BlackBerry Z10 Review
The BlackBerry Z10 is here, a new smartphone and a new perspective from the Canadian brand to compete in the smartphones market.
Let’s start with the design, which I really love! The new Z10 is really neat and elegant, from the texture of the back cover to curved edges to the screen, the phone looks good. What’s even better is the lightness of the phone, only 137.5 g! Speaking of the screen, the phone is equipped with a 4.2″ 768 X 1280 pixels 16M Color touchscreen, no keyboard, which could a disappointment to many BlackBerry users, personally I prefer touchscreens over QWERTY keyboards. I guess it depends on what you’re used to.
The latest BlackBerry OS 10 is on board the Z10, a faster, better looking operating system, to move around the new OS you can slide in from the 4 edges of the screen; sliding from your right side moves you from the BlackBerry Hub to the task manager and through the menu, while sliding from left side takes the other way around. If you slide from the bottom of the screen you exit the screen/app you’re on and unlocks the screen, while sliding from the top brings the settings menu.
I found it very smooth to browse through the device.
The new BBM supports video calling, however I couldn’t try it because it’s blocked in the UAE, but I believe it’s a big addition to the BBM.
The camera is a big feature in the Z10, the primary camera is an 8 MP that can shoot 3264 X 2448 pixels and Full HD 1080p at 30fps, the camera enjoys autofocus and LED flash, and i capable of geo-tagging, continuous auto-focus, image stabilization and face detection. The secondary camera is a 2 MP with the ability to shoot HD 720p videos at 30fps.
This below image combines 2 photos I took on the beach, in the first one the focus was on the sea, while in the second photo, the focus was on the bottle. You can have a look at some videos I shot using the Z10 in the video review above.
You can move the focus point across the screen with your fingers and the camera will automatically adjust, of course you can tell the difference while you’re shooting and you can refer to the above video to see how it looks like. One of the best bits about the Z10 camera is the Time Shift mode, a feature that enables to choose the best frame of each person in the photo, basically with this feature the phone will take a burst of photos and with the face detection capability, you will be to browse all frames of each face and choose the best one. This is a good feature if you are trying to photograph a number of people, where it’s almost impossible to have everyone looking directly at the camera and not blinking.
Another cool feature in the Z10 is the Word Prediction, and yes you are right, the phone will predict the words as you are writing, and all you have to do is to slide the word to your message for faster typing. Once you’ve got used to it, you will enjoy writing.
All in all, the Z10 is an excellent phone, nice design, light weight and a range of good features, and the price is competitive compared to other smartphone brands.
