Issues I have with my z10 (some possible fixes too)
(lots of edits, all honest):
:mad::mad::mad:
Background: I had been waiting years for the new BB10/Z10 and while I would have preferred to get the Q10 simply for it's full clicky keyboard, I didn't want to wait another few months. Luckily I'm in the UK so got hold of a Z10 48 hours ago. In the UK we get 7 (sometimes 14) days to try out a handset risk free. Here's why I'm currently intending to send it back:
(btw - I understand some issues can be palmed off to other companies e.g. Gmail issues - but seriously? BB can test this stuff before they release. Ultimately they should care if the end user has a rough time! And if you claim "ah, but it's a new OS!" then sorry - no dice. It's not new - it's not even new code! This has been in production for more than a year with thousands of RIM employees using dev-handsets to refine the OS and make it good to launch (part of the original delay). How some of these issues could have slipped by RIM personnel during the years they have been making BB10, is absolutely beyond me. Think about what makes your BB experience so great. Why do you love BB vs iP or Droid? For 90% of POWER users it's things like customisable notifications. Customisable LED colours. Individual mailbox icons. Things that enhance productivity and mean you don't have to check the device (as in power up, and swipe) constantly. 'Hearing' whether you need to look at the device itself saves hours each day. Things like delete vs delete from server. It's not as if RIM forgot all these things when they started making BB10!
1. You'll want to be able to assign a different alert sound to each mail box so you can tell, with your ears... if you need to pick-up/look at the device. Currently? You get only one alert sound for all emails, regardless of which mailbox they are for. And they all have to be the same volume.
2. You'll want BBM to work in Landscape mode, because this mode is much more comfortable to type in, especially 2-handed. Currently? Portrait only, sorry.
EDIT: workaround - activate via the Hub, rather than icon
3. You'll want WhatsApp, Bloomberg Mobile and BeBuzz - top App targets on pretty much any user's list. Really, they should have been part of the 70,000 apps RIM got finished pre-launch of BB10.
CLARIFY: not the Bloomberg for terminal login, that's available already. Bloomberg did a great App for monitoring portfolios too - that's missing. WhatsApp is the real pain here because of so many non-BB users who expect to be able to 'chat' these days.. yes, even though WhatsApp is HORRIBLY insecure and generally a poor version of BBM. There are 400 different battery monitors in the revamped App World, I would happily have jettisoned 399 of them if I could have had WA from day one.
EDIT: You can do a port of the Droid version of WA but it won't integrate with contacts list, apparently
4. when you click the Text Messages icon you'll want it to take you to your text messages, not the Hub.
CLARIFY: this is a known bug related to open emails in the Hub
5. you'll want to be allowed to set whatever lock password you want. Sometimes it's less about security and more about requiring SOMETHING to be entered before unlocking the device (stopping a kid, for example). If you want "ABAB" as your password, that is your choice. Currently? Nope - no patterns allowed.
6. the Z10 runs damn hot. You can fry an egg on it.
CLARIFY - might be syncing/config related to new device - may settle. May be exacerbated by the metal on the backing plate (the RIM logo)
7. the lock screen currently has just one icon for emails - ALL emails, regardless of mailbox. It has a fairly useless number for unread messages in ALL of the boxes combined e.g. "200 emails" - but maybe 198 are messages in a box you don't care for. Pretty lame because you therefore have to double-swipe into the Hub to see what messages are waiting.
8. opening a tenth App closes a previously opened App. It should ask you before closing the other App.
EDIT: This is a pain if Skype, Voice or Maps is the App it closes. Yes yes do you really need 10 Apps open? Depends how you use your device!
9. the battery % number has been removed! The current battery icon is too small to tell the difference between 30% and 15%.
EDIT: there is an App that can do this, I leave it running constantly
10. the screen rotation is S-L-O-W. Often you can count 1.. 2.. 3.. 4 before the screen switches orientation. Given how often you'll switch between orientations during use, it quickly gets annoying.
CLARIFY - this was noted on a demo video and perhaps RIM know about it. You will waste a lot of time waiting for the screen to change orientation.
11. because the auto correct option is ON the space bar, it stops you putting a space into the text you're writing. (if you don't want to accept the auto correct suggestion). You have to swipe up to circumvent this. It's annoying.
12. the touch (capacitative, I assume?) often requires 2 or 3 presses to register - simply not good enough. It's generally not that accurate. Trying to get the cursor to the right spot to edit something is frustrating.
EDIT: playing more with the 'cursor positioning circle' feature it's getting easier BUT - when near the edge of the screen it's still very tough AND when trying to cut/copy/paste it seems to have a mind of it's own. Appreciate I have been spoilt with a trackpad for many years...
13. when the screen finally rotates (see point 10) the position your cursor was in in the previous orientation is lost
14. you can't use the Calendar in Landscape mode - frustrating as typing 2 handed is much more comfortable in Landscape mode
15. auto-correct seems to function on the assumption that the first letter is already correct.
EDIT: often you mis-type the first letter and then the whole word before realising. Currently you need to delete the whole word (actually quite easy - swipe left on the keyboard) and start again = wasted time
16. it's not easy to put a question/exclamation mark into text. Fine, have a sub menu for general punctuation - but not these extremely common marks.
EDIT: which is exactly why comma and full-stop (period) are full-time keys
17. the super-useful "delete from device OR delete from device & server" has been removed entirely!
18. the status bar (battery, time, signal) has been removed from the screen when you are in an App
EDIT: you'll miss time the most, probably. Comments that it gives you extra screen space. That's a fair point.. but it should be a user option.
EDIT2: sort of workaround: Swipe up from the bottom, but not full swipe(as for minimizing the app) - just 3-4mm and you can see battery bar, time, wifi, cellular network, location, hotspot etc. Release, and you're in your app again - thanks borceg!
19. using the browser in Landscape mode means "open in new tab" is in a fricking sub-menu! It's like the single most used feature in any browser, and unlike Apple iOS you can't just hold a press to activate 'open in new tab'. It makes for a clunky multi-tab browsing experience when browsing in Landscape.
20. sometimes numbers are included in the on-screen keyboard, sometimes not. And not in the common sense way you might expect.
EDIT: yes there is a shortcut (swipe down on the keyboard) but no, that's not my point!
21. twice now my 'enter password to unlock' screen has appeared without the keyboard, meaning I couldn't enter my password.
CLARIFY - about 2 times out of 200, or 1%
22. new messages - why the heck couldn't you have some small icons in the status bar at the top of the screen? Why force us to swipe/double-swipe all the way to the Hub to see what messages, in which mailboxes, have come through?
23. in the Hub, the icons for each message don't show if the message was successfully sent. This is lame. To check if an email/text was sent okay, you have to go into the message (2 levels)
24. the 'mark as read' option is cranky with Gmail accounts - often taking
EDIT: hours to feed through and update.
25. you can't bulk 'mark as read' several message at once
EDIT: REJOICE! I think you might be able to.. double-checking....
26. you STILL can't see when a text message you received was actually sent by the other party. This is an absolute disgrace - even 10 year old Nokia phones can show this information.
27. you STILL can't swap email accounts when forwarding a message
28. Calendar reminders often don't trigger the red LED. In fact, the LED is generally pretty rubbish, often not flashing, or flashing only for a short while.
29. deleting an email takes 2 clicks rather than 1
EDIT - you can turn the delete confirm off
30. the device supplied ring tones/alert tones are AWFUL and you cannot set variable volume levels. Okay, you can load whatever sounds you like.. but, for example.. it let's you select .mid files for ringtone even though these aren't compatible (when someone calls, your phone will be silent). How difficult would it have been to put OS5/6/7 ringtones into the ringtones folder? So that users get some consistency out of the box?
31. there's an awkward 3 second pause between clicking Send and a text message actually sending. Why awkward? Because you then have to wait/waste 3 seconds waiting to see if your click was registered, and if the message was sent.
32. trying to type 2-handed in portrait mode is very uncomfortable.
33. battery life is as disappointing as you feared - about 12 hours tops, with sensible use
EDIT - might be related to syncing/config and general playing with everything.. might settle
34. GMAIL - boring standard message in the Inbox, no labels or anything funky - Universal Search won't find it if it's more than 1 WEEK old. And the power controls from previous BBs (Indexing, Extended Search etc)? Gone.
EDIT: you can fix this! When you add a new Gmail account (including Google Apps) click Advanced, rather than Email. This will let you (the very last option) set the sync period up to 30 days. Using Gmail in the browser isn't such a bad thing, and full search is available through that. A bit clunky, but probably bearable.
35. You'd like to set different ringtones (and volumes) depending on who's calling you? Say, so your wife can wake you up in the middle of the night, while you're travelling, but nobody else can? Nope - sorry - that feature is gone.
CLARIFY: you sort of can, but not really unless you want to set the ringtone to silent for everyone else
36. Weird one this. The phone has stopped ringing! Checked and double-checked all Notification settings, even did a reboot :crying::crying: but nope, phone will not ring for an incoming call!
EDIT: a fresh reboot has fixed it thank God - I was using a 206kb mp3 which may or may not be relevant
37. First field test of TomTom maps (Google maps is gone) wasn't that great. We wanted a chip shop and it found one 8 miles away. Fortunately the lady's 9900 using G Maps found one 500 yards away. I guess this will improve over time, and I'd love to know why G Maps is missing (assume aggressive move from Google?)
38. it's sometimes tricky to clear Missed Calls. I think you might have to go into the Missed Calls menu? Seems a little extra effort - previously you just clicked the Dial button once to view and presto, missed call indicator cleared. Hardly a huge thing but then as with a lot on this list, it's all about saving a second here, a second there = a big saving over the day or week.
39. Contentious I know, and arguably not a 'fault', but the charging points are gone so I can't get a desktop stand (ironic given the battery life is now more of an issue) :crying::crying:
40. Weird one this - the text message notifier is sometimes not played! About 1 in every 5 text messages, the vibration and LED work but the sound doesn't play. It's a .m4a file from BB5 (maybe 6) and seems to play fine most of the time.
41. MY GOD - this is a joke now. The sound alert for a text message sometimes doesn't play. It seems to vibrate okay, but every 5th or so text message, it doesn't play the alert sound. WTF. Are you kidding me RIM? This is the most basic function of a phone other than making calls.
42. Here's a nice little bug that clearly escaped RIM's attention for more than a year. If you set the display format for your emails to 'conversation style' (so that messages on the same thread are grouped - very helpful) but a folder which one of the messages is in isn't synced, then fresh inbox replies to that chain won't get shown to you in the Hub. Big deal? Well, it turns out that /GOOGLEMAIL/SENT ITEMS is a sub folder that's affected by this. So yeah.. big deal - it means any chain you reply to using your Blackberry, subsequent replies will not be displayed in the Hub. "Solution" is to disable 'conversation style' for thread display.
43. When you receive a new text message and read it, if you click back to return to the Hub the text message is unbolded (meaning it's been read). But the red asterisk (meaning there's a new text message) remains on top of the Text Messages icon. Now, how do you clear it? I'm not sure!
44. If you use the workaround to get BBM in Landscape, the 'status' of who you are chatting to takes up 50% of the screen space for the 'viewing' area (because the keyboard takes up 50%). Really, this status doesn't have to be permanently displayed in this way - it doesn't really change, and if you need to see it, perhaps a swipe could bring it back? As it is, what with the keyboard taking so much space, you can only see 1 line of the chat you're having.
45. The keyboard stopped inputting. There was a pop-up about a missing file, then the keyboard stopped typing. It was still visible on screen, but when I typed no letters would show up. It also killed voice input too. Rebooted the Z10 and after a 1 minute wait "preparing Blackberry Hub" the keyboard was working again.
46. There doesn't seem to be a way to put a new paragraph in a Text Message - the 'return' key is called 'send' in Text Message mode. Doing the usual shift+return (shift+send) just sends the unfinished text.
more
there's a whole bunch more **really really really annoying things** that have come to light :-(
47. keyboard glitch bug. This HANGS the keyboard - the only fix I have found is a reboot. I think, but not sure, that it's activated by trying to select a red-underline (spelling mistake) word but slightly missing the touch point. The keyboard then seems to die. You can tap the keys, but nothing appears on screen. Has happened about 5 times in as many days.
48. there is no "resend" function for emails/texts that have not sent
49. there is no contact memory i.e. the phone will not suggest contacts based on people you have previously messaged. Admittedly this has never been a feature on BB, however, it is a feature on every other modern device in existence
50. when you write a very long text piece e.g. in Calendar, the text box doesn't automatically go to the end of what you've written, should you subsequently try to edit it
51. which brings me onto a massive bug.. if you write too much in the Calendar app, despite allowing you to write it, when you save that calendar entry the app will TRUNCATE what you have written, without a warning
52. a nice bug that meant the volume up/down screen overlay got stuck i.e. it sat on top of everything and would not fade. Solution? Battery pull.
53. the "restart" function that's meant to stop you having to physically pull the battery out works only 50% of the time
54. you can't scroll over i.e. drag your finger a video in the browser without said video automatically playing
55. there is no longer a way to choose the size of the photo file you send in an email or text
56. in fact, there is no longer a way to choose what size/resolution of photo you take in the first place
57. emails get "ticked" automatically, making you assume they have been sent. Check back later - often the tick is replaced with a clock = email didn't send. Complete fail as an email client that you can rely on.
58. multiple text messages are linked together into one - cool, every device for the last 8 years has been able to do that. What is BB's take on it for their next gen O/S? You get the text message alert and vibrate for each individual message in the link! So 3 messages linked together? 3 beep beeps and buzzes. Smooth, RIM, smooth.
59. wondering why your battery is fading so quickly? Use the charger plug that came in the box. If you use USB, or an old BB plug, it doesn't give the Z10 battery the amps it craves. Did RIM think to point out this critical detail in the box, or instructions? Of course they didn't.
Why is this so ******* annoying? Why does it rile me so? Because in 7 DAYS I have found so many huge bugs with a flagship O/S and device, that was delayed for 2 YEARS while RIM perfected it. Literally thousands of RIM developers must have played with this device and platform over the course of those 2 years and yet none of them loved their work enough to FIX these extremely.. EXTREMELY.. simple bugs/glitches/missing-features.
You should be ashamed RIM, ashamed. This is a potentially great device RUINED by your POS quality assurance. You deserve failure.
http://www.thorstenfixplease.co.uk/
:mad::mad::mad: (returning to a trusty 9780 until I work out what to do..... overall my feeling is that in their rush to "re-launch" they have removed most of what made us all so loyal to BB in the first place!)
GOOD POINTS:
- You know how AWFUL the previous BBs were for browsing, taking photos, looking at photos, looking at videos.. basically anything media based? That's all fixed, and fixed really really well! The new browser is an absolute pleasure to use, as is the Reader function
- The hardware is also pretty special in terms of build
- The reviews that say the call quality is bad are off the mark, if you ask me. Maybe it's because I'm in the UK (3G) but they sound great
- And the speaker? VERY GOOD. Certainly adequate for a conference call type scenario with the device in the middle of the table, again contrary to some reviews
- The handset is a good weight, feels substantial but not heavy
- The headphone socket on the top makes for easier tune-listening when it's in your pocket
- Did I mention how GREAT browsing esp in Landscape is? Ooooo-la-la
- It's much easier to move icons around and sort them into folders
- It's great being able to see 16 big icons per screen
- BBM is sublime, as always
- The way pictures/videos are played back is finally updated - on the 9780 it would regularly crash the whole device
- I think (not confirmed) the email client is finally suggesting (or remembering) contact names/emails that you recently used?
FIXED
- BBM in Landscape workaround.. open it via the Hub not the icon - thanks BBThemes
- delete multiple emails, there is a multi-select, it's just in a sub-menu and not immediately obvious - thanks BBThemes - can't seem to make it work for multiple-select "Mark Message as Read"