BlackBerry is finally back with its new operating system, BlackBerry 10 and a new flagship smartphone, the BlackBerry Z10.
The Z10 is BlackBerry's first full touchscreen smartphone. Great news for anyone who could never get on with the tiny keys of the iconic physical Qwerty keyboard. See also: BlackBerry 10 Price in UK: Q10 & Z10
The overall design of the Z10 is clean and simple; it closely resembles the iPhone 5 with straight edges and rounded corners. The Z10's rear cover is slightly rounded at the edges and has a rubbery texture similar to that of the Nexus 7.
Available in black or white, we measured the Z10 at a pretty slim 9.2mm. It's also nice and light at 135g.
For an expensive flagship phone, we're not overly impressed by the build quality of the Z10. With a predominantly plastic chassis the phone just has a distinctly cheap feel and we don't like thin and flimsy rear cover - even if it does save a few grams of weight. The Z10 lacks the premium feel which a flagship device simply has to deliver.
BlackBerry has opted for a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM for the Z10's engine room. The dual-core chip might sound very mid-range but it coped with everything we threw at it which it what count.
The BlackBerry 10 operating system is nippy and shows no signs of lag. Browsing the web is particularly speedy, as BlackBerry said it would be.
The 4.2in screen is the Z10's best hardware feature. With a resolution of 768x1280 it has the highest pixel density of a phone we've reviewed at 355ppi. It's no surprise that text and images look crisp and clear. Our main concern is how quickly the display gets dirty with finger print marks.
There's only one model of the Z10 so you'll have to be ok with 16GB of internal storage, a quarter of which is already used up by the BlackBerry 10 operating system. Luckily there is a microSD card slot which accepts up to 64GB cards.
On top of the usual microUSB slot and headphone port the Z10 has a Micro HDMI port. Internally it has dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, NFC and support for 4G mobile networks.
The Z10's main 8Mp is ok, but nothing more - there are plenty of rival smartphones with better cameras. The Time Shift feture which allows you adjust photos after you've taken them is neat but similar functionality can be found elsewhere. We found quality of the 2Mp front facing camera to be good when holding a BBM Video call.
Since there are no physical buttons or touch sensitive soft keys for navigation, everything is done with gestures. After a few minutes of confusion we quickly got the hang of BlackBerry 10.
The main home screen shows any open apps in small windows while a traditional app menu sits to the right and there's a pull down settings bar.
We like the BlackBerry Hub, one of the main features of the OS. The Hub is an all-in-one inbox and notification centre for all your accounts and is accessible quickly and easily no matter what you're doing.
The keyboard is another good feature, allowing you to quickly construct sentences by flicking suggested words up from the keyboard.
Overall BlackBerry 10 is good, however it doesn't go beyond what is already available in the form of iOS and Android. It has merely caught up and presented similar features in an alternative way.
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