera has an LED flash and does
1080p video recording. The front camera can record in 720p. Feature-wise, the cameras are relatively bare-
bones compared to those found on the iPhone
and top Android devices. There's no panorama
mode, for instance, and you're also not
overloaded with the chinese-menu of shooting
modes that are common on Samsung phones. Yes, there are some exposure presets (e.g.
"Action" and "Night" and you can toggle the
flash and image stabilization, but that's about it. That's it, until of course you engage the
camera's Time Shift mode. Time Shift is one of BlackBerry 10's "wow"
features, using the camera with some clever
on-the-fly photo editing to fix annoying "Joe
blinked, let's do it again" moments in group
pictures. Here's how it works. First, engage Time Shift
mode. Then get your group together, and snap
your pic. Joe blink again? Just tap on his face
and you can go forward or backward in time
on just that face, the phone expertly
photoshopping Joe's alert expression on the moment where everybody else looks great.
Greta blinked too? You can do the same for her. Time Shift works well on the BlackBerry Z10,
but we've seen similar functionality in the
camera of the Samsung Galaxy Note II. RIM's
implementation is superior, however, zooming
in on the person and calling up a rotating slider
to select the exact moment of the person's "best face." It's a little addicting, and everyone I
showed the feature loved it. Less well executed is Storymaker, a BB10 app
that can assemble videos and photos from your
phone to create a "story" — sort of a video/
slideshow hybrid — of any particular
experience. It's a bit like a mobile version of
iLife, although it's very compromised. It's not tweakable enough to be a serious editor, and
it's not focused enough to encourage the
creative engagment of, say, Vine. I'm calling it
now: Storymaker will be a flop. Apps, Apps... Apps? Yes, the Z10 is a fine piece of mobile hardware,
and BlackBerry 10 does some impressive and
useful things, despite its steep learning curve.
However, no discussion of the platform is
complete without talking about apps. And apps
are BB10's fatal weakness. Here in 2013, where Android and iOS are fully
mature platforms, with hundreds of thousands
of apps, RIM's 80,000 or so are simply insufficient to offer a viable alternative. But it's
really not about the raw numbers; it's about
getting support for key developers, and
offering customers a variety of useful and
entertaining experiences. When I was setting up my Z10, I scowered
BlackBerry World (formerly App World) for the
apps I use the most often on my iPhone. eBay?
Nope. CNN? Forget it. Pocket? Uh-uh. Netflix?
Notoriously, no. What about stuff that ties into
my gadgets, such as Eye-Fi, Nike+ or Jawbone's UP app? Nada, zip, zilch. Okay, how about
productivity-related apps I use for work,
including Trello, Campfire and Expensify? Not a
one. Even Pulse, a news reader I use religiously
and has a simple HTML5 base, isn't there. Certainly, BlackBerry 10 has some apps.
Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare are there,
though some of those were created by RIM
itself, not the networks. Lastpass — a
password manager that's essential to my
workflow — is there. You can also get Angry Birds and many news apps, such as the CBC. All that's well and good, but it's not enough. For
most people here in 2013, their smartphones
have slowly become intertwined with their
digital lives, and RIM is pretty much starting
from scratch here. It's created a large canvas in
BlackBerry 10, but it's largely blank, and that's a tough sell for anyone in the market for a phone
today. Do you want a powerful mutitasker, or a
phone that can actually run Instagram and
Flipboard? The Balance Factor The Z10 has an ace in the hole, though, and
that's BlackBerry Balance. It used to be that you
needed two phones — one for your job and
one for personal use. That's evolved into using
the same phone for both sides of your life, but
the consequence has been an intermixing of email, calls and other content (photos, etc.) from
both worlds on the same device. BlackBerry Balance restores the wall between
work and play, but on the same phone. If you
end up using a BlackBerry Z10 for work, your
company can create a work profile on the
phone via BlackBerry Enterprise Service , one that's completely separate from the personal
side. Your company has total management of
the work profile, but the personal one is out of
bounds. RIM has engineered this at the chip
level, and it says it's physically impossible to
transfer data between the two profiles. Nonetheless, a Balance-enabled Z10 has just one
phone number, and you'll never miss a single
notification from either profile. All your email,
texts and notifications still get through. You can
see the number of calendar events and contacts
on the other side, but you can't view them until you unlock it. With Balance, I can see BlackBerry 10 winning
over company CIOs all over again. Finally they'll
be able to issue their staff a single phone that
they can use for both work and play. There
may be a lot of interest in BB10 from business
for this reason, which may be the platform's best hope, because I can't see consumers
getting interested until the app gap starts to
close, and that's not going to happen until RIM
can show developers they can make real
money creating BB10 apps. The Final Word I like a lot of what RIM's done here. The Hub,
while not perfect, is a well-thought-out solution
to "message creep" on smartphones today. The
multitasking is excellent, on par with Palm/HP's
dearly departed webOS platform. And that
slide-to-unlock trick is hot. When RIM debuted its PlayBook tablet, it
adopted the slogan "amateur hour is over," a
clear dig at the iPad and its consumption-based
use case. Today, that tagline is better directed at
RIM itself. With BlackBerry 10, the company
finally casts aside its withered operating system — an amateur mobile experience
among the platforms of today — for something
that's a leap ahead. RIM's finally gone pro. However, BlackBerry 10 stumbles, first right out
of the gate with its steep learning curve, and
second with its anemic app selection that
doesn't provide apps (like Vine) that deliver the
full mobile experience that today's digital
consumers want. Like Windows Phone, BlackBerry 10 now faces the chicken-and-egg
problem between developers and consumers:
There aren't enough apps to interest
consumers, and developers won't create them
until there are enough consumers to make
money. For iOS and Android owners, BlackBerry 10 is a
tough sell. That's why RIM's battle to reclaim
relevance will likely be fought overseas, where smartphone penetration is low. For customers
who just want a great email manager and a
few powerful organizing tools, the Z10 will
provide a great experience. And it can only get
better: The potential of BB10 is large enough for
some truly excellent apps to grow into. Will it get the chance? Once you figure out how
to use it (which really doesn't take long), the
Z10 is a worthy mobile flagship, and it certainly
"feels" much better than any BlackBerry device
that came before it. That good feeling isn't just
superficial, either. It's based on real power, and the ability to do things other mobile OSes can't.
But anyone buying RIM first BlackBerry 10
phone must realize: Most of that power has yet
to be unlocked.

Saw the review on CNN a while ago, not enticing, I'd rather stick with my Android phone from Samsung.
By the way, First to comment....